日语 汉语 英语
zhenlijiang
June 14, 2010, 11:50 AM posted in General Discussion(Jun 14 2010) This is just a place to talk about Japanese, and Chinese, and English, if we like. In Japanese, or Chinese or English.
pete, i took the cue to start a conversation here. there's always a lot i'd like to discuss w/the Cpod community, on Chinese in relation to other languages, in particular (but not restricted to) my native Japanese. sorry, way too many prepositional phrases in that last sentence.
btw just wondering if you have ever seen the TV show 中日之桥 (lit. China-Japan Bridge). we get it here early saturday mornings but i gather it's an evening show over in Shanghai. the hosts, a Chinese man 四海 and a Japanese girl 小森步, do all the talking in 日语 and the show is subtitled in 普通话. while it's not what i would call the best sample of broadcast-standard 日语 esp. for pronunciation reference (but 四海先生's style does have a certain appeal), some of the content can be interesting.
changye
February 18, 2009, 01:55 PMI'm very pessimistic about Korean reunification too.
Firstly, Korean people themselves are not very positive about reunification. South Korean people have a dream of expanding their teritorry and becoming Big Korea, but they are not willing to pay the cost of that. Furthermore, they actually don't have enough money to unite the two countries.
Secondly, Southern people are attracted by underground resources and the labor force in North, preferably including nuclear warheads, however South Korean just don't want to accept northern people in their society. In short, ROK is incapable of reuniting South and North in many ways.
Thirdly, Korean people are traditionally poor at agreeing to disagree. In other words, Korean societies are intolerant of people who have different opinions, and therefore I personally think it's virtually impossible for them to peacefully/amicably reach an agreement on reunification.
Korean leaders and politicians were just arguing/quarreling every day and were preoccupied with (traditional) internal factional struggles even when their country was on the verge of extinction one hundred years ago. One faction was pro-Japan, and other was pro-Russia in those days.
Korean people failed to come together at critical times in the past. They split into two factions again after they won independence from Japan. Korea managed to become fully independent from China in 1895, thanks to Japanese victory in the first Sino-Japan war, but its status as an independent country didn't last long partly due to their internal struggles.
I always feel guilty about Japanese annexation of Korea in 1910, since this just meant that Japan deprived Korea of a more favorable option that could have been chosen at that time. If Korea had been annexed to Russia, instead of Japan, modern Korean people would have been much happier than they are today!
changye
January 31, 2009, 08:48 AMHi zhenlijiang,
I've found a video of 中日之桥. I also have sometimes watched this programme before. 四海先生 speaks excellent Japanese for a non-native speaker, although there are some flaws in pronunciations, as you pointed out.
http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/Y-qbMdZyOkI/
My syster speaks and writes rather broken Japanese, but nobody doubts that she is a native Japanese. Her Japanese is very funny, but it sounds "natural" enough for us Japanese native speakers.
On the other hand, almost all the Japanese people can easily tell that Mr. 四海 is a foreign guy, even though he speaks much more fluent and authentic Japanese than my sister! Such is a language.
I know a Chinese professor who teaches at a college in Japan. His command of Japanese is just outstanding. In particular, his Japanese writing is better and more formal than mine.
That said, it's not difficult to tell that his text has been written by a foreigner, since he still sometimes uses a very slightly unnatural phrase and wording that educated Japanese people never use.
哎呀，we have a very long way to go........ haha.
zhenlijiang
January 31, 2009, 09:41 AMhi pete,
Bridge to Japan, as it's called, can be vacuous, like when they're showing their own golf tournament or something. but other than local Shanghai news bits they also do stories from Japan which will sometimes be about the latest in energy-saving technologies and such. i record the show so that i can pause to read the subtitles (i still don't read fast enough) when the content interests me. when Chinese is spoken in the videos the subtitles are in Japanese.
as changye says, 四海's Japanese is actually very good, much more proper and better than many natives. the pronunciation is not very good with a few of the non-Japanese voice-over narrators in the videos. 小森小姐 speaks naturally like the native she is, but not really at true broadcast-standard level.
but yes, watching TV is a terrible waste of time esp. if it gets to be a habit. at some point i'd be interested to know what you're reading. no matter how you study i'm sure you'll find that Japanese is a path embedded with Chinese nuggets. it should get to be fun for you, as you'll be finding things and making mental connections all the time.
