On knowing rub-a-dub-dub, Beijing style
Jung, who was then 38, got lost in the soup of his own psyche. He was haunted by troubling visions and heard inner voices. Grappling with the horror of some of what he saw, he worried in moments that he was, in his own words, “menaced by a psychosis” or “doing a schizophrenia.”
On the other hand, maybe you don’t want to avoid doing a Carl Jung. After all, you remember back* to the days when it all blended together, right? It was way more fun. There was the friend your parents called imaginary, the ability to fly that somehow landed you at the bottom of the stairs when you tried it after breakfast…
So today instead of maintaining the illusory separation, just strap yourself into a shoe and let’s visit wàiguó (外国 = a foreign country, i.e. not China), for no particular reason except that you’re three and you’re killing time in the Smart Kid Academy lobby with Mom and Dad, waiting for older sister to get out of her weekend lesson:
[As usual, the text linked to audio is available on a separate page -- we aim to serve the ubernerd. And let me know if it doesn't work: bjshengr at gmail and dot com]
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| 1 | Boy | Māma, nǐ huítóu gěi wǒ zhǎo yīge, gěi wǒ mǎi yīge ZHÈme dàde xié. | 妈妈，你回头给我找一个给我买一个这么大的鞋 | Mommy, can you find me a, buy me a shoe that’s THIS big? |
| 2 | Dad | Nà shì xié háishì xiāngzi ya? | 那是鞋还是箱子呀？ | Is that a shoe or a suitcase? |
| 3 | Boy | Bùshì! Wǒ yíhòu chuān nèige xié | 不是，我以后穿那个鞋。 | No! Later [when I get older] I’m going to wear that shoe. |
| 4 | Dad | Nǐ yíhòu yě chuānbùliǎo, nǐ kàn bàba de xié duō dà gèr a. Nǐ zuìduō yě jiù zhǎngde xiàng bàba de jiǎo zhème dà. Hái néng bǐ bàba de jiǎo hái dà? Zài dà, dàde yě yǒuxiàn. Nǐ mǎi nème dà xié nǐ gànma? Càng zài lǐmian shuìjiào ya? | 你以后也穿不了，你看爸爸的鞋多大个儿呀，你最多也就长得像爸爸的脚这么大，还能比爸爸的脚还大？再大，大得也有限。你买那么大鞋你干嘛？藏在里面睡觉呀？ | You won’t be able to wear it later. Look at how big Daddy’s shoes are. At the most your feet will grow as big as Daddy’s. Or will they be able grow bigger than Daddy’s? Maybe bigger, but there’s a limit. What do you buy such a big shoe for? Hide inside it and go to sleep? |
| 5 | Boy | Māma, Māma gěi wǒ tuō dào wàiguó qù. | 妈妈，妈妈给我托到外国去 | Mommy — Mommy can send me off to a foreign country. |
| 6 | Dad | A, gěi nǐ tuōyùn dào wàiguó qù? | 呵，给你托运到外国去？ | Huh, ship you to a foreign country? |
| 7 | Boy | Duì. | 对。 | Yeah. |
| 8 | Dad | Gànmá qù ya? Dāng xiǎoniúdú mài le? | 干嘛去呀？当小牛犊卖了？ | Go for what? To be like sold like a little calf? |
| 9 | Boy | Shàng wàiguó wánwan | 上外国玩玩。 | Go to a foreign country to play / have some fun. |
| 10 | Dad | Wánrwanr zài huílai? | 玩玩再回来？ | Play and then come back? |
| 11 | Boy | Duì. | 对 | Right. |
| 12 | Dad | Nà, nà zěnme gěi nǐ tuō – tuō chū qù ya? Zěnme gěi nǐ tuō chū qù ya? | 那，那怎么给你托，托出去呀？怎么给你托出去呀？ | Then, then how do we ship — ship you over there? How do we ship you there? |
