User Comments - changye

Posted on: Caught in the Act

Caught in the Act
当场被捕 (dang1 chang3 bei4 bu3)
被当场抓住 (bei4 dang1 chang3 zhua1 zhu4)

Posted on: 日本人的起源

Hi henning,

Actually, there was a kind of “East - Asian Union” in the past.

It was established by China probably more than 2,000 years ago and had continued to exist until the early 20th century, when the last Chinese dynasty “清” fell in 1912. This traditional union was formed based on the concept “中华思想” or Sinocentrism, and its members were mainly classified into two groups, the central civilization (中华) and neighboring barbarians (东夷, 南蛮, 西戎, 北狄), as I already mentioned in a previous posting. 

This union was something like the Warsaw Treaty Organization, where the Soviet Union played a role as “big brother” and controlled (and protected?) its satellites countries. In Asia, satellite “barbarian” countries, Japan, Korea, Mongolia, Tibet, Vietnam etc, presented tribute (朝贡) to China every year or once every few years. In return, China officially appointed those barbarian leaders as 王 (a local king) and authorized their political powers.

At the same time, China had to give “souvenirs” to missions, and they were far more precious and valued than barbarians’ tributes. In short, the satellites countries had nothing to lose either way. On the contrary, they gained large profit by presenting tribute to China, which was only a face-saving ceremony for Chinese emperors. Japan left this 中华 union in the 6th ～ 7th century, thanks to its geographical advantage, i.e. “Japan is an island country”.

This East-Asian Union played an important role in disseminating Chinese culture and language. For example, leaders and intellectuals in “barbarian” countries had to learn Chinese first because they needed to write “an address to the throne” in the language. As for the second “East-Asian Union”, I don’t think it will be feasible. Unlike European countries, there are too much difference in the size of countries, economic powers, and the political systems among Asian countries.

Posted on: 日本人的起源

The “etymology” of 小日本 (small Japan).

The concept that Japan is small (or Japanese are short) dates back to about 2,000 years ago in China. In a sense, it’s a very authentic and traditional derogatory term. A description about Japan first appeared in the Chinese history book “汉书” edited in the first century A.D., where Japanese were referred to as “倭人 (wo1 ren2, short people)”. 

The character 倭 (wo1) is said to have meant “short/tame” in those days, and it obviously has something to do with 矮 (ai3, short, low grade) in modern Chinese. Japan was called “倭”, “倭国” or “倭奴国 (wo1 nu2 guo2, a short slave country)”, and anyway, you can easily find that the characters used for these names carry a negative connotation.

In so-called “中华思想” (Sinocentrism), neighboring countries and people were often referred to as 东夷(yi2), 南蛮(man2), 西戎(rong2), and 北狄(bei3 di2), which basically mean eastern, southern, western, and northern “barbarians”. And derogatory characters were often used for the names of "barbarians", such as 蒙古，匈奴，and 鲜卑.

Japan, as well as Korea, had long been categorized as a member of 东夷, i.e. eastern barbarians. Thankfully, the words 倭国 and 倭人 are usually not used in modern China, but interestingly, 倭奴 (a short slave, 왜놈) is still being used very often as a disparaging word in Korea, which is equal to “Jap”. Korean people respect tradition very much.

For the record, 岛国 (an island country, 섬나라) is also a disparaging word for Japan in Korea. It seems that an archipelago (or islands) is regarded as “inferior” to a peninsula attached to mainland China. Of course, there are some Japanese discriminatory terms tailored for China and Korea, too. Good or bad, people really love this kind of word.

Posted on: On Location at the Beijing 2008 Olympics

I was a bit surprised to hear Amber addresses the Chinese driver as “司机!”. Is that a common (or polite) way in Beijing, Shanghai, and Taiwan? People usually say “师傅(shi1 fu)” or “司机师傅” here in a local city in northeast China, at least.

Posted on: 日本人的起源

I always feel sorry that 支那, a traditional name for China, has degraded to kind of a derogatory term in Japan in the past one hundred years. Actually, it is said that the word was transcribed from a Sanskrit word that means “China” and exported to Japan several hundred years ago.

