Understanding the Opposite Sex

在戀愛過程中，女人往往聽不懂男人的話。

Through the course of a relationship, women typically don't understand what men say.

傾城之戀   作者：張愛玲

Love in a Fallen City   by, Eileen Chang

A Chinese Woman's Face at Night

她安慰著他，然而她不由得想到了她自己的月光中的臉，那嬌脆的輪廓，眉與眼，美得不近情理，美得渺茫，她緩緩垂下頭去。

She comforted him, then unwillingly thought about the glow of the moon on her face, that delicate feminine outline, the eyebrows and eyes, an uncommon beauty, an obscure beauty, she gently lowered her head.


傾城之戀，作者 張愛玲

Love in a Fallen City by Eileen Chang

The Most Basic Rules of Chinese Sentences

Modern Mandarin unfortunately does not have a standard primer or document that every Mandarin speaker agrees upon.  English had at least three centuries of debate and scholarship to form the basic rules of English grammar, but Mandarin had less than a century due to political reasons.  

Fear not!  Here are a few basic rules that govern Mandarin:

1)  Basic sentences follow the subject-verb-object structure (SVO):

The most famous example of this sentence in English is "I kick the ball" (There's a paper written by an academic, but unfortunately I can't find the source).  You can easily identify the sentence components.

The sentence in Mandarin is: "我踢球."  It literally translates to "I/kick/ball."  Notice that "the" is missing, which leads to the next rule.

2)  Chinese is a pronoun drop language, or pro-drop.

After the pronoun is mentioned once, it usually doesn't appear afterwards.  A Mandarin speaker who is starting to learn English tends to drop pronouns.  It may sound blunt and a bit rude, but the overuse of pronouns sounds awkward not just in conversation, but in prose as well.  

For instance, in the English sentence "The book is front of the pencil" translates to "書在鉛筆前面,” which literally translates to "Book/at/pencil/front."

3) Chinese is a left-branching language.

This means that the modifier of basic elements of a sentence placed to the left.  English is a hybrid of left and right branching, but Chinese tends to be more strictly left branching.  So going back to the first example, if I want to add that the ball is yellow, I say "我踢藍球."

Most other rules you have to memorize, play by ear, or apply to specific cases.  Hopefully, this is a good starting point!

The Art of Mandarin

A friend of mine who's a profession writer told me that a blog must accomplish one of two things: express relatability or express expertise.

Even after publishing around 100 posts, my blog had content, but it didn't have a sense of purpose.  I left my blog on hiatus over the summer partly because I was afraid my blogs would be ignored.  I assumed that most people would rather consume infotainment, nothing that would hurt their heads. But I realized that I didn't need to cater to people who wanted distraction and entertainment.  I needed to write for the sake of writing, or art for the sake of art.

The other reason for my hiatus was because I started writing my novel.  Yes, I'm one of those people at social gatherings who start my conversation with "I'm working on this book about...," only to drone on about a half coherent plot.  My novel will tie closely to the themes of my blog.

Why titled, "The Art of Mandarin?"  "Tranquil Polmelo" doesn't roll off the tongue. My blog also isn't a guide to teach people Chinese.  There are plenty of websites that can help you the basics, or Google linguistics papers on the grammatical uses of particular Chinese words.

My blog is going to be about how Chinese sentences convey meaning and how meaning coveys the art of writing Mandarin.

10 Words or Phrases in Chinese That I Find Annoying

1)  壽 shou4:  Longevity

It's going to take you a few years off your life trying to get this right.

2)  持/待/侍/寺  chi2/dai4/shi4/si4

to maintain/to deal with, to wait for /to attend on/temple

I especially hate dai4 and shi4

3)  乾/幹 qian2/gan4

Part of the name of a Qing Dynasty Emperor/ to fornicate

"I will smack any of you if you get this wrong" --- Former Chinese professor

4)  ANY 4-word idiom, aka 成語

e.g.  囫圇吞棗：Out of confusion, swallow jujubes
This means when you encounter something confusing, you can't digest it, figuratively and literally.  Just say I don't get it!  Goodness!

5)   橙子，橘子，桔子 deng4zi1, ju2zi1, jie2zi1

These all mean oranges, but different sizes.  My parents always scold me for not knowing the difference.  It's all citrus!!!!

6) 纖 xian1: fiber

Ugly, just..., I can't....

7)  牽/宰/牢     qian1/zai3/lao2  :  to pull/to butcher/to jail

I could never get these right.

8) 龜  gui1:  turtle

I can draw a turtle faster than I can write this character.

9)  由/以/已/為/於/卻/而 you2/yi3/yi3/wei234/yu2/que2/er2

Imagine all the pronouns could use in English, and switch them interchangeably whenever you feel like for 3000 years.  You end up with this monstrosity.

10)  瑞典/瑞士 rui4dian3/rui4shi4:  Sweden/Switzerland

RAY-DIAN and RAY-SHI does not sound like "Sweden" or "Switzerland."  I'm not to worried, the Chinese embassy can barely get this straight either.
  

Words of the Day

卑鄙bei1bi3
base; mean; contemptible; despicable; grubby; sordid

公佈gong1bu4
issue, announce

信函xin4han2
letter envelope

洩/泄xie4
wreak

**Note:  Okay, how do these characters mean the same exact thing and sound exactly the same when they look completely different!!!??

垮kua1
fall, collapse


惠卿卑鄙公佈王安石的私人信函，離間他和皇帝的情感，王安石就垮臺，他晚年常一天寫【福建子】好幾次，以發洩心中的怒氣，呂惠卿就是福建人。

Huiqing contemptibly announced Wang Anshi's private letter, giving distance between Wang Anshi and the emperor's close relations.  Wang Anshi then fell from his position.  In Wang Anshi's later years, he frequently wrote "That Fujianer" during a given day on many occasions to express the rage of his broken hear.  Lv Huiqing was a Fujian person.

Mother's Day and the Mother Tounge

My graduation ceremony for my Chinese major was on Mother's Day.  The best graduation speech I ever heard was my classmate talking about why so many languages use the phrase "mother" when describing a native language.   In Chinese,母語 mu2 yu3 literally translates to mother language.  I wish I had a copy of that speech, but my paraphrasing is only a shadow compared to the original.

He talked about how our relationship to language is as intimate as our relationships to our mother.  If we think about it, the way we communicate and are able to exist in the world is through our mothers, and that our mother tongues frame the way we see the world.  And of course he gave a shout out to his own mother as well.

Although I first learned TeoChew (a Chinese dialect) and English at the same time, TeoChew has a much more visceral and intuitive oomph.   For me, I never empathized with English poetry until I hit college, but Chinese poetry was thoroughly enjoyable was I around 10.  It was because I wanted to learn more about my mother tongue that propelled me to major in Chinese.

If you are bilingual, or event if you only know one language, think about how your native language feels compared to a secondary language.  I like to describe this feeling as eating your grandma/mom's best dish versus eating a well prepared dish from a culture you are unfamiliar with.   A good dish from a high end restaurant taste's good, but mom's good cooking hits you at a deeper level.  Your cultural history, your biological mechanisms that evolved to process that particular food, and your mother's understanding of your personal preferences nourish your soul with that one dish.  That's the feeling you get from speaking in your mother tongue.

So as you are talking to your mom, eating with your mom, or even thinking about your mom, remember that you think and speak with your mother tongue.

Happy Mother's Day!






**Personal note: I'm enjoying cheesecake with mom.**