No Smoking...in China?

China is known to be a nation of heavy smokers. But you will be taken by surprise when you see this exchange in a beef noodle restaurant in the Cloud Nine (龙之梦) mall by Shanghai’s Zhongshan Park:

Customer: 服务员，烟灰缸！ [Waitress, (bring an) ashtray!]

Waitress: 这里不可以吸烟。 [You can't smoke here.]

Customer: 有吸烟区吗？ [Is there a smoking section?]

Waitress: 没有。 [No.]

Customer: [grumble, grumble]

In case you’re not familiar with China, let me tell you what’s surprising.

1. The guy asked for an ash tray rather than just lighting up.
2. The guy (and the other two men with him) accepted the restaurant’s no smoking policy

I guess I just like to celebrate the tiny little signs of social progress I see around me :D

You will also be noticed a sharp divide between the coffee shops in Shanghai. If you accept that the major chains here are Starbucks (星巴克), Coffee Bean (香啡缤), and UBC (上岛咖啡), they fall on a smoking/no-smoking continuum like so:

Costa Coffee aligns with Starbucks, and, at least in some locations, Cittá has recently joined the “glassed-in smoking section” faction, joining Coffee Bean.

You can see how smoking policies align with these companies’ target markets. UBC, with its dedication to universal smokers’ rights, frequently reeks of smoke, and has quite a few middle-aged Chinese men in there talking business (or something). Starbucks, on the other hand, is full of trendy young Shanghainese, and usually at least a couple foreigners. The interesting thing is that Coffee Bean and its ilk seem to have basically the same types of customers as Starbucks, and you rarely see middle-aged people there, even if they can smoke there. Most of the smokers at Coffee Bean and Cittá are young.

What does all this mean? Well, I’m just hoping that there will be less smoking in China’s future. Maybe UBC will even start to reek less!

Google Suggest Venn Diagrams for Chinese, Japanese, and English

I was recently introduced to the awesome Google Suggest Venn Diagram Generator by Micah. Some interesting suggested searches by Google were crossed with a Venn diagram by some creative soul, and then the process was automated on the web by request. The result is a unique way to visualize and compare the data indexed by Google.

Here’s an example of what the diagram generator produces:

So we can see from this graph that according to Google, lots of people are asking (or telling) why both people and girls are mean, why girls and Americans are dumb, and why people, girls, and Americans are all stupid.

I decided to try some queries of my own. I chose the terms “Chinese,” “Japanese,” and “English” as my recurring comparisons, and then added a little color to the results. Here are some of the more interesting ones:

how does _____ …

Yikes, “how does Chinese water torture work“? Gotta love the intellectual curiosity. I like the “how does English sound to foreigners” question though.

learn _____ …

Apparently there’s a whole lot of learning going on in the DC area. It’s no surprise that people want to learn online for free, but it’s interesting that Chinese is the only language of the three that people expect to learn in 5 minutes. (Tip: it might take slightly longer than that.)

_____ grammar …

Ah, good old 的. (I’m kind of surprised it trumped 了, though.)

awesome _____ …

stupid _____ …

Why is _____ so damn…

Ah, yes. But we expected that.

Car Tones

I recently stumbled across this graphic, and found it amusing enough to share.

So, does using an automotive visual help anyone learn tones any better?? It takes all kinds…

的 地 得

Learners of Chinese confront the “de triple threat” of Chinese structural particles pretty early on. You see, there are three different characters to write what sounds exactly the same to the ear. The three characters are 的, 得, and 地, each pronounced “de” (neutral tone) when serving as a structural particle.

If you’re just trying to improve your listening and speaking, you don’t really need to worry about this issue. If you’re working on your writing, however, you’re going to want to get it straight. I found the following (simplified) approach helpful:

1. …的 + Noun
2. Verb + 得…
3. …地 + Verb

OK, yes, it leaves out a lot of special cases, and the aforementioned “Verb” in “Verb + 得” can also be an adjective. But they’re nice rules of thumb if you’re looking for something a bit simpler.

But here’s the interesting thing: because the issue of the three de’s is one concerning writing and not speaking, Chinese native speakers themselves have to learn these rules, and can sometimes get tripped up. Some people who don’t need to write for a living might even just “opt out” of the whole issue and use 的 exclusively.

But because Chinese children have to learn to use the proper “de” in school, there is actually a children’s song about the three de’s! 

