In Chinese, the character for meat/flesh 肉 (ròu) and the character for month/moon 月 (yuè) are both mapped to the same radical, which can be combined with selected other components to make other characters. That radical is visually a thinner version of 月. Here it is on the left side of 臉 (liǎn; face) and on the right side of 期 (qí [pronounced qī in China]; a period of time).
Despite the radicals being the same visually, the nature of the character of which it is part makes it clear which of the two original characters (meat/flesh or month/moon) is being represented. Face (臉) is more related to flesh (肉) than to month/moon (月). A period of time (期) is more related to month (月) than to meat/flesh (肉). At least in my own usage, the radical appears far more often in its flesh/meat guise.
In a quasi-similar vein, some old typewriters (well, I guess all typewriters are old these days) didn't have a key for the numeral 1 -- you hit the key for the letter l (ell) instead.
Friday, September 23, 2011
Monday, September 12, 2011
Multiple ways to say "For example" in Chinese
In my relatively early years of learning Chinese, I attended a free, somewhat less formal class in which, at unpredictable times (unpredictable by me, anyway), the teacher kept using a phrase which I could not understand. When I asked her what it was, she was unable to remember having said anything of consequence. Many of my fellow students were native Cantonese speakers who didn't seem to bat an eye when the teacher spoke the mystery phrase. Perhaps they were already familiar with the phrase in Cantonese, and the Mandarin equivalent was easily understandable.
Outside of class I asked my mainland Chinese roommate for assistance, but my pitifully incomplete description of the sounds didn't give him much to go on, and, not surprisingly, he couldn't figure it out.
Eventually I learned that the teacher had been saying 譬如說 (pì rú shūo; "For example"), which explained why she couldn't tell what I was referring to from her lecturing -- it was only a helper phrase, never a major, or even minor, lesson point. By that stage of my Chinese studies, I think I had actually already heard elsewhere some different ways of saying "For example", but couldn't make the connection.
Here are other common ways of saying "For example" (capital F because this phrase is always used at the beginning of a sentence, never at the end). I've personally heard native Chinese speakers use all of them:
Outside of class I asked my mainland Chinese roommate for assistance, but my pitifully incomplete description of the sounds didn't give him much to go on, and, not surprisingly, he couldn't figure it out.
Eventually I learned that the teacher had been saying 譬如說 (pì rú shūo; "For example"), which explained why she couldn't tell what I was referring to from her lecturing -- it was only a helper phrase, never a major, or even minor, lesson point. By that stage of my Chinese studies, I think I had actually already heard elsewhere some different ways of saying "For example", but couldn't make the connection.
Here are other common ways of saying "For example" (capital F because this phrase is always used at the beginning of a sentence, never at the end). I've personally heard native Chinese speakers use all of them:
- 比方說 (bǐ fāng shuō)
- 比如說 (bǐ rú shuō)
- 好比說 (hǎo bǐ shuō)
- 舉例來說 (jǔ lì lái shuō)
- 例如說 (lì rú shuō)
Saturday, September 10, 2011
2+ iOS international keyboards
If you have two or more international keyboards configured, you can tap-hold the world globe key and then directly select one of the others. That's available in iOS 4.3.5, and may have been available in earlier versions. Tap by itself immediately takes you to the next keyboard.
I normally always have the Chinese (traditional) Handwriting keyboard configured. When I'm including bits of Chinese among English words, as opposed to writing longer text in Chinese, I normally use the English period instead of the Chinese period (。). The Chinese period takes up more space, presumably because within the Chinese context each character or punctuation mark should occupy the same amount of space as any other.
When I temporarily additionally configured the French keyboard, the order of keyboards was English-Chinese-French. I was mildly annoyed that I would have to tap twice to switch from Chinese to English, particularly because I'd be switching back and forth between the two languages frequently. Nice to learn that this is no longer an issue.
1/7/12: Even moreso since I recently added a fourth keyboard, Pinyin for simplified Chinese characters. I haven't devoted a great deal of time learning handwriting for simplified characters, so the Pinyin version of the keyboard for same is quite helpful.
I normally always have the Chinese (traditional) Handwriting keyboard configured. When I'm including bits of Chinese among English words, as opposed to writing longer text in Chinese, I normally use the English period instead of the Chinese period (。). The Chinese period takes up more space, presumably because within the Chinese context each character or punctuation mark should occupy the same amount of space as any other.
When I temporarily additionally configured the French keyboard, the order of keyboards was English-Chinese-French. I was mildly annoyed that I would have to tap twice to switch from Chinese to English, particularly because I'd be switching back and forth between the two languages frequently. Nice to learn that this is no longer an issue.
1/7/12: Even moreso since I recently added a fourth keyboard, Pinyin for simplified Chinese characters. I haven't devoted a great deal of time learning handwriting for simplified characters, so the Pinyin version of the keyboard for same is quite helpful.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
iOS international keyboards for Latin alphabet languages other than English
Earlier I had noted that, for occasional inclusion of accented characters in, e.g., French or Spanish, there was no need to add the respective iOS virtual international keyboard.
