On conversation topic universals
Spend too long with Beijing cabbies and you might think they were all…
5. Deep into American politics
4. Shocked and horrified about the traffic in Beijing
3. Swilled with hatred for traffic cops
2. Enamored of discussing where a building might be located, while harboring a violent allergy to anything resembling a map
But if that’s pretty much the gamut of your conversations, you’re missing out on what is apparently the most robust, productive source of conversation to be found in the city, the number one Beijing cultural universal, connecting 7-year-old first-grade girls (PBS) to 47-year-old taxi drivers (SJ = sījī = driver) through the intimacy of domestication. Just have a listen [update: click through to see the transcript below synced up with the sound file -- and if you want to use the very cool EXMARaLDA technology that made it possible, here's a post with more info on that. Sorry it has to be on a separate page for now.]:
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Pīnyīn
汉字
English
1 PBS Wǒmen xuéxiào fā cán le. 我们学校发蚕了。 Our school gave us silkworms. 2 SJ Nǐmen xuéxiào fācái le? 你们学校发财了？ Your school got rich? [misunderstanding fā cán (give silkworms) as fācái (get rich)] 3 PBS Fā cán le! 发蚕了！ Gave us silkworms! 4 SJ O, nà nǐ ná shénme wèide ya? 哦那你拿什么喂得呀？ Oh, then what do you use to feed them? 5 PBS Wèi le, wèide shì gēn sāngyè ní shìde. 喂了，喂得是跟桑叶泥似的。 (I) feed them — what they get fed is something like mulberry leaf paste (puree?). 6 SJ Yǒu nèi dōngxi ma? 有那东西吗？ Does such a thing exist? 7 PBS Wǒ juéde shì yīnggāi shì sāngyè ní. Tāmen chī. 我觉得是应该是桑叶泥。它们吃。 I *think* it should be mulberry leaf paste. They eat it! 8 SJ Xiànzài… 现在。。。 These days… 9 PBS Yǒu liù tiáo cán sǐle liǎng tiáo le. 有六条蚕死了两条了。 There were six silkworms and two died. 10 SJ Nèige… nǐ kěyǐ wèi sāngyèr. 那个——你可以喂桑叶儿。 Well… you can feed them mulberry leaves. 11 PBS Shàng nǎr zhǎo qù ya? 上哪儿找去呀？ Where can you find them? 12 SJ Dào… nǐ fùmǔ dàizhe nǐ bǐrúshuō pápá Xiāngshān ā huòzhe shénmede. Nèi kuàr liu… xiànzài jiù yǒu sāng shù, zhāidiǎnr sāng yèr 到——你父母带着你比如说爬爬香山啊或者什么的？那块儿溜现在就有桑树，摘点儿桑叶儿。 Go… your mom and dad could take you maybe to Fragrant Hills or some place like that. Around there, about now they have mulberry trees you can pick leaves from. 13 SYZ yī zhǒng fù ba? 一种 fu 吧？ A kind of “fu”, is that right? [misunderstanding "shu" as "fu"] 14 SJ Duì. shùshang de yèzi 对。树上的叶子。 Right. The leaves on the tree. 15 PBS Wǒ lǎolao shuō kěndìng méiyǒu. 我姥姥说肯定没有。 My grandma says there definitely aren’t any. 16 SJ Xiànzài yǐjīng zhǎng chū lái le, yǒu le. Nèige, wǒ hái gàosu nǐ yǒu yīge dōngxi néng wèi. Nǐ zhīdao wōsǔn ma? Zème cūde, gēn huángguā shìde. 现在已经长出来了，有了。那个，我还告诉你有一个东西能喂。你知道莴笋吗？这么粗的，跟黄瓜似的。 They’ve already started growing; they’re there now. I’ll tell you there’s also something else you can feed them. You know what wosun ["celtuce" in English -- see updated note 16 below] is? It’s about this thick, something like a cucumber. 17 PBS Sǔn? 笋？ Asparagus? (using just the second syllable, sǔn) 18 SJ Duì, sǔn. Nèi pí zài shàngtou zhǎngde yèzi yǒu. Yòng nèige wō… nǐ wèn nǐ … 对，笋。 那皮在上头长的叶子有。用那个莴。。。你问你。。。 Right, sǔn (likely just confirming the second syllable is pronounced sǔn). On the skin it has leaves growing out. You can use that wō — you ask your – 19 PBS Shì pǔtōng sǔn ma? 是普通笋吗？ Is it regular sǔn (asparagus)? 20 SJ Duì a! Jiùshi dàjiā màide nèi wōsǔn ma. Wōsǔn de yèzi wèi cán jiù xíng. 对啊！就是大家卖的那莴笋嘛。莴笋的叶子喂蚕就行。 It is! It’s just that wōsǔn that everyone sells. Using wōsǔn leaves to feed silkworms works just fine. 21 PBS Yèr nà jiù yǒu de kě wèi de. 叶儿那就有的可喂的。 In that case we really have something to feed them. 22 SJ Duì a. 对啊。 Right. 23 PBS Wǒ bù wèi wǒmen xuéxiào gěi de nèi chòu dōngxi le. 我不喂我们学校给的那臭东西了。 I’m not going to feed them the stinky stuff our school gave us anymore. 24 SJ Nèige yèzi wèi cán jiù xíng. 那个叶子喂蚕就行。 Feeding them the leaves is good enough. 25 PBS Lùbiānr jiù yǒu màide ya. 路边儿就有卖的呀。 You can buy them by the roadside. 26 SJ Duì. Něige shìchǎng dōu yǒu. 对。哪个市场都有。 Right. Every market has them. 27 SYZ Shì ma? 是吗？ Really? 28 SJ Duì. Nèige cán yào chī sāngyè tǔ chū lái de sī shì báide. Chī wōsǔn tǔ chū lái de sī shì huángde. 对。那个蚕要吃桑叶吐出来的丝是白的。吃莴笋吐出来的丝是黄的。 Really. Silkworms, if they eat mulberry leaves, put out white silk. If they eat wōsǔn the silk is yellow. 29 PBS Kěshì wǒmen zhèishi cǎi cán. 可是我们这是彩蚕。 But we … multi-colored silkworms. 30 SJ Shì ma? Nà nǐ yīnggāi gèng hǎohāor de yǎng tāmen, kànkan tāmen zěnme tǔ sī. 是吗？那你应该更好好儿地养它们，看看它们怎么吐丝。 Really? Then you better really take care of them, see what kind of silk they put out. 31 PBS ei? shìbushì tā tǔ wán le sī wán le tā jiù biànchéng ézi de [bùqīngchu]. Tā jiù zài nèi sīlǐ ba. 诶？是不是它吐完了丝完了它就变成蛾子的【不清楚】。它就在那丝里吧。 Hey, isn’t it true that it changes into moth (unclear) after it makes silk 32 SJ Jiùshi tā nèi zìjǐ gěi zuò yīge cánjiǎn, yuán de. Tā zài nèige yuán bāor lǐtou. Děng tā biànchéng ézi yǐhòu tā cóng nèi yuán bāo lǐtou yǎo yī kūlong jiù zuān chū lái le. 就是它那自己给做一个蚕茧，圆的。它在那个圆包儿里头。等它变成蛾子以后它从那圆包里头咬一窟隆就钻出来了。 It makes a cocoon for itself, a round one. It’s inside that round ball. After it turns into a moth it chews a hole out of the round ball to burrow its way out. 33 PBS Yǎo yī kūlong 咬一窟隆！ Chews a hole! 34 SJ [bùqīngchu] wài yíhòu, tā jiù [bùqīngchu] 【不清楚】外以后它就【不清楚】 After it’s outside [unclear] 35 PBS Wánle zài sǎzǐr 完了再撒子儿 After that it has to sow seeds again 36 SJ Duì 对 Right. 37 PBS Wánle zài cóng xīn yǎng. 完了再（重新）从新养。 After that, raise them again 38 SJ Tā zài pèi ǒu. Pèi wán ǒu yīhòu zài sǎzǐr. Shūshu zài zhèi fāngmiàn fǎnzheng… bèn … bùhǎoyìsi shuō nèi dōngxi. Wǒmen xiǎo de shíhòu yǎng cán de shíhòu nǐ kěyǐ ràng tā bùyào ràng tā tǔ chéng qiú zhuàng kěyǐ tǔ chéng yīge piànr zhuàng. 它再配偶。配完偶以后再撒子儿。 叔叔在这方面反正。。。笨。。不好意思说那东西。我们小的时候养蚕的时候你可以让它不要让它吐成球状可以吐成一个片儿状。 It’s pairing up. After it pairs up then it sows seeds. Uncle [i.e. referring to self] is pretty dumb about this kind of thing… kind of embarrassed to explain these things…[laughing]. When we were raising silkworms when we were small, you could make the silkworm produce a flat shape instead of a round one. 39 PBS Wèi shénme? 