On knowing what’s normal; a wán v. wánr (玩 / 玩儿) showdown; defining a Beijinger
Picture a Shàngdì spring day of 23° (73° for you folks back in Minneapolis) with a sky so blue even the Ministry of Environmental Protection can give Beijing a reasonably believable API of 53 . The apartment koi ponds brim with algae-free water. The water skeeters patrol in force, but the regular skeeters have yet to arrive. The lone turtle stays far enough out from port to evade capture by the groping hands of the apartments’ juvenile residents, who troll the waters in search of life, jerking back only occasionally when a mother’s halfhearted scolding warns of imminent death by waterborne disease.
Just the kind of day you might expect to hear behind you… well, just have a listen:
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[Birds chirping]
[More chirping]
[Chicken squawking?!]
SYZ: Wà!
哇！
Wow!SYZ: Zhēnde shì jī!
真的是鸡！
It’s really a chicken![Mischievous laughter]
Shì nǐ zìjǐ de jī ba?
是你自己的鸡吧？
It’s your own chicken?
YY: Shì wǒ zìjǐ de jī
是我自己的鸡
It’s my own chicken.SYZ: Nà tā chī shénme?
那它吃什么？
So what does it eat?
YY: Tā chī xiǎomài hé dànké
它吃小麦和蛋壳
He eats wheat and eggshells
SYZ: Shì ma?
是吗？
Really?YY: Tā hái yǎo rénjia tǔ de tán
它还咬人家吐的痰
It also pecks at the phlegm that people spit out.PBS: á?
啊 ?
Really?
Let’s say you just arrived in Beijing yesterday (practically the case here — just a coupla weeks ago). Not familiar with the ways and habits of Beijing, you go out exploring (just as far as the apartment complex gates, anyway — it’s kind of scary out there in the land beyond the koi ponds). In the exploring, you come across YY. After a clucking chicken whirlwind of an introduction, you might leave with a few questions on your mind:
- Do lots of kids keep grown chickens for pets?
- Do young girls really have words like “phlegm” on the tips of their tongues?
- Are wán and wánr (玩 / 玩儿 = play) pretty much interchangeable forms of the verb?
What’s normal matters, of course, because you want to know what’s going to catch other people’s attention. You don’t want to make the mistake of exoticizing the everyday. That was the gist of the grass-mud-horse translation question a few weeks ago.
This time some of the “what’s normal” answers are easy to guess at. On the chickens-for-pets question, the likely answer seems to be no, given the startled countenances of your fellow apartment dwellers. It takes something to bemuse a Beijinger, but apparently a live, fully-grown chicken with permanently ruffled feathers, toted around in a cardboard box or in the arms of a doting 6-year-old, is enough to do the trick.
The second item, phlegm, requires a little more context than a dictionary can give you. The standard translation for tán (痰) is “phlegm,” but since the little splats are about as common around this capital city as raindrops in Seattle, regulations and fines be damned , it’s no surprise that the word would hold none of the “medical term” connotation that phlegm / sputum have in English. Loogies, anyone?
But what about that last item, wán vs. wánr? Hasn’t the Beijing sounds editorial board stated in no uncertain terms its position that wán is from a realm far beyond Beijing? This post over a year ago noted that our star Beijinger, PBS, believed they were two significantly different words:
“wánr” is playing crazy/running around; “wán” is sitting there playing with some little thing
It went on to hypothesize that
the six-year-old thinks wán [play] is something you do the way the authorities want you to do it, while wánr [play] is actually playing and having fun. My guess is that this reflects what she perceives to be a difference in register – based on where she hears wán versus where she hears wánr. Because she’s growing up with Beijingers, the only place she hears wán is at school where they’re reading 玩 and the teacher is telling them to pronounce it wán because that’s how you’re “supposed to” say it. Her interpretation: wán is what you’re supposed to do; wánr is what you really do.quote
How then do we explain the following out of YY?
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YY: Měitiān zhèige shíhòu dōu kěyǐ jiàndào miàn o. Ye!* Jiù zài zhèlǐ jiànmiàn.
每天这个时候都可以见到面哦。 耶！就在这里见面！
At this same time every day we can see each other! Yay! Right here we can meet each other.PBS: Wǒ háiyào shàng xué.
我还要上学
[morosely] I have to go to school.YY: Wǒ zhīdao. Zhōuliù xiàwǔ nǐ kěyǐ dào zhèlǐ lái wán?
我知道。周六下午你可以到这里来玩？
I know. On Saturday afternoon can you come here to play?PBS: Zhōuliù xiàwǔ shénme shíhòu?
周六下午什么时候？
What time on Saturday?YY: Wǒ měitiān zhèige shí — měitiān zhōuliù xiàwǔ dōu wán diànnǎo.
我每天这个时——每天周六下午都玩电脑。
Every day at this time — every Saturday afternoon I play on the computer.Xiànzài shì zhōngwǔ ba. Xiàwǔ wǒmen jiēzhe wán.
现在是中午吧。下午我们接着玩。
Now it’s noon, right? In the afternoon we can keep playing.PBS: Hǎo. Xiàwǔ jǐdiǎn?
