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Soundbites: Cushaw

Not even Yuèmǔ U. (i.e. 岳母 / mother-in-law university) is infallible, especially in the face of her mother’s knowledge of the guā (瓜 = squashes) that grow in their Beijing sìhéyuànr (四合院儿 = traditional courtyard house*).

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TLL (Tàilǎolao 太姥姥, i.e. PBS’s great grandma): Zhè shì wōguā, wōguā.
这是倭瓜，倭瓜
This is cushaw, cushaw.

YU: Wōguā bùshì jiùshi nánguā?
倭瓜不是就是南瓜？
Isn’t cushaw just pumpkin?

TLL: Bùshì! Nánguā shì nánguā.
不是！南瓜是南瓜。
Not at all! Pumpkin is pumpkin.

Note YU’s full obliteration of the /sh/ in bùshì jiùshi. Pretty much standard issue for Beijing, as discussed in these posts.

The guā in their courtyard:

woguanangua

And, for comparison, the guā that you get from a Google images lookup of “cushaw” — the ABC Dictionary’s translation of wōguā.

Green_Striped_Cushaw_Pumpkins_Seeds

The ABC Dictionary translates them both as pumpkin/cushaw, but the editorial team is inclined (on the basis of this very little evidence) to think that wōguā is closer to cushaw than what the US calls pumpkin, at any rate.

Moral? Guā help keep you down to the earth, no matter who you are.

——–

*Is there a standard, idiomatic-sounding translation for sìhéyuànr?

Comments 7

  1. Randy Alexander wrote:

    bu2shi4!

    不 has sandhi.

    Posted 12 Oct 2009 at 11:19 am
  2. André Holthe wrote:

    @syz Not sure how idiomatic you want your translation of sìhéyuànr to be, but if my memory serves me well, I think I’ve seen it translated as a “quadrangle”. Me not being a native speaker of English, it’s up to others to decide if this is an adequate translation or if it just sounds like a silly german car.

    One of my many dictionaries says the following: “compound with houses around a courtyard”.

    Posted 12 Oct 2009 at 4:47 pm
  3. syz wrote:

    @Randy, I feel your pain, but I mostly try to go with the “rules” from pinyin.info: “Only the original tones are indicated; tone sandhi is not indicated.”

    That said, I’d be open to inviting some pinyin advocate-types over for a rumble about what the standard should be. I’m on the fence about marking sandhi (as must be clear from my inconsistency). Sometimes — like to you in this instance — it strikes me as just wrong.

    @Andre: well, quadrangle beats “compound with houses around a courtyard”, so at least we’re going the right direction!

    Posted 12 Oct 2009 at 5:17 pm
  4. Sima wrote:

    I rather like Andre’s quadrangle. As far as I recall from my school days, no school for the aspirational was without a nicely manicured garden surrounded on four sides by classrooms, and known to teachers and students alike as ‘the quadrangle’ or, more likely, ‘the quad’. Was that just a Brit thing, or did the same apply in the US too?

    ‘Old Beijing was full of quads,’ might be misunderstood, I suppose.

    Posted 12 Oct 2009 at 6:52 pm
  5. chriswaugh_bj wrote:

    ‘Quadrangle’ and especially ‘quad’ are too schoolyard. I’d normally use courtyard for sìhéyuànr, although that seems too quick to ignore the buildings involved, too focused on the space.

    Posted 12 Oct 2009 at 7:17 pm
  6. Kellen wrote:

    U of Michigan had a quad. Still does I’m sure.

    Courtyard worKs for me since I can’t really picture one without the buildings. Otherwise I’d just call it a yard.

    But, since none of these jump out as specific enough, I’d like to propose “curtilage”.

    Regarding writing sandhi, I’ve got the same problem transcribing Arabic. The L in definite article “al-” rarely is sounded, taking the sound of the following consonant and doubling it. The debate is whether to write it as an L or not when transcribing. I vote not, so I guess that means I’m on the side of writing the sandhi with tones.

    Posted 12 Oct 2009 at 8:09 pm
  7. syz wrote:

    I’m kinda with Chris here: my association with “quad” is “university” and “quadrangle” makes me feel like I should start talking secants and cosines. I won’t go on, cuz I’m starting to sound like a nattering nabob…

    To mark sandhi or not… Kellen, the parallel from Arabic is cool, even if it doesn’t help solve the problem. Part of the issue is that (sorry Swofford) Pinyin isn’t really a living script. So you can say there are “rules” but it’s very prescriptivist and not really tested by extensive actual usage. If you can think of some way to find the people who are interested in this (especially: not just foreigners) it would be cool to debate

    Posted 13 Oct 2009 at 9:51 am