| 13 | Boy | A? Ná yīgè xié, fēng zài lǐtou, ránhòu gē kǒudàir lǐ, ránhòu — du du du du du — ránhòu bǎ wǒ dài fēijī shang, ránhòu dǎkāi xiédài, Māma dǎkāi xié, ránhòu wǒ yī kàn, zài wàimian yī kàn… | 啊？拿一个鞋，封在里头，然后 搁口袋儿里，然后。。。然后把我带飞机上，然后打开鞋带，妈妈打开鞋，然后我一看，在外面一看… | Huh? Take a shoe, seal me inside, then put it in a sack, then — du du du du du — then take me onto the airplane, then untie the shoestrings, Mommy opens the shoe, then I just look around — outside just look and … |
| 14 | Dad | … yī kàn, dé, biēsǐ le, méiyǒu yǎngqì, biēsǐ le. | 一看，得，憋死了，没有氧气，憋死了 | … look and — oh no — suffocated to death. No oxygen, so you suffocate to death. |
| 15 | Boy | Ránhòu, ránhòu yòu fēi fēi, fēi guòlai, ránhòu wǒ jiù tiào xiàlai, (bù qīngchu) (xiào shēng) | 然后，然后又飞飞飞过来，然后我就跳下来，（不清楚）（笑声） | And then, then fly fly, fly back again, then I just jump down, (unclear) (laughter) |
| 16 | Dad | Nǐ yào qù wàiguó, qù něi guójiā ya? Nǐ xiǎng qù něi xiē guójiā ya? | 你要去外国，去哪个国家呀？你想去哪些国家呀？ | If you want to go to a foreign country, what country do you want to go to? What countries do you want to go to? |
| 17 | Boy | Qiānguó wànguó yā zhī lí! | 千国万国压枝梨 | Muddled line of a poem which reads “qiān duǒ wàn duǒ yā zhī dī.” Since he uses guó (which means country) it’s like saying “Thousand Country, Ten thousand Country…” |
| 18 | Mom | Xiǎng qù nǎge guójiā ya? | 想去哪个国家呀？ | What country do you want to go to? |
| 19 | Boy | a … Shānguó | 嗯。。山国 | uh, Mountain Country |
| 20 | Mom | Shānguó? Méi tīng shuō guo. | 山国？没听说过 | Mountain country? I haven’t heard of that. |
| 21 | Boy | Jiùshi jiùshi dì shān (sān?) ge guó. | 就是，就是第山（三？）个国。 | It’s just, it’s really the mountain (the Three Kingdoms?) country. |
| 22 | Dad | Sānguó ya? Nà shì Sānguó Yǎnyì! Nà shì Zhōngguó de. | 三国呀？那是三国演义！那是中国的。 | The three kingdoms? That’s the Romance of the Three Kingdoms! That’s part of China. |
| 23 | Mom | Nǐ hē bu hē le? | 你还喝不喝了？！ | Are you going to drink or not?! |
| 24 | Dad | Háiyào qù shénme guójiā ya? | 还要去什么国家呀？ | What other country do you want to go to? |
| 25 | Boy | Làiguó… jiùshì Lài — sh — nèige guó | 赖国。。。就是赖使那个。国 | Lai Country… that’s Lai — sh — that country. |
| 26 | Dad | Shénme jiào … Lài sh? Něi guó ya? Xiǎoyǔ, guówài de, guójiā de míngzi dōu wàng le ba? Wàiguó nèixiē guójiā de míngzi dōu shìbushì dōu wàng le? … a | 什么叫。。？赖使？哪国呀？小雨，国外的，国家的名字都忘了吧？ 外国那些国家的名字都是不是都忘了？ 。。。 啊 | What’s that? Lai sh? What country? Xiaoyu [name], you forgot all those foreign country names didn’t you? Foreign places, those foreign country names — you forgot them all, didn’t you? … right |
| 27 | Boy | Bù hē la | 不喝啦 | I won’t drink any more |
| 28 | Boy | Wàiguó? | 外国？ | Foreign countries? |
| 29 | Mom | Dōu zhīdao nǎxiē guójiā? Shuōchūlai wǒ tīngting. | 都知道哪些国家？说出来我听听 | What countries do you know? Tell me, I’ll listen. |