好。下午几点？
OK. What time in the afternoon?YY: Xiàwǔ — ēn** — suíbiàn nǐ ba!
下午——嗯——随便你吧！
In the afternoon — uh — whenever you want!
Clearly YY is a wán-play kind of girl. But between the mischievous laugh and the chicken, it’s hard to believe that her sort of wán-play would be what PBS was fearing: boring, proper play. So whence the pronunciation?
It turns out that YY actually moved here from Ānhuī (安徽). She was elusive with the details, but apparently not that long ago. This would explain not only wán/wánr but also her use of zhèlǐ (这里) instead of zhèr (这儿) to mean “here”, a choice that would be rather less common for Beijingers.
Or would it? Isn’t YY a Beijinger? If not, how long is it going to be before she is? It seems okay to talk about her as an outsider for now, but how about after another three years? And whose language is going to assimilate? Hers, or her playmates’?
What we’re running up against here is a classic big-city problem. It’s especially salient in Beijing and even moreso out here in Shàngdì outside the fifth ring of the city, where migrant workers (wàidìrén / 外地人) outnumber those whose parents grew up in the city by 10 to 1, where our apartment landlord feels some sort of special bond with the Beijing Sounds family, even though it includes a foreigner, because he is so surprised to find that he is renting to fellow Beijingers, where even PBS’s teacher is surprised to discover someone who distinguishes his non-Beijing pǔtōnghuà (普通话 = standardized Mandarin) from Běijīnghuà (Beijing dialect).
For now, Beijing Sounds is going to stick with the position (a weighty position of great political and sociological import) that wánr-play is what you do in Beijing and wán-play is what you do elsewhere. But this position is taken with the clarification that it’s not a shibboleth of belonging. The world has a bit too much of that already. Whether she eventually decides to wánr-play or stick with wán-play, I’m going to remain a permanent member of the YY fan club, home to those non-native Beijingers who might feel a little bit out of place but are ready at any time to enjoy a good romp in the koi pond with their loogie-eating chickens.
————-
* Can’t figure out how to do this with reasonably with characters OR pinyin Thanks, Randy, (in comments below) for the help with Ye
** Corrected from 啊 per Randy’s comment. Copy editor fired.
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Comments 12
UnBEARably cute. I’d advise YY to hire a body guard or maybe even milk-box taster. I don’t know how desperate PBS is going to get now that she has to share the spotlight–and what a rival at that!
As for wanr/wan, I have a great time down here in Guangzhou mixing in “wanr” whenever I feel like it. Because of the Chinese proclivity to repeat everything I say (post on this coming soon), I get to try to ferret out who’s from the nanfang 南方 (and I think Anhui counts) and who’s from up north. There are some locals though that will repeat back “wanr” just to give the ol’ erhuayin a whirl. But I definitely don’t hear anyone down here saying “wanr” on their own volition.
Posted 17 Apr 2009 at 11:42 am ¶Conversely, I never hear kids say wán up here in Dongbei. It’s a clear shibboleth. And that even counts when kids are reading their lesson texts in school. 玩 is simply always wánr.
…or maybe even milk-box taster. Or maybe even milk-bladder taster. I’m not sure about in Guangzhou, but around here, most milk is sold in bladders. Premium varieties are sold in boxes, but those are for the rich kids.
@SYZ: You missed a couple of very important interjections. The first is your 哇！(wà), and then later PBS’s 啊 (á).
The “yay” thing, is usually 耶 (yē). Together with 哦, it’s 哦耶, as popularized by 宋丹丹 (sōngdāndān) in the 2007 CCTV Lunar New Year 小品 (xiǎopǐn, skit) contest: 下蛋公鸡，公鸡中的战斗机，哦耶！ (xiàdàn gōngjī, gōngjī zhōng de zhàndǒujī, ōyè: the egg-laying rooster; the fighter jet of roosters, oh yeah!). Of course such interjections are variable in tone.
If you want to get picky about it, (as we so love to do here), the last 啊 should really be 嗯.
[Also, you might try to avoid using 吧 right after 鸡, hehe.]
Posted 17 Apr 2009 at 2:09 pm ¶This is progress. It seems like we’re narrowing down wanr/wan to a north/south thing at any rate. But where’s the dividing line? There’s still a lot of China south of Anhui…
Randy, the studio director thanks you for the much-needed character help. Corrections made above. Heads rolled in the editorial department and we are confident that the new hires will adhere to the six sigma practices established last year with the help of our consultants.
I’m a bit surprised that kids in dongbei read 玩 as wanr even in class. I’ve noticed PBS doing the wan thing many times while reading — but that’s the only time. In speech it’s always wanr unless she’s trying to be funny.
Posted 17 Apr 2009 at 7:59 pm ¶Is 痰 not simply the object of 吐？So 吐痰 would simply be ‘to spit’, in the same way that 吃饭 would be ‘to eat’. I appreciate that doesn’t help a great deal with actually translating the utterance, but it might suggest that 痰 is rather less colourful, as it were, than your ‘loogies’.
