The Mandarin Expression of the Week is:
In the big picture, how should we Mandarin field language learners view Chinese characters?
(The above picture is from near the beginning of the book The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, by John DeFrancis.)
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The Mandarin Expression of the Week is:
While worldly Chinese people consider Chinese calligraphy to be a precious part of their culture, what is precious about China in Jehovah’s eyes?
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The Mandarin Expression of the Week is:
Is Pīnyīn the Hangul of Mandarin?
metalslick
The Korean text “Joseongeul” and “Hangeul,” written in Hangul, the native Korean script. [source]
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The Mandarin Expression of the Week is:
What is transliteration? What is transcription? What is Pīnyīn?
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The Mandarin Expression of the Week is:
What does “kǎlā’OK”, the Mandarin word for “karaoke”, teach us about the idea of “pure” Chinese culture?
In this thread I’m going to talk about one of my favorite etymologies. The history of this word has got it all: it’s a fascinating tale of multi-lingual and multi-cultural interaction, full of surprises. I'm excited, let's go! pic.twitter.com/2JkZ1xNMe7
— zev handel (@ZevHandel) January 29, 2021
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The Mandarin Expression of the Week is:
Should Pīnyīn be capitalized the way English is?
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Some revisions have been made to the article “Pīnyīn Was Plan A”.
(The login information required is the same as for anywhere else on 3lines.org. If you’re already on the 3lines.org site, you can find this article in the folder Misc ▶ Articles.)
One of the changes made is that the quotations now have a light gray background to make it easier to tell them apart from the main text.
Here is an example of a portion of the article that has been rewritten:
Basically, compared to those in the standard program who were just taught Pīnyīn for a couple of months or so purely as a phonetic aid for pronouncing characters, the students who were allowed to use Pīnyīn on its own as a writing system for a couple of years or so not only did significantly better in learning the language and in learning the Chinese characters, they also did significantly better overall academically. This is not surprising to me, since language is needed to learn and progress in any and every other field of learning. As former UN interpreter Wu Wenchao said,
Chinese language is difficult to learn in comparison with alphabetic languages. …Chinese students work very hard and would have to spend two more years [some have said even longer] in learning in order to reach the same level of a Western intellectual. …The difficulty in learning is analogous to long boot-up time in computer terminology, which means system delay in becoming operational.
In view of the above, I can’t help but wonder how well those learning Mandarin for the Mandarin field can do who just keep on using Pīnyīn on its own as a writing system, instead of stopping and moving on to characters after some arbitrary length of time. Since Jehovah’s organization is now providing official Pīnyīn versions of the core publications, and since many unofficial Pīnyīn-containing resources are available as well (as discussed more extensively below), Pīnyīn-using Mandarin field language learners now actually do not have to divert years of additional time to learn the relatively complex Chinese characters. Also, they do not have to put forth additional constant, ongoing effort to remember the Chinese characters they’ve learned, and to learn new ones. (And if they do choose to learn some Chinese characters, they could do so more effectively than they could without the assistance of Pīnyīn.) Mandarin field language learners who just use Pīnyīn on its own as a writing system can focus more on the information being communicated in the publications, that they in turn need to communicate to those in the field, without having to expend so much time and mental effort on language technicalities. Such ones should do significantly better overall in the Mandarin field, just as the Z.T. students mentioned above did significantly better overall academically.
The article “Pīnyīn Was Plan A”, which began as a post on the tiandi.info blog, has been updated so that the scripture links point to the new 2013 edition of the New World Translation on the WOL site. Some other tweaks have been made as well:
This article contains the results of much research and analysis about something that is of fundamental importance to our work in the Chinese field, so I encourage you to check out the current version, even if you have checked out the article before.
The article “Pīnyīn Was Plan A” is now available to be read on 3lines.org. This is a revised version of the tiandi.info post of the same name. Here is the link:
(The login information required is the same as for anywhere else on 3lines.org.)
(If you’re already on the 3lines.org site, you can find this article in the folder Misc ▶ Articles.)
