Elementary - War Zone

Today is the Army's Day.

Here's a story on the young persons' military camp - 50 million kids a year go to these camps (!):  http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-09-04-bootcamp_N.htm

锻炼身体，保卫祖国！
duan4 lian4 shen1 ti3, bao3 wei4 zu3 guo2
Harden you body, and defend your country!

This is one of the most well known political slogans here in China. It's really worth seeing a lot of Chinese elementary school students marching and shouting this slogan.

Yes, the 1st of August is 八一建军节/ba1 yi1 jian4 jun1 jie2, the day that the People's Liberation Army/中国人民解放军/zhong1 guo2 ren2 min2 jie3 fang4 jun1 was founded.

In China, soldiers have a very endearing image rather than austere. You feel they are one of your friends or family. One of the reasons is that in time of peace, one of the military's primary duties is domestic disaster relief. The Sichuan earthquake is a great example. It's quaint that soldiers are commonly referred to as 'the most lovely people'/最可爱的人/zui4 ke3 ai4 de ren2. Sounds like what you'd normally say of a baby.

I don't like this lesson. 1000 missiles are targeted at Taiwan. "保卫国家! 冲!" is something you hopefully don't need in your normal Chinese usage.

jenny says: "soldiers are commonly referred to as 'the most lovely people'/最可爱的人/zui4 ke3 ai4 de ren2".

People in Taiwan and in most other countries will not agree to this.

For the first time ever I want to stroke Patricia.  She looks so concerned.  Is it the 锻炼身体?  Tell her Army Day coincides with the national day of Switzerland. Sometimes even the smallest, most pathetic life-forms are given a chance for survival. 

Hi liansuo,

Here is a self-produced slogan for my chubby dog. It seems to me that she doesn't like it very much, though.

锻炼减肥，卫生健康！
duan4 lian4 jian3 fei2, wei4 sheng1 jian4 kang1

The "trumpet" in the sound effects was hilarious!

@poopzilla Ever watched certain TV dramas or action movies? This vocab does appear.

yeah, yeah, feels strange, this lesson.

我是德国人，我不想战争。

I can imagine these words being spoken in any country, by any person, in any military setting.  Thanks for the lesson.  The other day I was trying to tell a story for my chinese homework (stone soup) and didn't know what word to use for soldier. Now I know!

Matthiask, when I did some soul searching why I feel slightly uncomfortable about this lesson, I had similiar thoughts.

Strangely enough, I found the dialogue pretty funny, especially because of Jenny's rendition of "我怕" which didn't sound frightened at all, rather...er...

Regarding Army Day, what's the point of getting half a day off (for active personnel)?

I loved the sound effects for this lesson.  Your sound team does a great job!

Decent lesson - no complaints about it - although I found it MUCH more disturbing than the screaming woman and power tools lesson. World War I and going "over the top" is the first thing I thought of when listening. I'm about to destroy everyone's mood: I kept thinking these were the last words of a boy right before he died!

See here for perhaps the finest five minutes of television Rowan Atkinson has ever been involved with - the closing scene of the Blackadder WWI series. And, if you're a fan of the TV show House and you haven't seen Hugh Laurie's earlier roles... you're in for a shock. Absolutely no Chinese content, I'm afraid.

Thanks for this lesson.  Good to hear other topics and get vocabulary in context.  Maybe hearing more sceince and technology lessons at multiple levels would be good as well.

冲 chong1-----

I looked it up in my C-E dictionary because I didn't recognize the radical (still don't, if anyone can let me know) and saw alternative uses

Chong1-pour boiling water on, as in chong1 cha2, make tea

Chong1 ce4suo3

rush, charge, as into rush into the house jin2 fang2zi

And also "to develop" for film

Looking at this word in the supplemental for "peace", and seeing the combo of "together" and "level" or "even", I'm going to assume that an1 is a peace that an individual can have in his personality whereas he2ping2 requires at least two people with peace BETWEEN them.

And yet another question: in the US, people in the different services have different terms for themselves, and it's bad form to mix them up.  For example, you'd never call a marine a "soldier".  Is jun1ren2 a term I can use for all uniformed persons who aren't jin2cha1, like "troops" in english?

I assure you that today's lesson is very useful, because you often see a sign that says "冲！" at a rest room here in China, and in this case, 冲 means "flush", but not "dash!".

You also sometimes see the slogan (?), 来也匆匆，去也冲冲 (lai2 ye3 cong1 cong1, qu4 ye3 chong1 chong1) at a bathroom. Chinese people really have a good sense of humor.

