China relegating _Pīnyīn_ to being just a pronunciation aid for characters is like a company hiring a talented A player executive and then making that person just get coffee for the CEO, because the established power base’s top priority is to preserve itself—B players in action. https://t.co/fNHsBWEsWO
— Troubadour WW (@troubadourww) May 15, 2024
Nice analogy. https://t.co/EE1mPuBcjR
— David Moser (@david__moser) May 15, 2024
[NOTE: For spiritual food (which is for you yourself to learn spiritual things from, and which ideally should be in your own mother tongue), please go to jw.org.
The supplementary language-learning material mentioned in this post is for helping you to learn about how the Mandarin language is used in an official publication, so that you will be better able to help others in the Mandarin language field.]
Thankfully, an official Pīnyīn PDF file for the current songbook “Sing Out Joyfully” to Jehovah (sjj) is now available for download from jw.org. (The short link for the current songbook, tiandi.info/sjj, has the link and additional information.) Note, however, that the currently available official Pīnyīn PDF file (2020 Nián 3 Yuè Printing) only contains lyrics—it does not contain musical notation 🎼. Also, it does not contain songs 152 to 158, which were added in the Mandarin 2024 Nián 3 Yuè Printing.
While we greatly appreciate the official Pīnyīn songbook PDF file that is available, the PDF format itself was conceived of in a world dominated by paper. Unfortunately, that means that PDF files are often not optimal for reading on the mobile devices that are now so prevalent among Mandarin field publishers.
Also, having to share limited display real estate with Chinese characters (and, in the past, musical notation 🎼) can in certain situations force the Pīnyīn text to be rendered in small type that can be difficult to read, especially for older people. (This relegation of Pīnyīn to being ruby text reflects the traditional/orthodox but erroneous and unjust view that Pīnyīn can only be a pronunciation aid, when it really qualifies as and works well as a full writing system.)
Another difficulty that is encountered, especially when one needs to quickly find the song that is about to be sung at a meeting, is that the official meeting schedules only list the numbers of the songs to be used, and the brothers announcing what song is about to be sung often only mention the song number, but in the current official Pīnyīn songbook PDF file, there is no listing of song links in song number order.
The official Pīnyīn “Sing Out Joyfully” to Jehovah (sjj) material that is now available in the JW Library app (iOS/iPadOS; Android; Windows) and on jw.org and the WOL does much to address the above challenges, but it still does not put musical notation 🎼 together with Pīnyīn, and it still gives prime display real estate to Chinese characters, at the expense of the Pīnyīn.
Unofficial language-learning materials for all the songs for Mandarin 2024 conventions, in the forms of proofread Pīnyīn web material (more correct than computer-generated Pīnyīn like that displayed by apps like Equipd, and more mobile-friendly than PDFs) or better (including much proofread musical notation 🎼 with Pīnyīn lyrics), have been posted to this resource that seeks to help with the above-mentioned challenges:
Screenshots of the above web resource on iPhone and on iPad 📱. (It can also be used offline with apps like GoodReader, Documents, etc.) Tap/click on a screenshot to see it full-size.
Scheduling notes:
The Pīnyīn songbook material in the above unofficial resource has been designed to be mobile-first, so it works well on mobile devices of various shapes and sizes, including tablets and smartphones 📱 running iOS, iPadOS, Android, etc. Some of the ways in which it does so are:
The introduction for the above resource explains why it’s good to use Pīnyīn as a writing system on its own.
In the material with musical notation 🎼 in the above resource, expressions in the Pīnyīn lyrics do not trigger a Pīnyīn Plus “flashcard” to appear next to them as usual, because the lyrics need to stay aligned with the musical notation 🎼. As time allows, links will be added to Pīnyīn lyrics in the material with musical notation 🎼. Each of these links will cause a Pīnyīn Plus “flashcard” to appear near the top of the display.
Previously, musical notation 🎼 in the above resource was taken from screenshots of an official PDF file. Note (and make it a musical note ♪, at that 😄), though, that the musical notation 🎼 for song 77 marked the debut in the above resource of musical notation 🎼 produced “from scratch” to be mobile-first in design. This should provide for better and more consistent user experiences going forward, especially on smaller mobile devices like smartphones 📱.
[NOTE: While the organization expresses valid general concerns here about posting copies of official publications to the Internet, there are good legal and spiritual reasons for concluding that those concerns do not apply to this particular material, since such material should NOT be considered to be infringing on copyright, and since such material is specifically designed to be, NOT SPIRITUAL FOOD, but rather, material FOR LANGUAGE LEARNING. See this disclaimer for more information.]
The Mandarin Expression of the Week is:
What connection is there between the Mandarin expressions for “demonstrating (as a protest)” and “Revelation”?
Comments are enabled on this blog, so if you are so inclined, comment away!
A news feed for this blog is available here.
“The level of denial in this regard can sometimes reach ludicrous proportions. A musician friend…who specializes in jazz music once forgot how to write the word for ‘jazz’ in Chinese, _jueshi_ 爵士. When I poked fun at him…, he became a bit defensive”
— Troubadour WW (@troubadourww) May 6, 2024
—David Moser @david__moser pic.twitter.com/sCUIFWQgxg
To provide a bit of background, “common things should be easy…” is often considered a good guiding principle in the world of computer software development. For example, pioneering computer scientist Alan Kay said:
“Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.”
This basic idea has also been declared to be a guiding principle for widely used software projects such as the Perl programming language and Apple’s SwiftUI framework.
Since writing systems like Chinese characters and Pīnyīn are really technologies, it is fair and reasonable to want common things like reading and writing Mandarin expressions (especially common ones!) to be easy, just as we want other common technological things to be easy.
“The Chinese [characters] writing system is simply not as user-friendly as other scripts, and non user-friendly devices get used less.”
— Troubadour WW (@troubadourww) May 3, 2024
—David Moser (@david__moser) pic.twitter.com/ZhUZp7Q6sJ
“Every day in China, perfectly intelligent language users who normally would be inclined to write down sentences in their native language for one reason or another, do *not* do so, and for no other reason than the writing system itself discourages the attempt.”
— Troubadour WW (@troubadourww) May 3, 2024
—David Moser pic.twitter.com/DjqqarYTJI
Thanks to David Moser (@david__moser) for reposting, and for his insightful, elegant, and occasionally whimsical writings and musings over the years.
— Troubadour WW (@troubadourww) May 4, 2024
The Mandarin Expression of the Week is:
What can help us to sing like the angels at Mandarin meetings, conventions, etc.?
The 2024 convention song “‘Hǎo Xiāoxi’!” (music+Pīnyīn), on an iPhone (landscape orientation)
Comments are enabled on this blog, so if you are so inclined, comment away!
A news feed for this blog is available here.
“Three Chinese graduate students at China's most prestigious university could not write the word for ‘sneeze’ in their own native script! One simply cannot imagine…e.g., three Harvard graduate students unable to write a common word like ‘sneeze’….”
— Troubadour WW (@troubadourww) May 3, 2024
—David Moser pic.twitter.com/KRPFDbH3L1