Recently, I was typing in a longer sentence in French. At that time I realized that, for extended writing in a Latin alphabet language other than English, one greatly benefits from switching to the appropriate international keyboard, in order to get proper suggestions for auto-correction, replacement suggestions, etc.
A French teacher long ago had written the following famous phrase on a piece of paper for me:
Ce qui se conçoit bien
s'énonce clairement,
et les mots pour le dire
viennent aisément.
which I subsequently misplaced. The second line eluded my memory for many years, but I recently remembered it, then searched for background on the complete phrase on the mighty Internet.
French Wikipedia says the original is from Nicolas Boileau:
De L'Art poétique (1674)
Ce que l'on conçoit bien s'énonce clairement,
Et les mots pour le dire arrivent aisément. (Chant I)
(bold emphasis is mine -- see below)
I find it a tad odd that multiple people have rendered his original phrase with slightly different words, even, e.g., on a mousepad.
The meaning of the French phrase hasn't changed in any of the slightly-different renditions I've seen, including in the one I got from my French teacher. On the other hand, the Gettysburg Address certainly wouldn't sound the same if someone started reciting it with "87 years ago...".
English translations of this French phrase feel quite awkward to me compared to the original, and I'm not including one here. Interested readers can copy the text and search on the mighty Internet themselves.
Recently, I was typing in a longer sentence in French. At that time I realized that, for extended writing in a Latin alphabet language other than English, one greatly benefits from switching to the appropriate international keyboard, in order to get proper suggestions for auto-correction, replacement suggestions, etc.
A French teacher long ago had written the following famous phrase on a piece of paper for me:
Ce qui se conçoit bien
s'énonce clairement,
et les mots pour le dire
viennent aisément.
which I subsequently misplaced. The second line eluded my memory for many years, but I recently remembered it, then searched for background on the complete phrase on the mighty Internet.
French Wikipedia says the original is from Nicolas Boileau:
De L'Art poétique (1674)
Ce que l'on conçoit bien s'énonce clairement,
Et les mots pour le dire arrivent aisément. (Chant I)
(bold emphasis is mine -- see below)
I find it a tad odd that multiple people have rendered his original phrase with slightly different words, even, e.g., on a mousepad.
The meaning of the French phrase hasn't changed in any of the slightly-different renditions I've seen, including in the one I got from my French teacher. On the other hand, the Gettysburg Address certainly wouldn't sound the same if someone started reciting it with "87 years ago...".
English translations of this French phrase feel quite awkward to me compared to the original, and I'm not including one here. Interested readers can copy the text and search on the mighty Internet themselves.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Clarifying last names in spoken Chinese
When calling in a take-out order in Chinese, it is common to be asked "你貴姓?" (Nǐ guìxìng?; What's your last name?). The normal response is "我姓...." (Wǒ xìng...; My last name is....), clarifying the character of your last name if needed. A small number of last names have two characters, but I won't get into those here.
Some last name characters are typically clarified in terms of some or all of their component parts (e.g., radicals). These descriptions can be pretty precise, where a component part(s) is/are only visibly "squeezed", or, e.g., an existing line(s) is/are lengthened, shortened, or moved "a little bit". Some such descriptions take a few more liberties.
I think the first time I was exposed to this clarification of last names was years ago, when I was talking on the phone to a native Chinese speaker, a guy who I had never met. He told me his last name was 張 (Zhāng). Then he added, 弓長張 (gōng cháng Zhāng).
Now, not having known about this common style of clarification of last names, and also not knowing the 弓 (gōng) character, I was pretty confused. Mentally imposing (quite incorrectly) a Western style first-middle-last (e.g., Franklin Delano Roosevelt) structure onto what he had just told me, I asked him if his full name was 張弓長 (Zhāng Gōng Cháng).
If anyone actually is named 張弓長 (Zhāng Gōng Cháng), that would be pretty weird -- it's kind of like someone being named Roose Velt Roosevelt. I think at that point in our conversation, this guy realized I didn't know as much Chinese as he thought I might. When we later met, he may have explained this style of clarification of Chinese characters, but in any case I eventually learned about it.
Both component parts combined without meaningful change:
Both component parts combined with mild changes:
Some characters are identified purely by just specifying a portion of their parts. Within the context of last names, that is sufficient to identify them.
Somewhere there may be a far more exhaustive compilation of such last name character clarifications. From my own experience, the above are many of the commonly used ones for relatively common last names. Note that last names are simply a subset of characters which can be clarified in this manner.
Some last names are so well-known and common, and other last names having the exact same sound are so rare, that it's unlikely anyone would ask for clarification. A good analogue in English might be Brown. If he calls for take-out, my favorite singer Jackson Browne doesn't likely get asked, "Is that Brown with an e on the end?"
I don't recall ever hearing of this type of clarification for any of:
The old question, "What's in a name?", has quite a different answer in Chinese!
Some last name characters are typically clarified in terms of some or all of their component parts (e.g., radicals). These descriptions can be pretty precise, where a component part(s) is/are only visibly "squeezed", or, e.g., an existing line(s) is/are lengthened, shortened, or moved "a little bit". Some such descriptions take a few more liberties.
