There are always difficulties when you try and write a foreign word in your own language. Most languages don't bother to use the same set of sounds as each other, so you can not always (or even often) get an exact match to the sounds in your language. There are a number of ways around this; European languages don't really have this problem since they all use the same alphabet, you just have to learn how the combinations of letters are pronounced in one language or another; and there are varying degrees of success with Romanising other languages.
For those of you not familiar with Chinese, the written language is made up of a set of ideograms. Each character is one syllable, and often has a handful of different meanings. Most words in Chinese are 1-4 characters; sometimes they are fairly logical combinations, and sometimes they seem to mean completely different things when used together than when used on their own.
Furthermore, there is no clue in the characters themselves as to how they are pronounced. You simply have to know. Not all Chinese people know how to pronounce all the characters, either; if they see an unfamiliar character, they will have to look it up in a dictionary to see how to pronounce it. Many different characters share the same pronunciation, and differ only in tone; many characters share the exact same pronunciation, including tone. For example, the pronunciation "shi" is shared by about 158 different characters; "shi" with a lowering then rising tone is sAll of thihared by about 10.
This means there isn't really a way to convert Chinese characters to Roman characters; you can, however, translate Chinese speech to Roman characters by making a set of rule for how those characters should be pronounced. These rules are important, as Chinese has a completely different set of sounds from English. A good set of rules is the now-standard pinyin; a bad set of rules is Wade-Gillies. Pinyin is consistent and once you know the rules of pronunciation, matches Chinese speech quite closely. You have to get out of the habit of speaking the English characters as English, though; "x" and "q" in particular are pronounced very differently (q always trips me up, especially in words like "quan").
However, it only matches Hanyu (Mandarin). None of the other Chinese languages have standard Romanisations. They do all use the same set of characters, though, so two Chinese people who speak different languages won't understand each other while speaking, but they will be able to write to each other.
So much for writing Chinese using English letters. How about writing English using Chinese characters?
Well, it happens in much the same way. There is no consistent system for it; people will just pick characters that sound most like the English word in question, with no regard for what those characters mean in Chinese.
To illustrate, here is a little story from when Ariel and I were in a park on Monday:
We had been walking for a while, and had finally spied a free bench to sit down on. No sooner had we sat, however, than we were accosted by a sideshow operator wanting us to try his game. We declined, but a short moment later he asked me to record his spiel in English - he spoke no English, Ariel was translating as necessary. I complied, since he was a pretty nice guy, really. Then, he wrote down the English words so he could say them himself, with both Ariel and me repeating the words so he could get the sound right. This is where it gets funny, because he was writing the English using Chinese characters.
I can't read Chinese at all, but Ariel told me later that he had been using mostly words from the kitchen - so the first line - "one ball, one pen" - was written like so: 碗包碗盆. This translates roughly as: cup dumpling cup basin.
The end.
Some words in English are pretty much impossible to write in Chinese characters (at least with Mandarin pronunciation - I don't know much about the other Chinese languages). Chinese doesn't have any final consonants, for example, so even a simple word like "pet" becomes something more like "peta" when written in Chinese. These habits stay with Chinese people speaking English, too, so it is very difficult for Chinese people to get out of the habit of either adding a vowel to the end of every word, or leaving the final consonant off entirely. Even the other (local, not foreign) teachers at school do it. Consonant clusters, even in the middle of words, are difficult for the same reason. Also, there is no sound even approximating "v" in Chinese, so guess which letter is the hardest for the kids to pronounce...
Friday, March 28, 2008
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Dinner Party
This is a very belated post - the party in question was three weeks ago. I just got the photos today, though, so today is a good day to write about it.
This story begins at Christmas time. A few days before Christmas the school had Christmas celebrations, and everyone was invited over to one of the teachers' houses for dinner, including us foreign teachers. I thought this was mighty swell of them to treat us to dinner, and decided that the foreign teachers should return the favour .I also thought it would be good for bringing everyone together.
So, earlier this month, we did.
Alex knows his way around the city the best, so it was his job to bring food from the city centre - it's cheaper there, the cost of living in this suburb is high. I spent the week beforehand thinking up my part of the menu, and making sure I had what I needed.
On the day itself, I prepared some handmade pasta during the lunch break. It took longer than I'd planned, and so I got back to school late, and Alex's girlfriend, Linda, finshed cutting it for me.