| 30 | Dad | Dōu shénme, wàiguó dōu yǒu nǎxiē guójiā ya? | 都什么，外国都有哪些国家呀？ | What are they? What sorts of countries are there? |
| 31 | Dad | Nǐ dōu shuōbuchūlai, Māma jiù bù dài nǐ qù le. | 你都说不出来，妈妈就不带你去了 | If you don’t say them, Mommy won’t take you there. |
| 32 | Mom | Bǐrú shuō, Měiguó | 比如说，美国 | Like, America |
| 33 | Boy | a? | 啊？ | yeah? |
| 34 | Mom | Bǐrú shuō, Měiguó, háiyǒu nǎr? | 比如说，美国，还有哪儿？ | Like America, where else? |
| 35 | Dad | Àodàlìyà | 澳大利亚 | Australia |
| 36 | Boy | Duì | 对 | Yeah |
| 37 | Dad | Nánfēi | 南非 | South Africa |
| 38 | Mom | Nǐ shuō | 你说 | Tell us. |
| 39 | Boy | Yìnzhōu! | 印州！ | Yin State! |
| 40 | Dad | Yìnzhōu?! Wǒde tiān, Yìnzhōu zài nǎr? | 印州？！我的天，印州在哪儿？ | Yin State?! My gosh, where is Yin State? |
| 41 | Mom | Nǐ yòu biān yīgè (xiào) | 你又编一个（笑） | You made one up again (laughing) |
| 42 | Dad | Chuānhǎo le méiyou? Chuānhǎo zǒule, chīfàn qùle, zǒule. | 穿好了没有？穿好走了，吃饭去了，走吧 | Do you have your clothes all on? Get them all on and let’s go, go eat lunch. |
| 43 | Dad | Zǒu ba! | 走吧！ | Let’s go! |
Text and subtext
Too bad the mother’s comments don’t come through so well [hazards of surreptitious recording in public places]. Most of it’s not transcribed, but you can catch pieces. There’s something quintessentially Chinese Mom about the eat-more-drink-more monologue that runs parallel to the main conversation. As you can hear from the kid’s (non)response, it’s mostly ignored unless it becomes very insistent.
Unshared culture
David Moser’s thoughtful take on the difficulties of learning Chinese mentions the lack of shared history
one of the main reasons Chinese is so difficult for Americans is that our two cultures have been isolated for so long. The reason reading French sentences like “Le président Bush assure le peuple koweitien que le gouvernement américain va continuer à défendre le Koweit contre la menace irakienne,” is about as hard as deciphering pig Latin is not just because of the deep Indo-European family resemblance, but also because the core concepts and cultural assumptions in such utterances stem from the same source. We share the same art history, the same music history, the same history history
That all seems true enough, you say, but surely that’s not going to matter in conversations with three-year-olds?
Of course not, unless your child genius makes no fewer than two references to Chinese culture and history that you have no clue about — because you grew up in a small town in eastern Washington where the only reference you ever made to China was the imagined conversation that would take place when you dug your mud pit deep enough to reach the other side of the earth.
But this is not about being a child genius and therein lies part of the problem. The references are so garbled as to be incomprehensible to someone who doesn’t know them already. To an adult who shares the background, though, it’s child’s play.