《的地得》 儿歌

左边白，右边勺，名词跟在后面跑。
美丽的花儿绽笑脸，青青的草儿弯下腰，
清清的河水向东流，蓝蓝的天上白云飘，
暖暖的风儿轻轻吹，绿绿的树叶把头摇，
小小的鱼儿水中游，红红的太阳当空照，

左边土，右边也，地字站在动词前，
认真地做操不马虎，专心地上课不大意，
大声地朗读不害羞，从容地走路不着急，
痛快地玩耍来放松，用心地思考解难题，
勤奋地学习要积极，辛勤地劳动花力气，

左边两人就使得，形容词前要用得，
兔子兔子跑得快，乌龟乌龟爬得慢，
青青竹子长得快，参天大树长得慢，
清晨锻炼起得早，加班加点睡得晚，
欢乐时光过得快，考试题目出得难。

I find the explanation of 得 a bit suspect. It “comes before adjectives”? Kinda misleading (but then again, so is “after verbs”).

I tried to find an online video of this song, and instead found a very similar butdifferent song also about the three de’s,click the link,the three de song

The amusing thing about this video is that in at least one place, the subtitles get the “de” wrong. (Can you find it?)

Online Resources for Learning Chinese

It used to be that there were few resources available online for learning Chinese. Now there are so many that it can be hard to separate the good from the bad. Through extensive experience learning Chinese, creating Chinese content at ChinesePod, and consulting at AllSet Learning, I’ve come to rely on certain resources which really stand out. You’ll find them here.

Lessons by Podcast

• ChinesePod – the original award-winning podcast that inspired all the imitators continues to deliver the best podcasts for learning Mandarin [subscription required]

Pinyin

• AllSet Learning Pinyin (an interactive pinyin chart for the iPad)
• ChinesePod: Pinyin Chart [subscription required]
• ChinesePod: Pinyin Program [subscription required]
• Pinyin.info: The Rules of Pinyin

Pronunciation

• ChinesePod: Pinyin Program [subscription required]

Listening

• Chinese BBTV Radio Online [review here]
• Tudou – one of the Chinese YouTube clones, full of great Chinese video content
• Youku – another one of the Chinese YouTube clones, full of great Chinese video content

Chinese Characters

• Skritter – the best online resource for practicing writing
• Chinese Character Etymology – tons of images covering the entire history of a character’s evolution
• Zhongwen.com – a hierarchical ordering of characters based on their composition

Chinese Dictionaries

• Pleco – not free, but worth the money (for iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile)
• Hanping – the best free dictionary for Android devices
• MDBG – a popular free online dictionary
• nciku – perhaps the most popular free online dictionary
• Jukuu – a database of sentences with part of speech data on words
• Wenlin – desktop software (Mac or PC) that uses the acclaimed ABC Dictionary

Chinese Grammar

• AllSet Learning: The Chinese Grammar Wiki [full disclosure: this is my own project]
• Basic Chinese Grammar – a basic “big picture” view provided by Rutgers University
• Wikipedia: Chinese Grammar – an academic overview with linguistic value, but not well suited to actual study

Reading Tools

• Wenlin – a great program for Windows and Mac; paste in the Chinese text and have access to easy character readings, dictionary lookups, character info, and more
• Chinese Perapera-kun – the most popular Firefox add-on for adding popup-style readings to characters on any webpage
• Zhongwen – a simple Chrome extension for adding popup-style readings to characters on any webpage

Writing/Composition

• Lang-8 – write whatever you want and get free feedback from the community

Flashcards

• Anki – the most popular SRS flashcard solution [more info on SRS]

Blogs

• East Asia Student – a student’s take on learning Chinese, Japanese, and more
• LaowaiChinese – thoughts on learning Mandarin
• Sinoglot – a blog on linguistic issues surrounding Chinese and its many dialects/languages
• Lingomi – a blog about learning Chinese, with emphasis on technology
• Pinyin News Blog – academic examination of pinyin in action

Link Lists

• Learning Chinese Online – a huge list of resources compiled by professor Tim Xie

Note that this page is not meant to be a list of all materials for learning Chinese; it is a filtered list of personal recommendation based on my own experience. If you’d like to suggest a resource for this list, please contact me.

Tones in Chinese Songs

I’ve been asked a number of times: if Mandarin Chinese is a tonal language, what happens when you sing in Mandarin? Well, the answer is the melody takes over and the tones are ignored. Pretty simple.

However, it may not quite end there. I recently discovered a paper called “Tone and Melody in Cantonese” which asserts that Cantonese tones are set to music in a somewhat different way:

For Chinese, modern songs in Mandarin and Cantonese exhibit very different behaviour with respect to the extent to which the melodies affect the lexical tones. In modern Mandarin songs, the melodies dominate, so that the original tones on the lyrics seem to be completely ignored. In Cantonese songs, however, the melodies typically take the lexical tones into consideration and attempt to preserve their pitch contours and relative pitch heights.

Here’s a graphical representation of Cantonese tones, with and without music:

And here’s an example of Mandarin:

I can’t say I’m fully convinced by the pitch contour graphic that the Cantonese songs “take the lexical tones into consideration,” but it’s an interesting argument. This would suggest that studying songs would be more beneficial to acquisition of tones for the student of Cantonese than for the student of Mandarin.