changye
thanks for the links! will check out the 日语借词 as i hardly know anything about that. and what do you mean about your sister's Japanese being very funny?
shawwui
January 31, 2009, 10:49 AMHi,everybody.So glad to see many people learning Chinese here.I'm a Chinese from Guangdong.Well,Chinese is not a difficult language as what you considered,but it can't deny that its character is hard for foreign people to remember and even to write an article.You all said that learning Chinese on TV,I don't think it's a good idea.Cause Chinese character not just one meaning its own.Chinese friend is more useful and convenient for you to master it well.However,to Japanese,Chinese character isn't a real problem any more,I think.Many similiars between Chinese and Japanese.
pearltowerpete
January 31, 2009, 12:01 PMHi changye and zhenlijiang
Thank you both for your enthusiasm! In response to your question, zhenlijiang, my favorite English writers are Don DeLillo, Mark Twain, and James Joyce. There are big gaps in my Chinese reading, but I did enjoy 活着 by 余华。There was also an recent piece on him in the New York Times Magazine, which is worth checking out. 费孝通，a 20th century sociologist, is another favorite.
changye
January 31, 2009, 12:41 PMHi zhenlijiang,
There are tons of Japan-made Chinese words in modern Mandarin (and even more in Korean), especially in academic termilologies. It can be safely said that both Chinese and Korean languages can't function without using them, just like foreign words from western countries are very important in Japanese.
This issue seems to be a matter of "national pride" for Chinese and Korean people, while it's only kind of a conversation piece for Japanese. I suspect that Korean people abandoned using Chinese characters partly in order to obscure tha fact that their native tongue is actually full of Japan-origin words.
Chinese guys who know about this fact commonly say like this; Even though these words came from Japan, they are basically made of OUR Chinese characters, so we don't need to feel small. I fully agree with this opinion. In the modern age, no country can survive without accepting and using loanwords from overseas.
Did you know that even 共产主义 was made in Japan?
zhenlijiang
February 01, 2009, 06:47 AMhi changye,
since the "lender" never lords a loanword over the "borrower" (as far as i know), nobody should feel like they're in debt or like they've been one-upped. however i suppose at this point in history it's easier from our side to see this simply as part of the mutual, of the exchange that has been going on between our cultures for centuries and not an invasion or injury. probably a bit different in nature, say, from the Academie Francaise and English ...
i remember long ago when i never dreamed about studying Chinese, being told the term for roller-coaster, which was longer than the 轨道飞车 or 过山车 i get in the dictionary now, more like a two-part explanation. i guess the concept of roller-coasters didn't really exist then in China so it had to be explained. and i thought gosh, in Japan we would just take the term in as 外来語 and express it in katakana. the thought of having to express everything in 漢字 seemed so foreign and different. it's simpler for us, with the result that we acquire (we think of it as acquisitions don't we) new concepts and knowledge without much thought. simpler, and the flip side is that we haven't defended Japanese very well from erosion. critics and scholars now warn us that our language is in danger of eventually disappearing.
looking down the list of 日语借词, sure enough they're terms i know the meaning of just as they are (= the hanzi/kanji are the same). so if i, a Japanese native, see a Chinese 生词 (two-character compound) and immediately know what it means because it's written the same, can i assume the term came from Japan?
zhenlijiang
February 01, 2009, 07:04 AMPS 和製汉语 meaning "Chinese terms with Japanese origins" is confusing to us isn't it, because when we say 和製英語 we're talking about those terms like アットホーム (at + home), made up of English-origin components, but are strictly Japanese, not working at all in English.
zhenlijiang
February 01, 2009, 07:08 AMhi shawwui, i do agree (??) a friend is much more 好用 than television! hahaha but both pete and changye are very proficient. being nowhere near their level i use TV (along w/radio lessons and now, the podcasts here) because i need the listening practice, not living in China. mostly things on NHK (Japanese public broadcaster), like news, interview clips, documentaries and HK Phoenix TV's 时事辩论会. among Chinese government leaders, 温家宝总理 i understand quite well! as he speaks always slowly and clearly and i guess, because he doesn't stray from the predictable ...
pete, thank you for the interesting piece on 余华. i saw him being interviewed last summer on NHK's 中国語会話TV show when 《兄弟》 came out here (looked for clips but didn't find anything). and i would have called this conversation "TV something" if i knew i was going to yammer on so about it.
changye
January 31, 2009, 07:48 AMHi pete,
I'm very happy to hear you've started learning Japanese. Welcome to the true world of "multi-reading Chinese characters", haha. As you might already know, a Japanese Kanji usually has several readings, including ones originated in Chinese sounds and ones generated in Japan. For instance, "生" officially has eight readings, and actually more than one hundred if you include all readings used in names of person and place.