The first reference (line 17) is pretty clearly line 2 from this well-known poem Tang dynasty poem by Du Fu:
| 江畔独步寻花 | jiāng pàn dú bù xún huā | Enjoying Flowers Walking Alone on a Riverbank |
| 杜甫 | Dù Fǔ | Du Fu |
| 黄四娘家花满蹊， |
huáng sì niáng jiā huā mǎn qī, | At Huang Si’s house, flowers fill the path, |
| 千朵万朵压枝低。 |
qiān duǒ wàn duǒ yā zhī dī. | Myriad blossoms press the branches low. |
| 留连戏蝶时时舞， |
liú lián xìdié shí shí wǔ, | Constantly dancing butterflies stay to play, |
|
自在娇莺恰恰啼。
|
zì zài jiāo yīng qià qià tí. | Unrestrained, the lovely orioles cry. |
If you play around with the consonants, it’s pretty easy to go from Du Fu’s “qiān duǒ wàn duǒ yā zhī dī” to our orator’s “Qiānguó wànguó yā zhī lí!”
Above translation available from here — apologies that the Beijing Sounds Tang poetry translators were not on hand this week to vouch for it.
The second reference (line 21) is to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, another bit of history that’s even more lost to graduates of the US educational system than, say, “to each according to his needs“. Even if you didn’t get the hint, his father did (line 22), and expanded on it, and therefore if you don’t know it you’re going to end up lost in this, the most juvenile of conversations. You can’t chalk it up to having encountered the world’s only three-year-old Chinese history buff. The three-kingdom reference is probably nothing more unusual than the three-men-in-a-tub reference an American kid would make, something that might cross his mind if he was setting out for waiguo in a shoe. It’s just part of the culture, a part that you don’t share. And so you struggle, “The words I know, but the meaning…?”
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Comments 25
I dig this kid. The 山国 line in particular is great, as is his mishearing of the Du Fu line. If I recall correctly, the State Department’s language assessment considers the ability to understand and converse with small children to be a mark of high proficiency in a foreign language, and this sort of trippy nattering is exactly why.
Great post. One small nitpick — the pinyin for 托 in line 12 should be tuo1, not tou1 — it’s correct everywhere else in the transcription.
Posted 10 Dec 2009 at 12:24 pm ¶Brendan, great catch on the tuo/tou mixup, now fixed — consider yourself a prime candidate for the Studios’ chief text editor position, whose current occupant is said to be considering a (strictly voluntary) resignation.
You’re right on with that “talking to kids” line, whether the State dept said it or not. It’s a serious challenge. Even though when I got this I knew it was going to be a great recording, I didn’t know the half of it until my friend helped me get those couple of historical references.
The other great thing about kids — besides the seemingly disconnected utterances — is their unwillingness to give you a break. Want more explanation? Fuhgeddaboudit. Want to get laughed out of the conversation over your lousy pronunciation? Talk to a kid.
Posted 10 Dec 2009 at 12:59 pm ¶Very cute! Reminds me of my days teaching English in the Japanese countryside. A preschooler once insisted to me that he was going to take a bus to America. I told him good luck with that, and where can I buy a ticket?
Posted 10 Dec 2009 at 1:07 pm ¶Great post, what fun!
Posted 11 Dec 2009 at 10:51 am ¶I love it! I always feel real proud when I can converse with a kid in Chinese. When it works, it’s great. They’re the only ones who don’t seem to care that you’re speaking a foreign language. To a lot of them you’re just speaking the only language on earth.
Posted 15 Dec 2009 at 1:54 pm ¶aw, that conversation was so cute. and you could tell the family are native beijingers, as opposed to wai di ren speaking putonghua. how did you get such a clear recording of this? fantastic blog, by the way. i enjoyed reading your entries.
Posted 16 Dec 2009 at 3:19 am ¶Glad you made it here Cindy. Since someone else asked me offline about my “recording equipment” I guess I should say, it’s pretty minimal. This one was recorded on a livescribe pen. I sometimes use my cell phone. For this one I mostly got lucky in that the waiting area I was in was pretty quiet and the kid was pretty close to me. Believe me I throw out a lot of recordings on account of bad sound quality.