If you’re interested in this kind of thing, Professor Marjorie K. M. Chan has lots of articles available on her website’s Publications page.

Units of Beer

This topic came up to my mind in a lesson of measure words recently, and I’m certainly a proponent of 啤酒(pi jib) education, so I thought I’d share this useful info on this blog:

Units of Beer

• 1 drop = 一滴(yì di)
• 1 glass/cup = 一杯(yì bei)
• 1 can = 一听(yì ting)
• 1 bottle = 一瓶(yì ping)
• 1 6-pack = 半打(ban dá)
• 1 12-pack = 一打 (yì dá,same as “a dozen”)
• 1 case = 一箱 (yì xiang,quantity may vary)
• 1 keg = 一桶(yì tong)
• 
  

Tone Notes:

1. Remember that for all uses of 一 above, the tone change rule changes “yī” (1st tone) to “yì” (4th tone).
2. 打 is normally read “dǎ,” but when it means “dozen,” it’s read “dá.”

Types of Tone Mistakes

As a learner of Chinese, you’re going to make mistakes with your tones. A lot of them. It’s unavoidable. It can be helpful to reflect on the kinds of mistakes you’re making, though, because it can help you realize that despite all the mangled tones, you’re actually making progress.

No, I’m not just talking about the stages of learning tones, I’m talking about mistakes which are fundamentally different in nature. As your Chinese gets better and better, you’ll keep making some mistakes, but the types of mistakes you make will change.

Types of Tone Mistakes:

1. Mistakes of Control
   When you first start studying Chinese, you have no idea at all how to properly make the tones. Even if you can hear a difference, you can’t do it yourself. Or maybe you can hear and repeat it immediately after, but then quickly forget how to do it. This is all part of the process of learning tones.
   Don’t think this type of mistake is only for beginners, though. Even after you can accurately produce individual tones in isolation, you’re going to have problems with tone pairs and tones across whole sentences for a while. (For most of the learners, the most insidious of these was the 3-2 tone swap error.)
   Relax! Persistent effort will totally pay off. No one masters tones in 2 weeks. It takes time.
2. Mistakes of Ignorance
   Sometimes you don’t know the tones of the words you want to use. Don’t worry; it happens to everyone. If you only use words for which you’re 100% sure of the tones, then you’re doing it wrong. Not knowing the correct tones but blundering on through anyway is just part of the learning experience.
   The key here is that you eventually make the effort to learn the proper tones for the words you’re unsure of. This takes time, patience, and lots of dictionary lookups. Eventually your accumulated tonal knowledge (and proper execution) make you start sounding less like a “stereotypical foreigner” when you speak Chinese.
3. Mistakes of Memory
   For many people, this is always the most frustrating tonal mistake of all. Have you ever been sure that you know the right tones for a word, and always took care to properly pronounce that word, but then found out much later that the tones you thought you had down cold were actually wrong?
   Nothing to do but make the mental correction and move on. Memory is never perfect, and you can’t really avoid these mistakes.
4. Mistakes of Influence
   This one can also be frustrating, but I’d say it’s more confusing than anything. So what happens when the dictionary says a word is pronounced one way, and your friend tells you it’s pronounced a different way? Or two friends give you contradictory information, but it’s all different from what the dictionary says? Sadly, these issues invariably plague the intermediate learner of Chinese.
   There are several reasons that these discrepancies arise. First is regional variation. Different parts of China pronounce some words in different ways, and although at times you’ll hear unquestionably “non-standard Mandarin,” at other times it’s unfair to call a certain regional variation “wrong” or “right” (although some Beijing have no problems at all doing this).
   Second is the widespread use of dated reference materials. Printed dictionaries simply aren’t keeping pace with the rapidly evolving language of the Chinese people. New words are created, and pronunciations change (sometimes just the tones) relatively quickly.
   Third is a cultural tendency to submit to the recognized authority (i.e. the outdated reference materials). So you often get exchanges like this:

   A: How do you pronounce the character 血(blood)?

   B: “Xuě.”

   A: But the dictionary says it’s either “xuè” or “xiě.”

   B: Oh yes, that’s right.

   A: But you just said…

   You get the idea. But what can you do? Know that dictionaries are not perfect, and no single person can be an authority on a whole language. You’re going to have to assemble your mental map of the words of the language over time, from the mouths of many speakers, not one “omniscient” teacher.

Don’t be afraid of making mistakes. They’re inevitable, and they help you learn. But as long as you’re going to be making these mistakes, you might as well look a little closer and gauge how your language ability is growing and your unruly tones are slowly but surely being tamed.