I have watched about four hours of Chinese TV
I know watching TV is a very good way to improve your Chinese, but it's a kind of torture for me, a lazy guy, since TV programmes in China are just boring, except for some history/culture subject documentaries. Here are well known TV documentary series titled "岩松看日本", which is one of the few programmes in China that subjectively (and favorably?) introduce Japanese society. If you have time, please enjoy them.
http://www.tudou.com/playlist/playindex.do?lid=435275&mode=0
And, just for your information, here are links to websites that give you rough sketches of Japan-originated Chinese (transliteration) words, 汉语中的日语借词.
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%BC%A2%E8%AA%9E%E4%B8%AD%E7%9A%84%E6%97%A5%E8%AA%9E%E5%80%9F%E8%A9%9E
http://9264875.blog.hexun.com/27385617_d.html
changye
February 02, 2009, 04:46 AMHi zhenlijiang,
P/S 3. Most 和製漢語 are translations of western techical terms that didn't exist in Asian countries then. And this is one of the reasons that China and Korea aggressively imported these newly-born Japanese words at that time. In short, there was a great demand for 和製漢語.
I don't think there is "a large market" for Japanglish words in foreign countries. Foreign people already have their own counterparts. For example, native English speakers use "cozy" instead of "アットホーム (at home)", or "a family man" for "マイホームパパ (my home papa)".
On the other hand, some "very Japan" words have been relatively easily accepted as a loanword in foreign languages, such as geisha and tsunami, since there is no (exact) equivalent of them in other countries. I don't know if "オタク (otaku)" has the same connotation as "a geek". Please enlighten me!
アニメ (anime) should be one of nice exceptions, if it's also classified into Japanglish words. A lot of foreign guys use the word "anime" in their English writings.
zhenlijiang
February 17, 2009, 11:27 PMhi changye
共产主义 ： are both parts 共产 and 主义 made in 日本？
how about we let the 日本共産党 have a go at running our country now? let's see if they're really serious about meaning to take charge, unlike those totally pathetic socialists. not that JCP are mainstream Japan at all, but you know they are the only real opposition out there! Hillary Clinton really shouldn't have wasted time visiting w/Ozawa.
suffering from a below-10% approvals rating(!! how does that happen) PM Aso is under pressure to call elections. with the sick economy (and finance minister) and jobs being lost left right and center apparently JCP is enjoying a little surge in popularity：http://www.jcp.or.jp/english/jps_weekly09/20081208_01.html
so maybe, just maybe ...
a democratic, Communist Japan--could that actually be a popular administration? would be interesting to see if it surprises us by 1) improving relations with our neighbors 2) really making us "more equal" in the US-Japan bilateral relation. could they really do it? seems the time has never been better for the JCP.
alexyu_yxj
February 18, 2009, 01:00 AM汉语进入日本之后也产生了一些新的字如“働く”里面的“働”，据说中国最大的词典是“辞海”，要不然就是“康熙字典”，不过这两本书我都没看过，因此不知道中国这边是否承认这个字。不过从方言上讲，汉语的方言字典里倒是有一些日语词典才有而汉语的“新华字典”里没有的字，如日语单词“親子丼”里面的“丼”。“新华字典”里没有这个字，不过至少我在“潮汕音字典”里看过，表示“东西掉到水里‘噗嗵’的声音”，很明显是个拟声词，和日语中的不同了。
顺便说一下，“新华字典”字典的词条量是十分有限的，如果日常需要，我建议购买新版的“现代汉语词典”，至于想研究汉语的，这两本可能不够，应该至少配上“辞海”和“词源”，最好有“文言文词典”，那是研究古汉语的词典。
changye
February 18, 2009, 02:53 AMHi alexyu_yxj
The Japan-made character 働 was actually used in China in the first half of the 20th century, but not anymore now. FYI, 鳕 (xue3, codfish) is a typical made-in-Japan Chinese character that is also used in China. Neither 働 nor 鱈 is listed in 康熙字典, of course.