为什么？ Why? 40 SJ Nǐ bǎ nèige — tā yào tǔ sī de shíhòu nǐ gěi tā gē zài yīge zhǐ piànr ràng tā — ràng tā tǔ — tā jiù zài nà (nè?) zhǐ piànr shang le. Tǔwánle jiē xià lái jiùshi yīge piànr le. Jiù méiyǒu nèi qiú le. 你把那个，它要吐丝的时候你给它搁在一个纸片儿上让它，让它吐，它就在那纸片儿上了。 吐完了接下来就是一个片儿了。就没有那球了。 You take that — when it is going to produce silk, you give it a piece of paper to make it — make it produce — it really puts out on that piece of paper. The silk it produces is in the shape of that paper. It’s not just a ball anymore. 41 SYZ Nà yǒu shénme yòng? 那有什么用？ Then what can it be used for? 42 SJ Nà jiùshi wánr ma! 那就是玩儿嘛 It’s just for fun 43 SYZ Duì jiùshi wánr. 对就是玩儿。 Oh right, it’s just for fun 44 PBS Nèi sī wǒmen tóngxué shuō zhǐnéng zhī máoyī 那丝我们同学说只能织毛衣 That silk my schoolmates say can only be used to make maoyi (a kind of winter clothing) 45 SJ Néng ā. Nèige tā tǔwán le yíhòu nèi sī tā shì yīnwei nǐ kàn tā cánjiǎn yě shì yuán de ba.Tā shì cóng wàibianr wǎng lǐbianr zhuànquānr tǔ de. Nà nǐ yào zhái de shíhòu nà yīnggāi bǎ tā cánjiǎn gē dào rèshuǐ lǐ pào yī pàobǎ nèi wàitou nèi céng, nèi gēnr sī dīliu chū lái 能啊。那个它吐完了以后那丝它是因为你看它蚕茧也是圆的吧。它是从外边儿往里边儿转圈儿吐的。那你要择的时候那应该把它蚕茧搁到热水里泡一泡把那外头那层，那根儿丝提溜出来 It can be. After it produces the silk, you know, because the cocoon is round.It winds the silk around and around from outside to inside. Then when you want to pull it apart you should put the cocoon in hot water and let it soak.Then from the outside layer, start pulling out that string of silk. 46 SYZ A shì ma? 啊是吗？ Oh really? 47 SJ Jiù kěyǐ rào xiàn le. Dào xiàn rào — tèbié tèbié de cháng yī zhěng gēr de sī. 就可以绕线了。到线绕，特别特别的长一整根儿的丝 Then you’re good to go around and around. Keep going around and get a really really long string of silk. 48 PBS Dèn de kāi ma? 扽得开吗？ Is it breakable? 49 SJ ā yī gēr dāngrán dèn de kāi lenǐ yàoshi duōle nǐ xiǎng dèn duànle yě bu róngyì ā yě jiēshi ne. Nǐ zuòchéng, zhīchéng yīfu le nǐ kàn duō jiēshi. 啊一根儿当然扽得开了你要是多了你想扽断了也不容易啊也结实呢。你做成，织成衣服了你看多结实 Uh, one string you can definitely break.If you want to break more strings it’s not so easy, it’s pretty strong. After you make clothes, you see how strong it is. 50 PBS Wǒ shuō bù jiǎn nǐ yào yòng shǒu zhème dèn, dèn de kāi ma? 我说不剪你要用手这么扽，扽得开吗？ I’m saying if you don’t use scissors and want to break/rip it with your hands, can you break it? 51 SJ Dèn nèi gēr sī gěi dèn chū lai a? 扽那根儿丝给扽出来啊？ Break the silk string to get it out? 52 PBS Bùshì! Jiùshi yào chéng yī gēnr wánle dèn de kāi ma? 不是！就是要成一根儿完了扽的开吗？ No! Can you break the string, that one you’re trying to pull out? 53 SJ Dèn de kāi 扽的开 You can break it. 54 PBS Nà, nèige, shìbushì nèizhǒng tèbié báo de wàzi jiùshì yòng cán sī zuò de? 那，那个，是不是那种特别薄的袜子就是用蚕丝做的？ Then, those, isn’t it those really thin socks that are made out of silk? 55 SJ Nà bùshì 那不是 That’s not the case 56 PBS Nà shì shénme? 那是什么？ Then what *is*? 57 SJ Yòng cánsī zhīchūlai dōngxi dōu shì língluóchóuduàn chóuzi 用蚕丝织出来的东西都是绫罗绸缎绸子 Stuff that uses silk from silkworms is all “silks and satins” [this is ABC Dictionary's rendition of the 成语 -- rough meaning: expensive cloth], silk cloth. 58 PBS Ō wǒ jiā, nèige, yuánlái shì yǒu nèige chóuzi zuòde qúnzi. 哦我家，那个，原来是有那个绸子做的裙子 Oh, at my house, well, I used to have that kind of dress made out of silk. 59 SJ Tèbié huáliur nèige 特别滑溜儿那个 Really slippery, that kind.
