Accent pop quiz:

You go to one of the many offices at your school or workplace. These are offices that deal in official business. Administration type stuff.

The nice but somewhat overly energetic woman behind the counter makes demands regarding an item referred to as “fuzao” (IPA: /fuˈʦɑʊ/)* which she’s expecting you to produce.

1. What is it she’s asking for?
2. Where is she from?

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It’s always good to see that the news business is getting the most out of its content producers.

Here’s an article from a textbook of mine, publishing date 2006:

And here’s the Xinhua article (link) from October 2007:

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Forty-year-old, fashion-blind, popular-press-eschewing recluses are generally excused from petty infractions of regulations against fuddiduddiness.

But some violations are inexcusable, apparently. So when I used the word 语言伙伴 (yǔyán huǒbàn, “language partner”) in a piece of writing the other day, my language partner grimaced. Her correction went something like this:

“Maybe you could just use the English word, ‘language partner’.”

“But isn’t the whole point to write Chinese?”

“Or you could use LP.”

“And Chinese speakers would know what ‘language partner’ or even ‘LP’ means?!”

“Well, my friends would. Nobody uses 语言伙伴. It’s sounds so, well, weird — kind of like some old-fashioned made-up word.” Continue reading

A quick post while I incubate some others in the works. Yesterday I was served at a nearby Tea Storm by Judy and Andrew. Not their legal names to be sure. It reminded me of something I’d meant to look into.

I know plenty of Chinese who use their English names among their Chinese friends. But does this happen the other way around? I never use any of the Chinese names I’ve been given. When someone uses one to refer to me, I usually ask that they just call me Kellen.

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Even if you don’t drive yourself, in Beijing pretty soon you learn to spot the xīnshǒu (新手), literally the “new hands”, the greenhorns, the folks that made it through cryptic questions and an irrelevant “road” test and now possess that coveted, slightly-too-big-for-a-credit-card-slot, laminated green card that entitles them, for the next six years…

1. to drive around the 47 cars waiting in the left turn lane and position themselves in front of the first car, even if that means placing themselves in the middle of an intersection during a red light
2. to reverse for 500m in the right lane of the freeway after passing the exit ramp they decided was appropriate after stopping and deliberating (in lane) for several minutes
3. to maneuver their car through a 10-minute long, 17-point U-turn on a street hardly wide enough for bicycle traffic Continue reading

Whilst on an informative jolly around Shaoxing’s lántíng 兰亭 (orchid pavilion) in the sweltering heat, I came across the following  stele:

It reads 鵞池 é chí, ‘goose pond’ (it probably loses something in translation). The guide told me that the é is a painstaking reconstruction of a character written by Wang Xizhi 王羲之 (303–361), whilst the chí was written by one of his descendants. And aparently Wang loved geese because he felt that, in profile,  they resembled the shape of the character 之 in his name. Continue reading

The Chinese writing system is incredibly efficient, isn’t it? I mean, it’s a pain to learn and we all forget how to write the odd character from time to time, but you can cram so much into such a small space. It’s not just things like the Analects which, in translation, require lines of English to represent the briefest of the sage’s utterances; even making simple arrangements by SMS/text message seems so much more convenient in Chinese.

Then, as Bryan pointed out, there are signs in your local hospital which protrude unreasonably far, simply so that they can helpfully accommodate the English translation.

Watch out. That thing could take your eye out! Continue reading

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m planning a trip to Korea this year. After failing to find truly cheap airfare, I ended up buying from one of those online sellers where the price looks great and then you’re suddenly hit with a thousand kuai in “fees”. I’m still working through the bitterness.

It turns out there were still some issues once the ticket had been purchased. The flight I had signed up for didn’t actually exist. They were kind enough to email me and let me know though, offering an alternative flight at close to the original time.

The original flight I had was to land in Gimpo 김포, and the only other one I knew of was landing in Incheon 인천. Gimpo is in a better location but either would work. The problem was that the new flight was to land in Rengchuang.

Rengchuan? What?

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I’ve just had a week on the road with a bunch of guys, a sports team, to be a little more precise. I’ve been coaching them for about eighteen months and we’re all on pretty familiar terms, but this is the first time we’ve all been away together.

We travelled from home in NE China, down to the South – 30 hours plus on the train. Plenty of time for everyone to get into the tour spirit.

Having played various sports for most of my life and having been on a number of tours, I ought to be pretty familiar with how these things pan out.  And sure enough, this tour was like most others; plenty of laddish humour, lots of card playing, a certain amount of drinking. People take up various roles in the group; the worrier, the flirt, the joker, the quiet one, the leader, the guy who can never find his stuff, the one who’s always last to breakfast.

Then there’s always tour language. Maybe someone says something really dumb on the first day and it becomes a catchphrase for the tour…

…or maybe one of the group has an unusual accent and this becomes much imitated.

And so it was. They all did their impersonations of me. Some just occasionally, some near incessantly. It was kind of amusing; sometimes flattering, sometimes pretty uncomfortable, but mainly just intriguing to hear how I sound to them. I only managed to capture a few phrases on the final day and here they are:

你好吗？

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就到这里吧

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放松点吧

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[Descriptions of above recordings added, 11 Aug 2010. Sima]

I’d love to pretend that I never say any of these things and that it certainly sounds nothing like me, but I guess the big question is…

Is this clear evidence of girlspeak?

But beyond that, does anyone have any experience of being mimicked? Is there a general comic accent which most people would recognise as the foreigner speaking Chinese? Would anyone care to describe what they hear in the above recordings that sounds foreign?

In the schadenfreude category, here’s an example of a college-aged native Mandarin speaker mis-parsing a sentence that would have been clear if it had been spoken or if writing with Chinese characters indicated word boundaries.

I wrote:

我下星期一直跟小孩在家

I meant:

（我下星期）（一直跟小孩在家）
(I next week) (continually with kid at home)
Gloss: “I’m home with my kid all next week”

But she read:

（我下星期一）（直跟小孩在家）
(I next Monday) (continually with kid at home)
Gloss: “I’m home next Monday with my kid”

The central ambiguity is in how to parse these four characters: 星期一直. Is it (i) or (ii)?

1. 星期一 (Monday) plus 直 (continually)
2. 星期 (week) plus 一直 (continually)

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