Beijing Sounds — 北京的声儿

Thanks, all, for the feedback this week. Between huffing virus-laden recirculated toxic fumes (aka flying) and battling a drooling-in-meetings case of jet lag, I’ve only had time for a few responses up until now.

It’s kind of shocking what happens to email/comment volume when well-trafficked blogs give you a plug. Special thanks to recently unmasked Jeremiah of the inimitable Granite Studio for mentioning Beijing Sounds. That mention was picked up by Jeremy of blogosphere stalwart Danwei, whose “Beijing-obsessed” line was spot on. So the feedback floodgates were opened, at least by Beijing Sounds standards.

I’m particularly smitten with two categories of comment that go to prove some people are even more obsessed with běijīnghuà than I am.

1. Deeper Thinking

To R or not to R? Apparently, some people have thought pretty hard about érhuàyīn 儿化音:

Sima wrote a treatise to get you started on the semantics of it all, with an especially good observation about fànguǎnr 饭馆儿 versus túshūguǎn 图书馆 — this is how linguistic meaning gets created. Elisa responded with another example, which my closest Beijinger informant tells me is not just běijīnghuà, but old-timer běijīnghuà at that. Then Brendan (of bokane.org fame) topped it off with a link to the best “bèir 倍儿” ever uttered in the history of cinema.

What do you call Mandarin butchered by non-native speakers?

I’d nominated then pleonastically defended “mandarish” but now I’m kicking myself for not thinking of Shaan’s approach of coining a Mandarin word for the task — it’s certainly a better parallel to “Chinglish”, which is fundamentally a combination of English syllables.

2. Corrections

I appreciate everyone who’s sent in a correction, by email or by comment. Apparently Beijing Sounds is a target-rich environment. My typesetter’s on notice that any more slacking will result in suspension without pay.

For the most part, I just make a note and correct the entry, but William had the observation that the mistake in this entry

一减一加五等于无

gives “the result of the calculation as 无 wu2 nothing instead of 五 wu3 five”. Amusing.