As for 丼, its history is a bit complicated. Firstly, 井 once had a dot in it, like 丼, mainly in the era of bronze inscriptions (金文) and small seal scripts (小篆). In short, 井 is the simplified form of 丼, and the old form is still used in some dialects, as is often the case.
http://www.internationalscientific.org/CharacterASP/CharacterEtymology.aspx?characterInput=%E4%BA%95&submitButton1=Etymology
The Japanese 丼 (a rice bowl) happens to have the same shape as Chinese 丼, but they are two different characters separately created in China and Japan, according to one of my dictionaries, which is the reason their meanings are completely different from each other.
Incidentally, as far as I know, the biggest Chinese dictionary （published in China） is 汉语大词典 (1993, 12 volumes), and the Chinese character dictionary that contains the largest number of hanzi (85,568!) is 中华字海，which contains not only authentic hanzi but also dialect characters including ones in Japan, Korea and so on.
http://baike.baidu.com/view/52045.htm
http://baike.baidu.com/view/632847.htm
I'm dying to get both!
P/S. The biggest Chinese dictionary in the world was completed in Korea last year.
changye
February 18, 2009, 03:52 AMDoes anyone happen to know if 働 is still used in Taiwan?
changye
February 18, 2009, 08:06 AMHi zhenlijiang
You are right. 共产主义 is a Japanese translation of a western-born concept "communism", which was brought to China about one hundred years ago. You can see terminally ill communism here in China.
I'm not sure if it's true, but they say that Mao Tzedong was not very satisfied with "中华人民共和国" since there is only one pure Chinese word, i.e. 中华, in the country name. 人民 and 共和国 are also Japan-made words.
Having said that, actually 共和 is originated in a famous historical episode in ancient China. 共和 is the name of an era of 西周 (west zhou) that was established more than three thousand years ago.
changye
February 18, 2009, 09:49 AMP/S. Mr. Kim Jong-Il hates to hear Japan calls his flourish empire "北朝鲜" (North Korea), but ironically enough, the country name "朝鲜民主主义人民共和国" consists almost entirely of Japan-origin words, except for 朝鲜. I know the great national leader has long been trying to eradicate Japan-made words in Korean, and therefore I think that "北朝鲜" is much more suitable for him, since it's 100% pure Chinese.
pearltowerpete
February 18, 2009, 09:54 AMNorth Korea is a baffling country. Our new Secretary of State 希拉里 just visited Japan and appeared to calm the waters a bit.
But I'm not optimistic about the future. If you thought the German reunification was tricky, you ain't seen nothing yet!
changye
February 01, 2009, 12:24 PMHi zhenlijiang,
Don't worry. The Japanese language will never disappear, as long as Japan and its people exist. Our mother tongue accepted tons of Chinese words in the past, but it has never changed into Mandarin. We use a lot of words borrowed from English when talking about the Internet and computers, but the language we speak is not English, but proper (?) Japanese. The real problem is Japan's population decrease, which began a few years ago.....
There are numerous Chinese words commonly used in Chinese and Japanese, and most of them are originated in China, of course. For example, 波及 is a made-in-China word used in the both languages, although it's a more formal word in Chinese than in Japanese, as is often the case with this kind of words. On the other hand, "和製漢語" are generally seen in academic and scientific terminologies.
和製漢語 (made-in-Japan Chinese words) were invented about one hundred years ago by some Japanese inteligencia who had a great knowledge about Chinese classical literature, so, in general, these words make good "Chinese" sense. More importantly, they are all written in Chinese characters. And therefore, 和製漢語 were very easily aceepted by Chinese people at that time.
I think that so called 和製英語 (Japanglish) are usually created by people who are not so proficient in English, which has consequently led to the production of a lot of funny quasi-English words in Japan. Anyway, Japanglish words are basically written in Katakana, so they are not easily accepted by native English speakers, unless foreign people deeply fall in love with 日本語 (Japanese), hehe!
P/S. I hear that foreign people who live in Japan tend to take on "Japanglish words"!!
P/S2 A guide dog is called 盲導犬 in Japan, but 導盲犬 (V+O structure, guide-a-blind-person dog) in Chinese, since the latter makes grammatical sense in Chinese. So some 和製漢語 used in China might possibly have this kind of problem.
pearltowerpete
January 31, 2009, 02:10 AMHi zhenlijiang,
Thanks for the suggestion! I have to say, in almost four years living here, I have watched about four hours of Chinese TV. I learn by reading, and find that I forget a great deal of what I see on screens.
But there's a first time for everything!