Oop, finally made out the radical.  As the advert at the beginning of the podcast notes, some of us have to SQUINT at the characters.  A little larger:

冲

Number 7, as in bing1 and leng3 

呵呵~聊点开心的！今天不只是中国的建军节，而且在很多地方可以看到漂亮的日全食！

shenhe says
3 hours ago

Strangely enough, I found the dialogue pretty funny, especially because of Jenny's rendition of "我怕" which didn't sound frightened at all, rather...er...

..otic? ;)

Changye, just curious...in Japanese, Shogun is written as 將軍(jiang1jun1),the same word for general in Chinese. Do the Japanese military still address generals as "Shoguns"?

I had never heard of Army Day in China, but I noticed some fireworks were set off here in Suzhou tonight.  Chinese friends said it was in fact for this holiday.  Any of you living elsewhere in China see fireworks (hard to separate it from the normal daily occurences of firecrackers...)?

@inland

冫 is the ice radical (two strokes). It is associated with cold things.

It's easy to confuse with 氵, the water radical (three strokes).

As a retired soldier, I found this lesson much too basic and much too short. Perhaps military terms could be covered in an Intermediate or Upper Immediate Lesson.

Of course, now that I am over 60, it is doubtful that I will ever need these terms again.

But even as a tourist to the Forbidden City, I watched soldiers drilling just inside the Tiananmen Gate and to the East of it. It would have been interesting to have the volcabularly to understand what the orders were, and what the officer or NCO in charge was saying to improve the marching performance of his squad.

@bazza What is going on in your dirty mind? ;-) (Hey, how would that be translated into Chinese?)

@wjefferys That happens to me ALL the time.

@foleadu When a little kid wearing a pair of "military look" trousers threw a bunch of firecrackers (the really loud ones) right before my feet just as I stepped out of the house, I knew it was Army Day.

@wolson Or discussing strategies on a podcast? That would be really useful, at least for those amongst us who play Counterstrike ;-) And I'm sure the NCO didn't say 冲!

Just general interest: How would you say "Hold your fire?"

Great Lesson.  I also would like more military terms.  Appreciate the slogans given by changye.  The trumpet sound reminded me of movies where the Chinese Volunteers charged in Korea.  冲！冲！

If you want more military vocab, why not watch 士兵突击 Soldiers Sortie on YouTube? A very popular TV drama. Subtitles in characters, as usual. Highly recommended, if you're into this kind of stuff.

Hi hitokiri,

In modern Japanese military forces, the heads of Army, Navy, and Air force are called respectively as follows, 陸将、海将、空将. As you know, the term 将軍 had been used until the end of the Edo era (江戸時代, 1603 ～ 1867). I'm sure that you are relatively familiar with the Japanese history in the late 19th century.....owing to your favorite Japanese anime るろうに剣心....hehe. By the way, the pinyin of 将军 is not "jiang1 jun1", but "jiang4 jun1", at least in a dictionary.

When I saw the title to the lesson I was seriously distrubed. I'm glad I read the first comment on this page.

I thought for one minute Chinesepod was promoting something evil

I just heard the lesson. ok.......... that was wierd........

Hi inland,

The character 冲 is a little tricky, because it’s a simplified character originated in two different traditional characters, 沖 (chong1, pour, flush) and 衝 (chong1, dash, charge up, clash). And therefore, etymologically speaking, the shape of 冲 doesn’t have much significance, which is why you need to learn traditional characters if you are interested in etymology of Chinese characters.

Confusingly, there are some other Chinese characters of this kind, such as  发 (發,髮), 干 (幹, 乾, 干), 复 (腹, 複), 谷 (谷, 穀), 征 (征, 徴), 里 (里, 裡, 裏) and so on. The characters in parentheses are all traditional characters of which meanings are different from each other. I always think this is a major shorcoming in simplified Chinese characters, even though it was necessary for reducing the total number of 简体字.

Hi inland,

P/S. It seems that things about 冲 is a little more complicated than I thought, because I’ve found that 冲 is listed in 康熙字典 (kang1 xi1 zi4 dian3，1716年), which means that the character already existed long before the introduction of 简体字 in 1950s. In short, 冲 is not a character newly invented in 1950s, but a variant form (异体字) of the traditional character 沖.