Posted 16 Dec 2009 at 6:33 am ¶haha, recorder on a pen, very subtle. good thing they don’t know you’re recording them, or they’d clam up big time. yea I can tell you were sitting real close to the dad, he was practically speaking over the recorder. and unlike a lot of people, he actually spoke very clearly, some beijingers I know tend to mumble – myself included, especially when I’m talking real fast, all the words start to connect, so something like “wo3 gao4 su4 ni3″ becomes “wo-gao-er-ni”, or “bu4 zhi1 dao4″ becomes “bu-er-dao”, with the dao sounding like “dog” without the “g”. ha! don’t you feel lucky you don’t have to record me? ;P
love the sound bytes, keep ‘em coming!
Posted 16 Dec 2009 at 7:48 am ¶“Believe me I throw out a lot of recordings on account of bad sound quality.”
I hear ya, I got the feeling when I saw that sometimes you post two sound clips as examples for the same line, like in the “xià chē” post. It’s a pity when you have to throw out some quality recordings because they are hard to hear, I’m sure you often catch a lot of really neat jems, like this family convo in the waiting room, but then have to toss them after listening to them on playback. props for trying, though
Posted 16 Dec 2009 at 8:01 am ¶Proverbs always get me when I’m reading Chinese – this is the reason why!
Posted 22 Dec 2009 at 2:39 am ¶Full agreement here, Robin.
Encountering the chengyu while reading can be quite hazardous. There you are minding your own business, muddling along character by character, even word by word, parsing up a storm. “Great!” you’re thinking, “I’ve finally got enough characters to plow my way through a text without looking up every other character.” Then, wham! Four characters in a row you’ve never seen in your life. Or better yet, two you don’t know combined with two that produce a false parsing — so you think you sort of understood but you actually missed the entire point. Oh, the joy of it all.
Posted 22 Dec 2009 at 6:20 am ¶This is an amazing piece of ” 侃 “, good for nothing but some linguistic aerobics if you are really into it.
But why such a big pair of shoes? A possible
social-linguistic allusion is that you have to walk
away in such shoes if you don’t want to be shoehorned into the small pair of shoes
( ” chuan xiao xie ” ) that spells the Chinese troubles. Lastly, several typos or mispronunciations: Bu shi is pronunced 2nd followed by 4th tone; Zhao yige is 3rd + 2nd + neutral; Yihou is 3rd + 4th.
Great blog and keep up the good work!
Posted 13 Feb 2010 at 10:02 pm ¶Hi CL — good point about not wanting to chuan xiao xie. Maybe if I’d heard the beginning of the conversation I could credit the little boy with starting off from that allusion!
Then, tone marking. Oh, where do I start on tone indication. The first point is to say that of course you’re right. So why did I put it this way?
Well, most of your points are about tone sandhi. The standards schemed up by the inventors of Pinyin say that tone sandhi should not be indicated in writing. Check out this reference from pinyin.info.
But I’m pretty sympathetic to your position. I think it looks unnatural too. So sometimes I violate my own rules and write a bu2shi4 and the like.
You’re not the only one who’s complained. In fact, in digging, I find another bu2shi4 complaint. See here.
I’m going to stick with no-sandhi-marking for now. It’s a bit of a pain for Mandarin beginners, but it does have its merits. But maybe if we get enough good arguments against it I’ll reconsider.
that ge in zhao yige is definitely neutral, though. Thanks and I’ve changed it.
Posted 14 Feb 2010 at 6:47 am ¶Go figure: if you didn’t smile or laugh or without thinking of that ” xiao xie ” while listening to this piece of conversation, you were literally out of the loop on what they were talking about in the first place. So please consider a quick take on the allusion of ” chuan xiao xie ” hidden or invisiblly embeded in the conversation a benchmark of your awarness of Chinese linguistic culture. Simply this: You were a foreigner if you missed it. The same is true with English, of course.