In the evening Ivy and I went home earlier than everyone else, because we had one less class to teach. This gave us about an hour to get a headstart on dinner, and it meant there was still one of us - Alex - to escort the Chinese teachers here. We got our first surprise when we walked in the door - Alex's girlfriend, Linda, wasn't there, and she was the one Alex sent to do the shopping. Without the ingredients, we couldn't cook anything - but we had plenty to keep us occupied, because I hadn't stored the pasta very well and it had now decided it preferred being a lump than nice long strands.
We were still untangling pasta when Linda came back, very flustered - it turns out she had to carry an awful lot of bags of groceries, and they don't let you take the shopping trolleys far enough to catch a taxi.
Now that we had groceries, the cooking began. Linda and I stayed here to cook, and Ivy went back to her apartment, in order to use as many kitchens as possible. Ivy cooked an African-style stew, and was done long before Linda and me. Since we were both making multiple dishes, and there was limited bench space and only two cooking elements, neither of us had enough to cook as fast as we would have liked.
Everyone arrived before any food was ready - but my compulsive snacking habits came to the rescue here, as there were plenty of snacks of various kinds to keep everyone happy. Ivy finished hers and helped Linda and me, but it was something like 10 or 11 o'clock before dinner was served. Even then, I hadn't finished - I served half some of mine, and kept cooking a couple of things more.
Before we had finished cooking, though, the power went out. The only light in the place was the gas stove. Everyone piled out into the corridor, and Alex went downstairs to find someone to give us some electricity. A little explanation here is in order - the electricity is pre-paid, and the only way to charge it is to put money on a card, then have one of the staff put the card in your meter - because all the electricity meters are behind a locked door. The side-effect of the locked door is that I have no idea how much electricity I have left, until it goes out - at, as it happens, the worst possible time.
A couple of the teachers told ghost stories, and eventually we got enough power to last the night restored. Normally there's not a whole lot you can do about it at that time of night, because the building attendant's office is closed; I guess we got lucky.
So, what did we have? Ivy cooked her African stew; Linda cooked a bunch of Chinese things that I mostly don't remember, but they were numerous and good - she cooks well. I coked mostly Italian food - gnocchi with butter, pumpkin ravioli, hunter's style chicken, and more that I had planned but didn't have time for. I wanted to have something from New Zealand, though - as much as I like Italian food - so I made fish and kumura chips, in a beer batter. That went down very well, and along with Linda's and Ivy's food staved off the starving hordes while I cooked the ravioli, then the gnocchi.
Afterwards I made mulled wine - not terribly well, they didn't like that so much, but all of that conspired to keep me in the kitchen most of the night. I didn't mind so much - I'm not a terribly social person at the best of times, anyway, so at least I was keeping myself occupied.
For those of you keeping track, Linda isn't a teacher where I work, and Alex is one of the foreign teachers. Yes, this means that Alex copped out on his share of the cooking by having his girlfriend do it.
After I'd pried myself away from the stove, pictures were taken, and thus I present these:
This is the kitchen. From left to right: Linda, Ivy, me. Note the lack of Alex!
Here are most of the teachers and staff where I work. Helen, the head teacher, was camera-shy; there are no photos of her here. Mary, who works in admin, didn't come to dinner, and neither did the cleaning lady whose name I don't know because she doesn't speak any English. So, from left to right: Ariel, a teacher; Diane, the receptionist; Melinda, Apple and Vivi, all teachers; and Tracy, the headmaster.
And here is a photo of everyone! (With the aforementioned exceptions.) From left to right: Ariel, Diane, Melinda, Tracy, me! Ivy, Alex, Apple and Vivi.
One last photo for fun!
The party ended at about 1 or 2 in the morning. Everyone said their goodbyes, and I had a little more to eat. The leftovers kept me going for several days after that! All in all, a good time was had by all.
This story begins at Christmas time. A few days before Christmas the school had Christmas celebrations, and everyone was invited over to one of the teachers' houses for dinner, including us foreign teachers. I thought this was mighty swell of them to treat us to dinner, and decided that the foreign teachers should return the favour .I also thought it would be good for bringing everyone together.
So, earlier this month, we did.
Alex knows his way around the city the best, so it was his job to bring food from the city centre - it's cheaper there, the cost of living in this suburb is high. I spent the week beforehand thinking up my part of the menu, and making sure I had what I needed.
On the day itself, I prepared some handmade pasta during the lunch break. It took longer than I'd planned, and so I got back to school late, and Alex's girlfriend, Linda, finshed cutting it for me.
