Learn Chinese!

There are two parts to this post: Firstly, I would like to advertise the Chinese conversation group that we’re starting, similar to the Japanese Learners group, but with some key differences. The two big issues considered were how we wanted to split our time between practicing listening/speaking and reading/writing and whether the group should/could be open to beginners. After an initial meeting to discuss these questions, we reached the following resolutions:

It seems more feasible / easier to practice listening/speaking than reading/writing, but combining the ideas of “wouldn’t it be nice to have a children’s book that helps with reading/writing” and “let’s write a manhua” (a.k.a. “manga” in Japanese or “manhwa” in Korean), we may devote parts of our sessions to discussion of writing a children’s book that helps with reading/writing. Otherwise, our conversations will probably be us telling stories or what happened last week, etc (basically, random conversation around whatever topics we think of).

I think we don’t want to exclude people, but given that we don’t seem to have any particular idea on how to teach Chinese, the solution we came up with is to have the group be open to anyone, but just not make any guarantees about how much you’ll get out of it. I would be up for teaching a 1-2hour-long introductory foundational session on useful things to know about Chinese (like pinyin, characters/radicals, possibly some basic grammar, etc).

Essentially, beginners are welcome, and I will present introductory material whenever needed, so if you’re interested in learning Chinese, you should blanche yourself onto zhongwen and vote in the scheduling poll. I strongly encourage interested people to join, and not to let current proficiency level scare you out of joining, because the group really does have speakers at varied levels, and not everyone grew up listening to Chinese or anything like that.

For the second part, I would like to append the words “with fortune cookies … NOT” to the title of the post. See, the other night, a group of us went to dinner and received the following fortunes:

Old age is always 20 years older than you are.

and

All that we are is the result of what we have thought.

On the backs of these fortunes, though, the fortune cookies attempted to teach us Chinese. One fortune cookie claimed that “驚(jīng)喜(xǐ)” means “Surprise” and “猕(mí)猴(hóu)桃(táo)” means “Gooseberry.” Well, they are at least somewhat “right,” but they’re also somewhat wrong. The first phrase contains the word “喜” which is used in such expressions as 恭喜发 (the popularized pronunciation, “gung hay fat choy,” is Cantonese, and some of you may recognize that it is used around Chinese New Year), 喜欢 (meaning “to like”), etc. Basically, the word involves some expression of liking/happiness, and “surprise” in English doesn’t necessarily involve that. Thus, a better translation might be “pleasantly surprising.” The second phrase actually refers to Actinidia deliciosa (common name kiwifruit, usually shortened to “kiwi”), which is apparently also known as Chinese gooseberry. Well, gooseberries (Ribes uva-crispa) and Chinese gooseberries are not the same thing. And I don’t know about you, but when I see “gooseberry” on a “Chinese” fortune cookie, I don’t immediately leap to the conclusion that I should be thinking about Chinese gooseberries. It makes me want to call up the company that makes these fortune cookies and tell them, “y’all’re right, but only in your own little world in your own little minds.” Honestly, neither of these translations actually involves any long and detailed background on the etymology of the characters/words. How hard can it be to get it right?