The Mandarin Expression of the Week is:
What’s different about how the current Mandarin version of the NWT Bible (nwtsty) renders the names of lands, and how does that relate to modern-day Mandarin groups and congregations?
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Most of the language learners in the Chinese fields are from English-speaking backgrounds. Unfortunately, the worldly Chinese-speaking and English-speaking cultures are two of the proudest sets of cultures ever.
— tiandi, Links News (@TiandiLinksNews) December 25, 2022
Beware of worldly cultural pride that can prejudice and hinder you.
The Mandarin Expression of the Week is:
Does traditional Chinese culture feed its people or “eat” them?
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The Mandarin Expression of the Week is:
How can we talk in Mandarin about Jesus’ date of birth, as opposed to his birthday?
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The purpose of 3-line, _Pīnyīn_ Plus, etc. material was never to compete with the organization as a source of spiritual food (which is ideally in one’s mother tongue). Rather, it has always been to help Chinese field language learners get past the Great Wall of Characters. pic.twitter.com/nrFOdSRlnu
— tiandi, Links News (@TiandiLinksNews) December 9, 2022
E.g., Chinese field language learners whose mother tongue is English ideally get their spiritual food in English. For them, publications in Chinese characters are generally tools for working in a Chinese field—not spiritual food—but the characters make them really hard to use.
— tiandi, Links News (@TiandiLinksNews) December 9, 2022
The world treats characters like sacred cows, but writing systems are actually technologies—systems for reaching practical goals.
— tiandi, Links News (@TiandiLinksNews) December 9, 2022
For many Chinese field language learners, _Pīnyīn_ Plus, etc. material is better technology for showing what Chinese speech to use in the field. pic.twitter.com/UaFuJQqh3L
The Mandarin Expression of the Week is:
What coincidental linguistic connection is there between zero-COVID and the last dynasty of China?
An electron microscope image of SARS-CoV-2—also known as 2019-nCoV, the virus that causes COVID-19
NIAID
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[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 🎼.
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.
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) web material that is now available on jw.org and on the WOL addresses some of 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 2022–2023 circuit assemblies, in the forms of proofread musical notation 🎼 with Pīnyīn lyrics and 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, 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.]
