Between Asgard and the Western Paradise

Having lived in Taiwan for some time and talked to a lot of foreigners, I’ve noticed that there are common mistakes among people who speak different native languages.

Lexical Problems:

Since Japan, Korea, and Vietnam were all influenced linguistically by China, a common error among Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese students is to use coinages derived from Chinese, but which are not strictly Chinese. For example, Japanese students refer to the subway (metro, underground) as 地下鐵 (dìxiàtiě) which is the Chinese reading of Japanese Kanji meaning (chikatetsu) “subway”. While its meaning is parsable, it’s not very well understood. A better term to use would be 捷運 (jiéyùn). Japanese speakers may sometimes use incorrect measure words. While Chinese also uses measure words, they are often different in Japanese. Thus, “a sheet of paper” is rendered by Japanese as 一枚紙 (yī méi zhǐ) instead of 一張紙 (yī zhāng zhǐ). Some Vietnamese tend to reverse the order of words, as modifiers in Vietnamese often come after the noun. Thus, a Vietnamese speaker might call a flower vase 瓶花 (píng huā) instead of 花瓶. Speakers of Western languages don’t have the advantage of cognates in their native languages and will sometimes use the wrong word entirely; this is usually because of a lack of understanding of certain connotations and cotexts. For example: 這是我同志。我們工一起。他也跟我同方。(Zhè shì wǒ tóngzhì. Wǒmen gōng zài yīqǐ. Tā yě gēn wǒ tóngfáng.) This sentence actually contains a grammatical error, but that will be discussed later. Tóngzhì means “partner” or “comrade”; here the speaker is referring to a business partner, but colloquially the word can refer to a person with which one has homosexual relations. That notion is reinforced, although unintentionally by tóngfáng. The speaker wants to say, “He is also my roommate,” but tóngfáng implies the sharing of a bed.

Grammatical Problems:

Grammatical errors seemed to be the strongest among speakers of Indo-European languages, who are unaccustomed to the idiomatic use of certain phrases, or the fact that certain words function a bit differently in Chinese, for example, being able to be used as both a verb and a noun depending on context. Wǒmen gōng zài yīqǐ follows the correct English pattern S+V, with the verb clause containing the modifier “together”. However, Chinese word order is different; the correct way to pronounce it would be placing the modifier before the verb to say 我們一起工作. Prepositions also appear in the wrong place, for example 我去公園,明天, corresponding to the word-order “I shall go to the park tomorrow”, where the correct order would be 我明天去公園.

According to Chinese author Táng Lùyu (唐陸羽), who wrote the treatise on tea Chajing (茶經), the tea plant has several names.  In Mandarin, tea can be called jiǎ, shè, míng, and chuǎn, in addition to the already-common name cha (一曰茶，二曰檟，三曰蔎，四曰茗，五曰荈).  In the eighth century, the character tu (荼), which today describes the sowthistle (Sonchus oleraceus) was used for a variety of bitter herbs, which included tea.  A similar character, using the tree radical(梌) with an identitcal pronounciation appears in an early medical text, which is traditionally attributed to Shennong.

Today, the name for “tea” in many languages around the world derives from the character 茶, but a few languages also derive the pronounciation from the Minnan pronounciation of 荼, te.

In Russian and Turkish, tea is called чай and çay, respectively, with a similar pronounciation; in Arabic, the word is pronounced “shai,” indicating a derivation from cha. In Italian, Spanish and German, the words are tè, té, and Tee (again with similar pronounciation), indicating a derivation from tê. Incidentally, these derivations also shed light on the way in which tea reached other parts of the world. For example, Russians and Turks likely recieved their tea through overland trading routes based in Central or Northern China, and thus heard the “cha” pronounciation. Meanwhile, the English and Spanish traded in Southern China, and heard tea refered to as “tê”.

The following is a Romanization of a “mystery language”. Can you:

1. Name the language and the language family?
2. Name the script(s)/alphabet(s) that are usually used to write it?
3. Name the countries or region where the language is spoken?

Ganzo veh ting radioli. Radiofehdi gunfu da. Nwurzh’in lyan nanrzh’in khuandi, khuandi fehdini, Myan fehli yizh’inzi zavodshon zwuli duehsho traktordi, fabrikashon zh’ili duehsho bupidi sichin. Zikhu khuatur doli kolkhozshonli. Ba vehmu rayionshon Aun Auonshyadi s’ichin ye fehli, fehs’i vehmu kolkhoz kehzhya ba sanbai gektar lyonsh’i zhonshonli. Danlindi yi, lyong’i kolkhoz khan gan vehmu zhondi dueh. Shukur fehdi: Zh’i dus’i pindi kommunist partiyadi linshu zamu, d’iikhadi sh’in.

The answer will be provided in one week.

Many Westerners, when first learning about the Sinitic languages, make the assumption that the written language across the many dialects are identical. However, this is not true. Some dialects use different words altogether which must be written differently, and in some cases the word order ina sentence is changed. Written Chinese is a form of standardized Mandarin, and while often mutually intelligible, sometimes presents difficulties for speakers of other dialects.

For words in Taiwanese that are cognate with Mandarin words, this presents no problem. The Taiwanese word for dog (káu) and its Mandarin counterpart (gǒu) both share the similar sound and the same meaning, so it is easy to use the character 狗 for both. However, some Taiwanese words are different in sound from Mandarin words. For example, in the word for ‘all’ in Taiwanese is lóng, but in Mandarin it is pronounced quán. In a case like this, sometimes people will simply substitute the character 全 in the Taiwanese sentence, but one has to remember that it is pronounced differently.

For words that are of more than one character, sometimes alternative characters must be found for syllables with no Mandarin equivalent. For example, ‘tomorrow’ in Taiwanese is pronounced miâ-á-tsài. Clarly, this cannot be written as 明天, since one character can only represent one syllable. Instead, we use the character written as 明仔載. However, even when the number of syllables is the same, sometimes it’s necessary to write it with different characters ‘child’ is written as 囡仔 and pronounced gín-á. Taiwanese also retains some aspects of middle Chinese, using words like 無 (pronounced bo) in place of 沒有 or 日 (jit) instead of 太陽. Also, there are words which do not even exist in Mandarin, and of course, characters must be made up for that as well.

As people are primarily literate in Standard Mandarin in Taiwan, this means that although many people can speak the Taiwanese language, only a few can write it well. In fact, many people prefer to write things down in Mandarin alone, and translate ‘on the fly’.

One proposed solution is to develop a purely phonetic system to represent Taiwanese sounds. Historically, four systems were used: the earliest was the transcription into Latin used by Jesuit priests, the second was a modified version of Japanese katakana, the third was Zhuyin Fuhao with added letters to show the sounds of Taiwanese (extended bopomofo), and the last was an attempt to make a completely native system, called Tai-oan-ji.