Interestingly enough, one of the meanings of 冲 (in 康熙字典) is “the sound generated when chiseling ice (冰)”, and of course 冰 (ice) has relation to 冲 (沖, flush, pour) because ice is made from water. Furthermore, the traditional character 沖 also had a meaning “shoot up”, like 飛将沖天 (fly up to the sky), which is very close the modern meaning “dash, charge” of 冲 (衝).  

I’m sorry that it’s rather complicated, but at least you can say that 冲 is not completely irrelevant to 沖 and 衝 semantically. 冲 might not be a ideal character to replace 沖 and 衝, but it could be said that the simplified character 冲 bears traces of the Chinese scholars’ labor pains. To simplify, or not to simplify, and how to simplify? That WAS the question in 1950s.

For the record, the original meaning of the left part of 冲, two dots, is “freeze”, and its best example word should be 冷冻 (leng3 dong4, chill). The three dots (left part) of 沖, of course, means “water”. Although they are not irrelevant semantically, they are still different from each other, which is the limitation of 简体字. Thank you for inspiring me to look into these characters. 

Hello,

Changye, I was going to remark on the "ice" radical being used for "rush" or "flush" or pouring boiling water over tea leaves.  But I decided not to, having two minds on etymology.  I find it interesting but as a student, I am trying to decide between:

a) learning the thinking behind the characters is useful in remembering them and figuring out the meaning of unfamiliar characters;

b) learning the thinking behind the characters is one more thing to remember and I might was well spend my time in rote memorization through flash cards and such with minimal info on the "meaning" of the components. 

The differences in the culture between me and even the reformers in the 1950s make it clear that I'll never have much intuitive grasp of what they are getting at.  "The thinking behind" characters belongs to someone who is used to writing in this fashion, somone who is Chinese, someone who live fifty to one thousand to two thousand years ago.  It's quite beyond a casual student living in the US.

I have the Tuttle books on 500 most used characters: it has one or two sentences on the meanings of components, and most often it's "It's a phonetic" or "It came to mean" without much more explanation.  It suits me as a learner, although I find your etymological discussion interesting in itself.  I can see both chipping ice and flowing water leading to rush.  When you chip ice, pieces fly up into the sky, right?

Off topic,  I asked yi1ge4 tai2wan1ren2 gu4ke4  how he inputs in chinese.  He says he types pinyin and the program prompts him on the various characters fitting the pinyin.   

inland,
learning this language corroborated my belief that there just is no such thing as too much information, especially not if it is interesting in itsself. 

Just like you I also do not consider ethymology as something I want to learn and most of the details fade away quickly from my lazy brain. But then: after all this discussion - how will I ever be able to forget that 冲 has those two meanings and that it is written with the ice-radical?

Since my student times I always tryied to apply a "++layer" approach - trying to read at least one layer below the material I was supposed to master (e.g. by reading additional text books or journal articles). The additional knowledge stayed fragmentary but all the relevant material solidified painlessly in my holey brain. Much more effective for me than following a "rote memorization path" which was always a dead end for me.

So, for me the ethymological story time with Changye is most valuable input.

i heard there was a saying from MaoZiDong that says "同志们...冲啊!"  Meaning, "Comrades... CHARGE!"  but can also be used as a joke when flushing after a big "battle" on the John... as in the link below:

http://gaoxiaopicture.gaoxiao8.com/gaoxiaotp/20050602/15.jpg

Henning, interesting and valid point.  Maybe I'll go one really, really shallow layer below the surface :).  I don't entirely disagree with the position of Sherlock Holmes, who said the mind is like an attic and one can only store so much in it.

Hi inland,

To memorize 500 characters, as a first step, is a very good idea. You can also learn the meanings of most radicals while studying those basic characters, which enables you to effectively look up a Chinese dictionary. There are about 200 radicals, and they are very important and helpful when you guess the meaning of a character that you don’t know. They are just like prefixes and suffixes of English words, which are originated in Latin and Greek. 

As for etymology, let me just say that it is not a main dish, but a very tasty dessert (or spice?). I recommend you look into it only when you have interest and room for “dessert.” Please be noted that there are often a few etymologies for one character, and some of them are rather forced (牵强附会, qian1 qiang2 fu4 hui4) or just an afterthought, although they are seemingly very plausible. Conversely, it’s up to you to select your favorite (or right) one.

An etymological approach is not necessarily an effective and efficient way to learn Chinese characters. On the contrary, it’s sometimes very inefficient. But inefficiency, or a roundabout way, often makes things interesting. Actually, I also don’t know much about etymologies. I have neither enough time nor an intention to look into every character. And that is just why I thank your post that triggered my interest in the character “冲” this time.