Give silkworms, get rich
If you haven’t broached the subject of silkworms, clearly you’ve been missing out.
As for what’s going on language-wise, the Běijīnghuà (北京话 = Beijing dialect) is so thick you might get a tongue cramp if you take it all in at once, so how about a few curls towards the roof of the mouth just to get things started, then we can pick up the analysis again next week (or next month, at the rate the BJS production team has been putting out posts recently).
| Line | Note |
| 2 | PBS: Wǒmen xuéxiào fā cán le. SJ: Nǐmen xuéxiào fācái le? Humbly considered, this is perhaps the most elegant example of the ambiguities of the Mandarin syllable-final N ever recorded in the history of the universe. What, exactly, is the difference between “fā cán le” and “fācái le”? In Pinyin, it looks pretty clear: there’s an N. But in Beijing, the N rarely (my intuition, no proof yet) gets fully closed at the end of the syllable, meaning air continues to go through the mouth as the N is produced. Therefore a word with syllable-final N often gets just a nasalization of the preceding vowel rather than something an English speaker would think of as an N. It can be a tremendous source of confusion for Mandarin learners when listening, as well as when producing Zhonglish. For example, just try saying fānyì （翻译 = translate) with a fully closed N and see if any Beijingers understand you. But ah, here’s the Zhonglish-speaker’s revenge: irrefutable evidence that it can mix up native speakers as well, if the context is not clear (as it wasn’t in this case since PBS’s statement was simply thrown at the cab driver without warning). Since fācái (get rich) is a far more common phrase than “fā cán”, that’s how the driver interpreted it. |
| 12 | The 那块儿溜 characters for “Nèi kuàr liu” are, according to the BJS language consultant, just kind of made up and there’s really no “proper” character for 块儿溜 or 块溜 for that matter. The requisite google search turns up 1420 hits for “块溜”; pretty low, but the first few instances, at least, are definitely for that usage. She says there’s no question that any local would know the word itself. What say you folks outside Beijing? |
| 16 | Wosun is a cucumber-like vegetable — ABC dictionary translates as “asparagus lettuce” but it’s definitely not asparagus or lettuce. UPDATE: It is also called “celtuce” in English. Thanks, Todd, for the reference. If I’d just gone to Wikipedia, I would have seen its various names all in one place. Here’s the pic:
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Happy silkworm breeding.