In the evening Ivy and I went home earlier than everyone else, because we had one less class to teach. This gave us about an hour to get a headstart on dinner, and it meant there was still one of us - Alex - to escort the Chinese teachers here. We got our first surprise when we walked in the door - Alex's girlfriend, Linda, wasn't there, and she was the one Alex sent to do the shopping. Without the ingredients, we couldn't cook anything - but we had plenty to keep us occupied, because I hadn't stored the pasta very well and it had now decided it preferred being a lump than nice long strands.
We were still untangling pasta when Linda came back, very flustered - it turns out she had to carry an awful lot of bags of groceries, and they don't let you take the shopping trolleys far enough to catch a taxi.
Now that we had groceries, the cooking began. Linda and I stayed here to cook, and Ivy went back to her apartment, in order to use as many kitchens as possible. Ivy cooked an African-style stew, and was done long before Linda and me. Since we were both making multiple dishes, and there was limited bench space and only two cooking elements, neither of us had enough to cook as fast as we would have liked.
Everyone arrived before any food was ready - but my compulsive snacking habits came to the rescue here, as there were plenty of snacks of various kinds to keep everyone happy. Ivy finished hers and helped Linda and me, but it was something like 10 or 11 o'clock before dinner was served. Even then, I hadn't finished - I served half some of mine, and kept cooking a couple of things more.
Before we had finished cooking, though, the power went out. The only light in the place was the gas stove. Everyone piled out into the corridor, and Alex went downstairs to find someone to give us some electricity. A little explanation here is in order - the electricity is pre-paid, and the only way to charge it is to put money on a card, then have one of the staff put the card in your meter - because all the electricity meters are behind a locked door. The side-effect of the locked door is that I have no idea how much electricity I have left, until it goes out - at, as it happens, the worst possible time.
A couple of the teachers told ghost stories, and eventually we got enough power to last the night restored. Normally there's not a whole lot you can do about it at that time of night, because the building attendant's office is closed; I guess we got lucky.
So, what did we have? Ivy cooked her African stew; Linda cooked a bunch of Chinese things that I mostly don't remember, but they were numerous and good - she cooks well. I coked mostly Italian food - gnocchi with butter, pumpkin ravioli, hunter's style chicken, and more that I had planned but didn't have time for. I wanted to have something from New Zealand, though - as much as I like Italian food - so I made fish and kumura chips, in a beer batter. That went down very well, and along with Linda's and Ivy's food staved off the starving hordes while I cooked the ravioli, then the gnocchi.
Afterwards I made mulled wine - not terribly well, they didn't like that so much, but all of that conspired to keep me in the kitchen most of the night. I didn't mind so much - I'm not a terribly social person at the best of times, anyway, so at least I was keeping myself occupied.
For those of you keeping track, Linda isn't a teacher where I work, and Alex is one of the foreign teachers. Yes, this means that Alex copped out on his share of the cooking by having his girlfriend do it.
After I'd pried myself away from the stove, pictures were taken, and thus I present these:
This is the kitchen. From left to right: Linda, Ivy, me. Note the lack of Alex!
Here are most of the teachers and staff where I work. Helen, the head teacher, was camera-shy; there are no photos of her here. Mary, who works in admin, didn't come to dinner, and neither did the cleaning lady whose name I don't know because she doesn't speak any English. So, from left to right: Ariel, a teacher; Diane, the receptionist; Melinda, Apple and Vivi, all teachers; and Tracy, the headmaster.
And here is a photo of everyone! (With the aforementioned exceptions.) From left to right: Ariel, Diane, Melinda, Tracy, me! Ivy, Alex, Apple and Vivi.
One last photo for fun!
The party ended at about 1 or 2 in the morning. Everyone said their goodbyes, and I had a little more to eat. The leftovers kept me going for several days after that! All in all, a good time was had by all.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Love and Guns
Since the last post was just pretty pictures, and so was awfully easy to digest, I'm going to go on a bit about socio-political issues in China.
First up, guns: there aren't any. The military have them, sure, but ordinary citizens are not allowed to own, let alone carry, guns. As a result, there aren't a whole lot of shootings over here, and would-be murderers have to use less efficient methods of killing - generally knives or swords. A further result is that people here feel pretty safe. I think anyone who thinks that guns are necessary for self-defence should visit China and see how necessary they really are.
Love over here is a much trickier subject. Many people in China still have traditional views on love and marriage, which means that most people marry young and marry once. Most girls will not even have many boyfriends before choosing a husband. Men over here still place a high value on virgin brides, too. Add in to this mix the money issue, which is very closely related to the 'one child' policy, and things get kind of sticky.