Good luck!

Please excuse my ignorance but I'm still negotiating my way around the website. Would someone please tell me how to get the lesson again once I've marked it as studied.

I really enjoyed this lesson after initially thinking it wouldn't have anything I'd want to use but my Chinese foster daughter likes racing ahead of us and some of this vocab would be helpful. Thanks. 

zani11,

on the "Me" page there is a small section (table) called my archive, center page on the right. This is an ele lesson so you would click on the red number that indicates how many ele lessons you have in the "studied" column and this will take you to a list of all the ele lessons you have marked as "studied". 

Or you can go to lessons tab first and sort through all lessons in reverse chrono order. You can narrow the search by picking a channel.

RJ 

oh and zani,

you can use the search function and search for the name of the lesson or a keyword. The search function can be tempermental at times but works most of the time. Once you find it you can bookmark it again.

Hi spongebobmay,

Thank you. You supplied me with a conundrum to solve. I wanted to know what your post was, so I put the words that I did not know in my dictionary. The three characters 日全食 did not co-locate, so I was at a loss to know what it meant. But I was thinking along the lines of the theme of this lesson. When I looked again today it dawned on me, (slight pun intended), it means 'total eclipse of the sun'! I am glad I did not have to ask.

I just watched the Mummy- Tomb of the Dragon Emporer. This lesson was actually useful in relation to it!

RJ,

Thanks a lot for both tips!

Sounds more like a computer game. But useful vocab, nonetheless. 谢谢！

for those fond of Monty Python quotes, learning to say "charge" is quite useful; but how do you say "run away" (once the charge runs into trouble)?

(sorry for reviving such an old thread ... just catching up with some old lessons that slipped through the cracks at the time.)

@hpaa11, thanks for your question, or I'll never have the chance to listen to this funny dialogue, "charge","前进”，“冲啊！”，as for "run away”，“撤”，“chè”

shenyajin: thanks!!

(i'm tempted to create a list of Monty Python quotes translated into Chinese -an altogether new level of geekiness! ;-) )

大家好，我在中国！The word bǎowèi is for defending against a physical attack, is there a word for defending against a verbal one? E.g.,

They were insulting my friend so I defended her.

Hi carlos

保护 (bao3hu4) protect, safeguard

Good luck!

好的，谢谢你， Changye. I think we use bao3hu4 to imply physical protection, maybe not against an attack but against neglect or the elements, e.g., protect the environment or endangered species or protect the eyes or the skin from excessive sunlight.

http://chinesepod.com/resources/glossary/entry/保护

I found this one: bian4hu4

http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/wordsearch.php?searchMode=I&word=1993

I think the term for defense lawyer or counsel is bian4hu4 lv4shi1, can anyone confirm? Thanks!

Hi carlos

I think 辩护 is a little too formal in this case. Your friend is insulted (or tease/pick on?) by someone, and the "insult" could be translated as 欺负/侮辱 in Chinese. If someone 欺负/侮辱 a friend of mine, I would 保护 her/him, but usually not 辩护. I think that probably 辩护 is also OK in a given situation. Here is the link to Googl search results by keywords "欺负" and "保护".

http://www.google.cn/search?q=%E6%AC%BA%E8%B4%9F++%E4%BF%9D%E6%8A%A4&hl=zh-CN&newwindow=1&start=10&sa=N

Hi carlos

P/S. Maybe the word "辩护" connotes "vindicate/support". So if a friend of yours get verbaly harrased, I think what you need to do is not "辩护", but jsut "保护" (protect her/him from verbal harrasment). You can use the word 辩护, for example, when you speak in defense of a friend who is criticized for something.

Hi changye, thanks for the insight and your time, I really appreciate it. Greetings from Chongqing!

Carlos

i think you should put a bit more detail

thanks

1. Re the expansion sentence:

向前冲。(Xiàng qián chōng.) Forge ahead.

What is the difference (in meaning and/or frequency of use) between the use of 向 (xiàng) and 往 (wǎng) in this context?

2. Re the expansion sentence:

快冲，别人要赶上来了。 (Kuài chōng, biérén yào găn shànglai le.) Quick, hurry. Other people are going to catch up to you.

My dictionaries give 2 main meanings for 上来 (shànglai):

(a) to come up / to approach

(b) a verb complement indicating success

I see value in applying either of these meanings in the sample sentence. Which meaning is intended? Is 赶上来 (găn shànglai) a set phrase?