Posted 14 Feb 2010 at 12:44 pm ¶And also the title of your blog: Beijing de Shengr which sounds too much of a bland, flat, non-Chinese coined
Posted 14 Feb 2010 at 12:53 pm ¶term. The best bet I can come up with for your idea,
is ” 京片子 ” or ” 京腔 ” which are the authentic native terms for the vernacular speech of Beijing.
I read the Chinese name of the webapge as a translation from the English, which is badass, in english at least. It’s like a rock band, minus the “the”, with beijing, or the sounds of beijing, as the star.
I’m sure there’s little doubt that beijing de shengr is not a “authentic name” for the “vernacular speech of Beijing”, but the blog’s scope has always been somewhat wider and more cooler than that, evidenced by the sweeping grand title “beijing sounds”. Plus it’s got the “r”, which is crucial, in a way that perhaps only some people can appreciate, (which groups that is, we’ll leave for others to decide). It’s not a flat, non-chinese coined name, it’s a translation. It’s different. It’s called faithfulness in translation.
For example, there’s the post about the sharpening the knives. That’s not about the beijingqiang, it’s about the lives and sounds of people in the city. Anyway.
Posted 14 Feb 2010 at 4:09 pm ¶Well. Peace on this debate. Translation aside, hard
Posted 14 Feb 2010 at 6:14 pm ¶or faithful. Hands down, ” Beijing de Shengr ” has
outstretched the Chinese grammar to the point: love
it or loathe it. ” Shengr ” as a noun, is often used as
an object like in ” keng shengr ” ( shuo huar ), or in
phrase ” xiao diar shengr ” ( lower your voice ) or
in ” da shengr ” ( raise your voice ) or ” mei shengr
le ” ( No more words. ). But ” shengr ” with the possesive ” de ” is never heared or seen before
our ” Beijing de Shengr ” even though it appears to
be politically right in grammar. Blame this on
mandarin Chinese or the Beijing vernacular? For
Beijing Sounds of your scope and under a proper,
idiomatic Chinese title, it has to be ” 北京音响 ”
or ” 声音北京, ” 北京之音 ” or better yet ” 北京声息 “, if you get the right drain in the language. Ask
the people there on the street and let them take the pick !
@Cui Litang: I have to, out of scholarly responsibility, point out that you have committed a big no-no. You have said: “’shengr’ with the possessive ‘de’ is never heard or seen before our ‘Beijing de Shengr’…”, and have provided no evidence of this postulation.
Allow me to ever so gently burst your bubble.
While it seems that Beijing Sounds’ use of 的声儿 might be the most popular out on the web right now (with the top hit), it’s certainly not the only one. And 3.7 million raw Google hits is quite a lot for a non-constituent* combination of three Chinese characters (try some other combinations and compare).
This reminds me of the many times I’ve been teaching Chinese university students, where in a classroom debate, there would quite often be a student who would stand up and preface their opinion with “we Chinese feel that…”. I normally stop the student right there and ask them how many provinces they’ve been to (the answer is usually between one and three). Then I point out that just on this information alone, there is no way they could speak for all Chinese people.
Expressing one’s opinion is quite helpful — it lets others consider perspectives that they perhaps haven’t previously considered. And relating one’s personal experience is also a valuable thing. Personal experience is unverifiable, so people will just take your word for it unless there’s reason not to. But other people’s descriptions of their own personal experiences are an important thing to pay attention to, and always welcome in debates.
But making sweeping statements about how things are (when they are demonstrably not that way) won’t do much for credibility.
If you think 北京的声儿 is not hip enough, that’s good to express. I agree that it’s a little bland, but it also has (in my opinion) a certain clarity, and (also in my opinion) clarity is something the Chinese language could use a little more of.
*It is not even two complete constituents. 的 is part of 北京的, and 生儿 is a complete constituent.