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Comments 9
awesomeness
Posted 08 Jun 2009 at 3:03 pm ¶agreed. awesomeness. one of my favourite posts yet.
Posted 09 Jun 2009 at 2:52 pm ¶hsknotes & Kellen, in payment for the unwarranted compliments, please partake of this EXMARaLDA-enhanced version of the transcript, in which text and audio are (mostly) synced.
Posted 09 Jun 2009 at 3:11 pm ¶I too would like to add a “sweetness” to the growing list of compliments. Here are a few highlights for me:
1) the new audio syncing software is great (will read more about it soon)
2) I absolutely agree with the nasalization of vowels instead of what we would call a “n” consonant at the end. Even down here in Guangzhou you hear “hen hao” 很好 pronounced “he (nasalized) hao.
3) What a dose of Beijinghua indeed! I’d never heard “den4″ 扽 for “break” before. Does that need to get added to MDBG?
4) Random erhua sighting. *40 “Jiù méiyǒu nèi qiú le” sounds like “quir” to me. But what do I know?
Posted 11 Jun 2009 at 6:44 am ¶(Oh, and I forgot to check that little subscribe thing so I’m doing that now)
Posted 11 Jun 2009 at 6:45 am ¶Hi Albert, the qiú is definitely a qiúr — I’m with you on that. The beauty of the EXMARaLDA stuff is that every time I mark one of those erhuayin babies, I’ve got a permanent record in my little corpus. Eventually I will have a way to have a nice visualization and search so you can hear any er-ified syllable/word your heart desires.
On henhao, I’m not surprised to hear it’s just nasalized down south too — I reckon it’s almost never otherwise.
I found that MDBG (CEDICT) has 扽 as dùn, “to move, to shake” — clearly not the use above. ABC Dictionary has
Posted 11 Jun 2009 at 8:38 pm ¶dùndèn as “yank/pull tightly” which seems pretty close.What??? A discussion of silkworms without mentioning eating them?
When being invited out to dinner against your will, it’s pretty rare up here in Manchuria to not see a plate on the table with silkworms on it (pupae).
Along with dog meat, when I first came up here just shy of seven years ago, I was pretty disgusted at the idea of eating them, but also along with dog meat, I now eat them fairly often.
They are usually fried and have a hard outer shell; they probably average about 2.5cm thick and 4-5cm long. Here is a picture from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fried-silkworm-china.jpg
The “meat” inside is kind of like mini scrambled eggs. The two things I don’t like about them, which is the only reason I don’t eat them more often, is that you usually have to peel them and take out the hard middle core (I have no idea what that is). For that reason I also don’t eat a lot of shrimp, or fruit with hard seeds in it, or fish with bones. If I put food in my mouth, I don’t like having to take some of it back out (like bones, seeds, etc).
They are reasonably tasty though, and packed with protein.
Posted 12 Jun 2009 at 1:05 pm ¶By coincidence, not long after you wrote this post John of Sinosplice wrote a post in which he suggested “Celtuce” as the English name for Wosun. Apparently not many people have heard that word before, but it seems to be correct (other names include “stem lettuce”, “celery lettuce”, and your dictionary’s “asparagus lettuce”). It’s a member of the lettuce family.
Posted 21 Jun 2009 at 10:32 am ¶@Randy: inexplicably, the culinary opportunity has never presented itself at the studios. I will inquire.
@Todd, thanks for the celtuce info. Definitely a more satisfying name than “asparagus lettuce.” I updated the reference above. Is it just coincidence that both John and I would have covered celtuce within a few days of each other? I aver that it is so, all rumors of celtuce-farmer blogger payola to the contrary.
Posted 21 Jun 2009 at 1:01 pm ¶Trackbacks & Pingbacks 1
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