China's 'one child per family' policy to help reduce their overpopulation problem is quite well known. However, because the policy is less than a generation old, most people are not prepared for the effects on traditional ways of life. In this case, it is traditional for the children to support their parents when they get old. This is not an issue if you have five siblings, because the burden is spread very thin. However, if you have no siblings, and your husband or wife has no siblings, then the two of you need to support both sets of parents. Add the child in, and that means that a modern family has to support seven people on the income of only two. The older people are certainly not prepared for this, and I think it will be a generation or so before the realities of preparing for your own retirement sink in; in the meantime, you need a lot of money to even think about starting a family.
This means that there is a de facto class division in China; people marry as rich a person as they can, which is generally someone of their own economic strata - except for very beautiful girls, who can often find a rich man to marry. Many people will marry for money rather than love - and will stay married, because you get a bad reputation if you have more than one serious boyfriend, let alone husband.
This attitude is gradually changing; the Chinese teenagers today have more open-minded views about things like the number of past partners, although money is still an issue.
On a completely unrelated topic, Xi'an is much prettier now that the trees are flowering and patches of green are showing up all over the place.
First up, guns: there aren't any. The military have them, sure, but ordinary citizens are not allowed to own, let alone carry, guns. As a result, there aren't a whole lot of shootings over here, and would-be murderers have to use less efficient methods of killing - generally knives or swords. A further result is that people here feel pretty safe. I think anyone who thinks that guns are necessary for self-defence should visit China and see how necessary they really are.
Love over here is a much trickier subject. Many people in China still have traditional views on love and marriage, which means that most people marry young and marry once. Most girls will not even have many boyfriends before choosing a husband. Men over here still place a high value on virgin brides, too. Add in to this mix the money issue, which is very closely related to the 'one child' policy, and things get kind of sticky.
China's 'one child per family' policy to help reduce their overpopulation problem is quite well known. However, because the policy is less than a generation old, most people are not prepared for the effects on traditional ways of life. In this case, it is traditional for the children to support their parents when they get old. This is not an issue if you have five siblings, because the burden is spread very thin. However, if you have no siblings, and your husband or wife has no siblings, then the two of you need to support both sets of parents. Add the child in, and that means that a modern family has to support seven people on the income of only two. The older people are certainly not prepared for this, and I think it will be a generation or so before the realities of preparing for your own retirement sink in; in the meantime, you need a lot of money to even think about starting a family.
This means that there is a de facto class division in China; people marry as rich a person as they can, which is generally someone of their own economic strata - except for very beautiful girls, who can often find a rich man to marry. Many people will marry for money rather than love - and will stay married, because you get a bad reputation if you have more than one serious boyfriend, let alone husband.
This attitude is gradually changing; the Chinese teenagers today have more open-minded views about things like the number of past partners, although money is still an issue.
On a completely unrelated topic, Xi'an is much prettier now that the trees are flowering and patches of green are showing up all over the place.
Blue Dragon Temple
The Blue Dragon Temple is small compared to many temples, and the park around it is not very large either, but that is not the attraction. Spring has come, and flowers everywhere re blossoming - and the Blue Dragon Temple ground have a plethora of flowers on display.
Ariel and I went to look and take photos, and quite a few other people had the same idea. There were many couple taking photos of one another standing under the flowering trees, and there was a wedding couple too. In China, they take all their wedding photos before the actual wedding - the photographer will take them around to scenic places and take lots of photos. Ariel told me that afterwards they will airbrush the photos in Photoshop, and charge quite large sums of money for the wedding album; a couple can easily spend 5000RMB on it.
After the temple we wandered around a nearby park, and that's where this photo was taken. Look, it's me!
This is Ariel, at the Blue Dragon Temple:
The remaining photos were all taken at the Blue Dragon Temple.
Ariel and I went to look and take photos, and quite a few other people had the same idea. There were many couple taking photos of one another standing under the flowering trees, and there was a wedding couple too. In China, they take all their wedding photos before the actual wedding - the photographer will take them around to scenic places and take lots of photos. Ariel told me that afterwards they will airbrush the photos in Photoshop, and charge quite large sums of money for the wedding album; a couple can easily spend 5000RMB on it.
After the temple we wandered around a nearby park, and that's where this photo was taken. Look, it's me!
This is Ariel, at the Blue Dragon Temple:
The remaining photos were all taken at the Blue Dragon Temple.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Violin
I have a violin! See:
I bought it after some trial and error from a music store in the South district, with Yoyo's help. It pays to have a Chinese friend along with you when shopping - the price she got was 2/3 of the price it would have been for me.