Posted 14 Feb 2010 at 8:46 pm ¶Discussion on Chinese retroflex er can be academic or scholastic and there is no doubt about that. The truth is: when I said ” de shengr ” was never heard or seen before ” Beijing de shengr “, it was outside of the linguistic bubble of Beijng/Northern vernacular, in vast linguistic regions where use of retroflex er in daily encounters or on media was kept to the minum and
Posted 15 Feb 2010 at 11:48 am ¶rightfully so, not just because the retroflex er sounds non-standard, but also according to my Professors at Beijing Language & Culture University, retroflex er has dialectic color even within Beijing linguistic bubble. And what’s more, ( more ) frequent use of retroflex er is usually found among less educated population, indicating retroflex er a degenerating and fading linguistic phenomena all the way from the drama scripts of Wang Shifu through Ming & Qing and then
that of Lao She’s like the Teahouse and Long Xu Gou.
So when I said let the people on the street to take the pick and that’s all about it. Sure enough. Your web evidences of retrofelx er do support your descriptive view on this Beijing de Shengr, but again. for the title of a serious blog, this is sort of out of the style. Beijing de Shengr is ALMOST HIP, riding on the slipping comeback of the retroflex er in the language.
“serious blog”
“riding on the slipping comeback of the retroflex er in the language.”
What?
What, what?
Uh, some more comments.
XX之音 nearly always connotes “The Voice of XX” due to “Voice of America”, and similar constructions. That’s certainly about as far as off an idea as this blog is looking for to create.
I had a lot more comments about the other suggestions, but I just deleted my extended comments commenting on them.
“was kept to the minum and
rightfully so”
What? Yea? Pro-censoring how people talk and making them feel like ignorant crapheads for talking like their parents and where they came from? What?
Let’s all abandon Shanghainese because the Mandarin train is coming to bring us to funland!
The idea of taking perfectly clear statements in english like “beijing sounds”, with the connotations clear as day to an english speaker, and finding “colorful” and more “something” (insert appropriate adjective/adjectival phrase here) phrases to “translate” them as, is something that makes native english speaker very very uncomfortable sometimes, ie, (京片子, “Slices of Beijing”). It’s why when some english speakers here the names of english language book or movie titles in chinese and pause for a second, and roll them around in their mouth for a minute, and think, “hey, that’s uh, uh, terrible, yeah, that’s the word: awful. Don’t do that.”
Oh, yeah, and this:
“according to my Professors at Beijing Language & Culture University”
Fail.
But anyway.
Posted 15 Feb 2010 at 1:25 pm ¶First of all there is NO CENSORSHIP here whatsever regarding use of retroflex er. If you have to bring in ” censorship ” as you already have, it is all that jungle of law in language use, a choice made by the average NATIVE Chinese speakers other than by a bunch of people from Beijing vernacular or another bunch of people from Wu vernacular, let alone by any other non-native speakers however they have acquired this language. Truth is: the average native Chinese speakers from across the Yellow River and Yangtze River use retroflex er to the minum, not because of any ignorance of it but because of their NON-DIALECTIAL development of Standard Chinese, Chinese Putong Hua. Linguistics is descriptive and never prescriptive if your ” censorship ” is all about that.
And as to the analystic statement made by my Professors at Beijing Language & Culture University regarding use of retroflex er in Chinese Putong Hua, let’s be NO EVILS, they are authoritive, as they are natives of Beijing vernacular as well as trained Chinese linguists.
Honestly there’s nothing criminal here with the title
of ” Beijing de Shengr “, as long as it is accepted
for its somewhat outlandish cool factor. But before
such usage is readily EMBRACED by the majority of the population, rather than entertained by a tribe or two indulged in and obsessed on this bit of DIALECTIC FLAVOR, there is a natural concern
for its properness and authnticity which of course is all here before Chinese Putong Hua or Shanghainese or Cantonese get rolled all over by your petty retroflex ” er ” !
Fail? I don’t know what you were talking about.
Posted 15 Feb 2010 at 6:43 pm ¶Uh, where to start?