I must say that the new BJS sound effects team has done a great job with the birdsong.
Posted 17 Apr 2009 at 9:53 pm ¶Of course such interjections are variable in tone.
Yup. Thus, it’s OK to leave out tone marks on such words in standard Pinyin orthography, though it’s fine to put them there, too, if that helps the interjection’s expressiveness or you just happen to think it’s bǐjiào hǎowán[r] that way.
Taiwan’s part of the wán zone, of course, this not being Táiwānr.
Posted 17 Apr 2009 at 10:12 pm ¶@Sima: Actually here 痰 is the object of 咬: 咬（人家吐的）痰. Which I find really strange — how does one bite phlegm? Oh, I see the dictionary also lists “snap at”. Um. I think I’m gonna be sick. Attention! Cleaning crew, please report to BJS Northeast Outpost #2! Emergency!
And all over the kang, too! What a mess.
@Pinyin.info: Have you ever heard “reciting pinyin” as a euphemism for vomiting? ā … ō … è!
Posted 17 Apr 2009 at 11:18 pm ¶@Randy: LOL!
Posted 17 Apr 2009 at 11:25 pm ¶That’s the first time I’ve heard that. I’m a bit surprised no one has ever tried to use that against me.
On the HSK you actually are supposed to read words that ‘feature -r’ like ‘wanr’ with the ‘r’ whether they are marked with an ”儿“ or not. I‘m nearly certain the same applies to the Putonghua test teachers, broadcasters, etc, have to take that tests pronunciation in addition to other things. I think the HSK nowadays always will write out 玩儿, but I’m not sure if that was always the case. From what I can tell, xiaohai 小孩, and wan 玩 are non-standard putonghua. I’d stress that I don’t think they are appropriate alternative pronunciations either, like say, Missouri, in the U.S. If it’s not a written rule, I imagine it’s at least unwritten in a place like CCTV that wan2 is not an appropriate pronunciation for 玩。
Sima is right, I wouldn’t read anything into 痰， 吐痰 is the full form ‘ie 2 character phrase’ of ‘to spit’. It’s like 吃饭 where 饭 isn’t really an object, and doesn’t really mean ‘food’ because there’s really no such thing as ‘饭’ Throwing around words like ‘object’ when discussing two-character verbs in chinese can be risky. And don’t trust any dictionary, they are all horrible.
Posted 18 Apr 2009 at 1:59 am ¶I didn’t know milk boxes were so posh!
I’m curious all you dōngběi-ers, do you ever hear 开玩笑 pronounced kāiwánrxiào?
I’ve often wondered about whether that “R” gets stuck in the middle of stuff (how’s that for linguistic precision). For example, I’ve heard 一碗面 pronounced yì wǎnr miànr, but I’ve never heard 面条 pronounced miànrtiáo. I’m hardly the one to talk about what érhuà I’ve heard though, seeing as how I’m confined mostly to the nánfāng. Any guidance/observations about those?
PS: I’m loving this FireFox plugin that lets me tone-ify all this pinyin here.
Posted 18 Apr 2009 at 8:37 am ¶@hsk: Thanks for straightening me out on that. My use of the word ‘object’ stems from the notion that 吐痰 is a 动宾 construction.
I’ve just had a quick check in one of my old grammar books and it suggests that a good test for this type of construction is that it can be put into the form: ‘verb 的是 noun’. Examples:
学习汉语 －－－ 学习的是汉语 (this seems clear enough)
写信 －－－ 写的是信 (this would seem reasonably meaningful)
Now if we consider our two examples from above:
吃饭 －－－ 吃的是饭 (?)
吐痰 －－－ 吐的是痰 (?)
It strikes me that neither of the above would be meaningful – one would really need to specify whatever is eaten or spat:
吃的是米饭
吐的是吐沫？
Perhaps my mistake it that of expecting grammatical ‘rules’ to necessarily produce meaningful language, but if anyone can shed a little light on this for me, I’d be most grateful.
I’m really not sure how syz might have better translated the original expression. In BrE slang we have/had the charming expression ‘greenies’ and I guess that would be much the same as ‘loogies’, but ‘It also pecks at people’s greenies,’ would seem to be inappropriate. Of course, if he’d written ‘It also pecks at people’s spit,’ some wag might have enquired whether the chicken was in the habit of perching on people’s lips and drinking from source. I think I’d best stop there.
Posted 18 Apr 2009 at 1:18 pm ¶re reciting pinyin, here in Changzhou the Wu words for vomit and la duzi are ou and ei, both in often said as an implosive rising-tone glurp. gotta love going to the vet in Wu. “has he ou’d yet? no? how about his ei?”
re the chicken eating phlegm, uh, gross.
nice post, btw
Posted 19 Apr 2009 at 12:44 pm ¶呕吐 is the full form of vomit, and is seen more in writing than spoken speech in North China, but no one would have any confusion understanding, there aren’t that many ‘ou’ words to confuse with it in context.
I’d imagine the ‘ei’ might come from 泄.
Posted 23 Apr 2009 at 12:02 am ¶