Interestingly, they say the Sanskrit word was a transcription of 秦 (qin2), the ancient dynasty that unified China for the first time in history. And the same goes for the English word “China”, which is also believed to have came from 秦. I must say that 秦始皇 was really great in many ways.

There is another group of words that refers to China, namely “Kitai” in Russian, “Kitad” in Mongolian, and “Cathay” in English. They say that these names all came from 契丹 (qi4 dan4, Khitai), the people who established the dynasty called 辽 in northern China in the 10th century.

Posted on: Morning at the Office

Hi billbag,

It's perfect Japanese! Very well-written.

Posted on: We're going to miss the plane!

Hi henning,

The character 就 basically has a meaning "only", for example, 我就有这个(I only have this) or 就我一个人去(Only I go) etc. You can also say 只剩几分钟, but it seems to me that 就剩 connotes more "hurry" than 只剩.

As for 才, it means "barely, just now", so 才剩几分钟 is not appropriate in this case. Their friends, who are waiting at an airport, might say "他们才来了！" when the taxi arrives. Confusingly, 现在才十点 is translated as "It's only ten o'clock now".

Posted on: Morning at the Office

Hi henning,

Thankfully, that is not so difficult for Japanese people, becuase we also distinguish a word based on the length of a vowel.

おじさん (ojisan) uncle
おじいさん (ojiisan) grandpa

おばさん (obasan) aunt
おばあさん (obaasan) grandma

ふりん (hurin) adultery
ふうりん (huurin) a wind bell

The same goes for Cantonese and standard Korean (in Seoul), but I hear that younger Korean guys don't care much about the length of a vowel recently.

Posted on: Morning at the Office

Hi auntie68,

Let me give a (long) supplemental explanation to your posting. As you wrote above, Chinese dialects generally have about 6～10 tones, and it mainly reflects the eight tones (四声八调) in ancient Chinese spoken in the 4th ～ the 10th century (中古音). Interestingly, you see only four tones (四声), i.e. 平上去入, in rhyme books edited at that time, which means that people in those days only put importance on four tones when they composed verses.

In Chinese poetry, tonal patters, as well as rhyming, are very important, and ancient poets set many complicated rules for tonal patters. Even so, they only paid attention to four tones, but not eight tones. The reason is very simple. Actually, there were only four kinds of tonal curve in those days, and every tonal curve was further divided into two sub-tones depending on whether the consonant of a character is voiced or unvoiced.

If a character has an unvoiced consonant, it was pronounced with higher pitch, and a voiced consonant with lower pitch, but in both cases, their tone curves were basically same. This phenomenon is quite understandable considering soprano and baritone voices. In short, there were four tone curves, and two pitches for every tone curve in ancient Chinese. I’m not sure I made myself understood in my clumsy English.

(1) 阴平 (flat tone + higher pitch, unvoiced)
(2) 阳平 (flat tone + lower pitch, voiced)

(3) 阴上 (rising tone + higher pitch, unvoiced)
(4) 阳上 (rising tone + lower pitch, voiced)

(5) 阴去 (falling tone + higher pitch, unvoiced)
(6) 阳去 (falling tone + lower pitch, voiced)

(7) 阴入 (entering tone + higher pitch, unvoiced)
(8) 阳入 (entering tone + lower pitch, voiced)

I’m afraid that above is a rather simplified discussion. Maybe you can find a similar tendency in Cantonese tone system, but be noted that there is no voiced consonant in modern Cantonese. By the way, there still is no accepted theory about the tone system before the 4th century. Some scholars believe that the contrast of tone length, such as a long flat tone and short flat tone, played an important role in distinguishing a meaning.

Sorry for a long post. This is one of my favorite topics!

Posted on: 多音字

Hi goulniky,

Thanks! That is a great article about 多音字. I'm rather surprised to know that there are more 多音字 in Chinese than I thought. Wow, more than 30% of 1-500 characters are 多音字!! Perhaps I was better off not knowing this.