@hsknotes: thanks for logical defense of name
@Randy: thanks for the research
@Cui Litang
I guess you mean well, in the sense that you were trying to come up with a name that refers more closely to the beijing dialect of Mandarin. The trouble is, your comments are kind of off the wall. So I guess I’ll start with something that sounds a lot like a comments policy.
I’ve never had to have a comments policy, because (thankfully!) everyone who comes here seems to do exactly what I think great commenters should do: add to the conversation!
What does it mean to “add to the conversation”? Well, you take some idea and add your own experience. You disagree. Or you agree. Or maybe you take the idea in a new direction. But the key thing is that you don’t stick to a position without reason. Once you start sticking to a position without reason, the conversation gets kind of pointless.
Yet you seem to be doing that.
In the beginning, you seemed to say that “beijing de shengr” was not a native term for “京片子”. Then when hsknotes corrected you and said the blog was about more than just beijing pronunciation, you said “beijing de shengr” uses a form that no native speaker would use. Then Randy corrected you by finding lots of examples of native speakers using 的 with 声儿. Then you said something about use of erhuayin being only for dialect and not for a serious blog… which doesn’t make any sense. Even worse, you’ve started using ALL CAPS, which, to most people, indicates yelling.
Conclusion: you’re kind of on parole now. I would like to believe you have something to add to the conversation. If you can do that, I’m happy to have you here. Otherwise, your comments will probably find there way into the deleted category — if you do a close read of the Constitution, you’ll find no mention of freedom of speech.
Posted 15 Feb 2010 at 7:32 pm ¶is there any good writing about retroflex er sound in dialects outside of northern mandarin?ｂｅｃａｕｓｅ ｔｈｅｙ ｓｅｅｍ ｔｏ ｃｒｏｐ ｕｐ ｅｌｓｅｗｈｅｒｅ， ｗｈｅｔｈｅｒ ｓｈａａｎｘｉ ｏｒ ａｎｈｕｉ ｏｒ ｊｉａｎｇｓｕ． ｔｈｅｙ ａｐｐｅａｒ ｔｏ ｓｅｒｖｅ ａ ｐｕｒｐｏｓｅ ｏｒ ａｔ ｌｅａｓｔ ａ ｐａｔｔｅｒｎ ａｌｓｏ．
Posted 15 Feb 2010 at 7:40 pm ¶@ syz: thanks again for your e-mailed ideas
about Chinesenow.biz which I have kindly
replied.
@ Randy: gets my appreciation for providing web
evidences of retroflex er, on a perfect descriptive
linguistic standing.
Thanks for mentioning your blog Constitution which I found in perfect line with your philosophy and consideration in choosing a good name for your blog segment, that is ” Beijing de Shengr “. This is also where I seemingly chipped in with comments and suggestions that had led to more comments over the language usage if not toward a better name for the blog segment. This was nothing great but at least we had exchanged ideas, thoughts and resources, all with reason, about the language usage if you read carefully, as I did think and believe, like many others would, ” Beijing de Shengr ” for the name of your blog segment as it claims to be, is problematic and controversial. And I stuck to this position, resting upon the good faith in freedom of speech until you came back in brandishing to me your Constitution. But ” Beijing de Shengr ” as a name for the blog, even in perfect support by your Constitution, still sounds way too dialectic and tribal to my ears, and unfair for the great efforts you have been making in preparing and posting it ! Well, you are sure in a perfect position to defend your blogsphere !
I started our encounter here with a comment in a neutral ” possible ” position, about the allusion of ” Waiguo in a shoe ” which was never discussed or
entirely missed.
Both comments with one perfect intention might well be ignored if you are not interested.
Thanks for your freedom of speech !
Posted 15 Feb 2010 at 11:23 pm ¶鎒名: that’s a great question. We’ve had a bit of discussion here and there over the years at beijing sounds, but the short answer is: I don’t know. I’ll try posing this to a wider group
Posted 16 Feb 2010 at 6:51 am ¶Post a Comment