Then I discovered that it had no bridge, and had to go back to the shop to get one. Finally, I strung and tuned it, breaking a string in the process, and having the bridge fly out after trying to play a few notes. I shaved a bit off the bridge to make it fit better, re-strung it, and then tuned it properly - that is, I used my computer as an electronic tuner, instead of relying on my ear. I have no ear for that sort of thing; the computer did a much better job.
Then, I applied lots of rosin. It still doesn't seem to be enough, as I still can't get a decent sound out of the violin, but that might have more to do with my complete lack of knowing how to play the violin than with any problems with the rosin. It's difficult stuff to apply, too.
Eventually I'll be playing actual notes and so forth, and the violin itself was dead cheap, so all around it's a win. I'm going to teach myself how to play violin!
...Failing that, the guy in the store can put me on to a violin instructor. I might have to learn Chinese before I learn to play violin if I do it that way, though!
I bought it after some trial and error from a music store in the South district, with Yoyo's help. It pays to have a Chinese friend along with you when shopping - the price she got was 2/3 of the price it would have been for me.
Then I discovered that it had no bridge, and had to go back to the shop to get one. Finally, I strung and tuned it, breaking a string in the process, and having the bridge fly out after trying to play a few notes. I shaved a bit off the bridge to make it fit better, re-strung it, and then tuned it properly - that is, I used my computer as an electronic tuner, instead of relying on my ear. I have no ear for that sort of thing; the computer did a much better job.
Then, I applied lots of rosin. It still doesn't seem to be enough, as I still can't get a decent sound out of the violin, but that might have more to do with my complete lack of knowing how to play the violin than with any problems with the rosin. It's difficult stuff to apply, too.
Eventually I'll be playing actual notes and so forth, and the violin itself was dead cheap, so all around it's a win. I'm going to teach myself how to play violin!
...Failing that, the guy in the store can put me on to a violin instructor. I might have to learn Chinese before I learn to play violin if I do it that way, though!
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Look! It's a Post!
I don't really have a reason for not updating in so long, so I'm not going to try and explain the lack of posts recently. Instead, I'm going to talk about stuff!
A lot has happened, so not everything is going in this post. This post is going to be long enough as it is, partly because I want use English with no concern as to whether I'm using words or constructions that might not be understood. Nothing like living in a country that doesn't speak English to make you value using the language - really using it, not just a tiny subset. I'll talk about the dinner party and the violin in a day or two.
I don't want to rag on China straight off the bat, though - instead, I want to talk about nice Chinese people, because it's not something I really expected. I want each of you to imagine how you'd treat a Chinese person wandering around your city with absolutely no grasp of English, just for comparison - but I am constantly finding nice people here. The checkout operators at the supermarket give great big smiles for a simple 'thank you'; a man on the bus wiped down a wet seat for me so I could sit down; the man at the violin shop just being a generally nice guy; all the teachers at school.
I still haven't learned much Chinese. I did take a taxi on my own for the first time today, though, and even managed to get where I wanted to go.
The weather is getting warmer here. Yesterday I was fine in just a t-shirt, although today took a colder turn and forced me back into my jacket. Speaking of which, this post isn't going to be as long as first promised - I'm cold here, I have to move away from the place I can actually get internet access. More tomorrow!
A lot has happened, so not everything is going in this post. This post is going to be long enough as it is, partly because I want use English with no concern as to whether I'm using words or constructions that might not be understood. Nothing like living in a country that doesn't speak English to make you value using the language - really using it, not just a tiny subset. I'll talk about the dinner party and the violin in a day or two.
I don't want to rag on China straight off the bat, though - instead, I want to talk about nice Chinese people, because it's not something I really expected. I want each of you to imagine how you'd treat a Chinese person wandering around your city with absolutely no grasp of English, just for comparison - but I am constantly finding nice people here. The checkout operators at the supermarket give great big smiles for a simple 'thank you'; a man on the bus wiped down a wet seat for me so I could sit down; the man at the violin shop just being a generally nice guy; all the teachers at school.
I still haven't learned much Chinese. I did take a taxi on my own for the first time today, though, and even managed to get where I wanted to go.
The weather is getting warmer here. Yesterday I was fine in just a t-shirt, although today took a colder turn and forced me back into my jacket. Speaking of which, this post isn't going to be as long as first promised - I'm cold here, I have to move away from the place I can actually get internet access. More tomorrow!
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