I think the first time I was exposed to this clarification of last names was years ago, when I was talking on the phone to a native Chinese speaker, a guy who I had never met. He told me his last name was 張 (Zhāng). Then he added, 弓長張 (gōng cháng Zhāng).
Now, not having known about this common style of clarification of last names, and also not knowing the 弓 (gōng) character, I was pretty confused. Mentally imposing (quite incorrectly) a Western style first-middle-last (e.g., Franklin Delano Roosevelt) structure onto what he had just told me, I asked him if his full name was 張弓長 (Zhāng Gōng Cháng).
If anyone actually is named 張弓長 (Zhāng Gōng Cháng), that would be pretty weird -- it's kind of like someone being named Roose Velt Roosevelt. I think at that point in our conversation, this guy realized I didn't know as much Chinese as he thought I might. When we later met, he may have explained this style of clarification of Chinese characters, but in any case I eventually learned about it.
Both component parts combined without meaningful change:
- 古月胡 gǔ yuè Hú
- 木子李 mù zǐ Lǐ
- 言午許 yán wǔ Xǔ
Both component parts combined with mild changes:
- 耳東陳 ěr dōng Chén (The 耳 character changes this way, but it doesn't always change this way when it's a component of a more complex character.)
- 人可何 rén kě Hé (The 人 character changes this way.)
- 口天吳 kǒu tiān Wú (The 天 character grows "arms".)
- 木易楊 mù yì Yáng (The 易 character gets an additional horizontal line.)
Some characters are identified purely by just specifying a portion of their parts. Within the context of last names, that is sufficient to identify them.
- 草頭黃 cǎo tóu Huáng (The Huáng character that has the 草頭 radical.)
- 雙人徐 shuāng rén Xú (The Xú character that has the 雙人 [double person] radical.)
Somewhere there may be a far more exhaustive compilation of such last name character clarifications. From my own experience, the above are many of the commonly used ones for relatively common last names. Note that last names are simply a subset of characters which can be clarified in this manner.
Some last names are so well-known and common, and other last names having the exact same sound are so rare, that it's unlikely anyone would ask for clarification. A good analogue in English might be Brown. If he calls for take-out, my favorite singer Jackson Browne doesn't likely get asked, "Is that Brown with an e on the end?"
I don't recall ever hearing of this type of clarification for any of:
- 劉 Liú
- 馬 Mǎ
- 王 Wáng (三橫一豎王 sān héng yī shù Wáng, the Wáng character having 3 horizontal strokes and 1 vertical stroke, provided by Yitrun -- thanks!)
The old question, "What's in a name?", has quite a different answer in Chinese!
Mercury Web Browser Lite app
For some months, the free Mercury Web Browser Lite was my favored "night browser", a browser that allows a significantly dimmer screen than normal for browsing in the dark. Although I'm an Opera Mini browser guy (most of the time during the day, anyway), in 2012 I bought Mercury Web Browser Pro, so probably won't be updating this entry much, if at all, going forward.
The Lite version limits you to two tabs, which was actually acceptable for my usage. That was one tab more than my original night browser, Late Mobile Browser, which I wrote about here.
The paid version is more full-featured and seems to have quite a following. Still, Mercury Web Browser Lite already has quite a few features, and may still be of use to you.
Mercury Web Browser Lite 5.1 and 5.2 could identify itself (masquerade) as a different browser, as shown below (version 5.1), but that capability was taken away in 5.2.1 according to an App Store review. That masquerading ability can sometimes be helpful, as I wrote about here, but if you didn't get a version before 5.2.1, you are likely too late, unless the company restores it in the future. You could of course buy the Pro version to get that, and other additional features as well.
Ads on the iPod:
The Lite version limits you to two tabs, which was actually acceptable for my usage. That was one tab more than my original night browser, Late Mobile Browser, which I wrote about here.
The paid version is more full-featured and seems to have quite a following. Still, Mercury Web Browser Lite already has quite a few features, and may still be of use to you.
Mercury Web Browser Lite 5.1 and 5.2 could identify itself (masquerade) as a different browser, as shown below (version 5.1), but that capability was taken away in 5.2.1 according to an App Store review. That masquerading ability can sometimes be helpful, as I wrote about here, but if you didn't get a version before 5.2.1, you are likely too late, unless the company restores it in the future. You could of course buy the Pro version to get that, and other additional features as well.
Ads on the iPod:
- 5.1 did not show them.
- 5.2 showed them (which led to many negative App Store reviews), though not continuously.
- 5.2.1 no longer shows ads according to the company's version notes in the App Store.
Chinese vocabulary for today's world
Ordered by Pinyin syllables. I'll likely add notable other ones I come across going forward.
- 部落格 (bùluògé): blog
- 更新 (gēngxīn; first, not fourth, tone on gēng): update (e.g., an app)
- 聯想 (liánxiǎng): auto-complete (which I mentioned previously here)
- 下載 (xiàzǎi): to download
- 消歧義 (xiāoqíyì): disambiguation (in Wikipedia when the object of the search could mean different things)
- 在雲端 (zài yúnduān): in the cloud (referring to data)
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