The subject of Pīnyīn and the Chinese characters may be one of the most important subjects I have ever written about, since it deals with facing the most difficult fundamental aspect of the Mandarin language, the language that is the very reason that the Mandarin field exists. This article contains much of the fruitage of months of research and analysis regarding this subject, and I highly recommend that anyone in or interested in the Mandarin field read it. Please feel free to pass on the information about this article to any Witness you know who fits that description. (Many of the principles discussed in this article apply to the Cantonese field as well, which is evidently consolidating on the Sidney Lau system as the romanization system of choice.)
Some of the material under the Meanwhile... subheading of the tiandi.info post “Pinyin Was Plan A” has been added to and rewritten.
Here is the current form of the section that was added to and rewritten:
The current reality is that it is good for those in the Chinese field to learn as many Chinese characters as they reasonably can. However, experience has shown that focusing too much on characters can cause one to get bogged down with their multifarious complexities and vagaries—while a picture may be worth a thousand words, it can take a thousand words or more to precisely describe a picture! All these complexities and vagaries can slow one’s progress in mastering other aspects of the language that are actually more important in the Chinese ministry. What other aspects are these? John DeFrancis, the linguist mentioned above, said in his book The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy that
Speech is primary, writing secondary
Meaning is ultimately carried in the sound of a language; writing mainly carries meaning not in itself, but because it represents the sound of the spoken word. This primacy of speech is not functionally or culturally poor or limiting, as held by some proponents of Hànzì and their contained meaning. Note what multiple award-winning composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim (who wrote the lyrics for West Side Story) said about something that, like speech, is made up of sound alone:
Music is the richest of the arts because it’s the most abstract. And it is so filled with emotion.
Yes, speech is made up “only” of sound, but then so is music, which is merely the richest of the arts! Since it is so closely related to something that is the richest of the arts, it should come as no surprise that when it comes to language, “speech is primary”.
That means that understanding and speaking a language are even more important than reading and writing it. Indeed, understanding and speaking are the proper foundation upon which reading and writing must be built, not vice-versa. That is a basic fact about language, and about how Jehovah created us to learn and use language. For example, a baby naturally first learns to understand a few words, then one day it sees its father and says “Dada”. Only later does it learn to read and write the word “father”. A baby who writes out “father” before it ever said “Dada” would be most unusual!
Also, Jehovah built right into us the specialized equipment we need to directly produce speech, but we can only produce writing indirectly through the general purpose tools that are our hands, which generally must do so using man-made tools and media such as pens and keyboards and paper and computer screens. So, Jehovah himself supports that “speech is primary, writing secondary” in the very way he designed our bodies.
In our ministry specifically, we definitely need understanding and speaking much more than we need reading and writing, as important as they are. For example, a Japanese sister once explained to me that since Japanese writing uses many Chinese characters, Japanese people can often understand the meanings of Chinese characters that they read. However, the pronunciations of those characters are different in Japanese. So, before a Japanese publisher can be effective in the Chinese ministry, he must still first learn how to understand and speak Chinese—knowing the meanings of the characters is not enough. Think about it: When witnessing, what good is it for you to know the meanings of the characters in a scripture if you can’t
introduce it,
pronounce the words in it correctly when reading it out,
explain it understandably,
understand the student’s questions,
or answer the student’s questions effectively?
Conversely, we can often give a good witness just by understanding and speaking Chinese, even if the opportunity does not arise to read or write any Chinese while doing so.
In view of the above, it may be good to keep in mind the counsel in the January 15, 2011 Watchtower:
Jehovah’s Word urges us to “make sure of the more important things.” (Phil. 1:10) Likening the Christian life course to a long-distance footrace, under inspiration the apostle Paul recommended: “Let us also put off every weight . . . , and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.” (Heb. 12:1) His point was that we must avoid needless pursuits, needless weights, that will tire us out. It may be that some of us are simply trying to squeeze too much into already busy lives. . . . Reasonableness and modesty should move all of us to recognize our limitations and keep unnecessary commitments to a minimum.
Yes, overemphasis on Chinese characters can be a burden that weighs us down rather than helping our progress in learning and using Chinese. And as the above counsel from The Watchtower emphasizes, we really do need to avoid things that weigh us down on the long-distance marathon of our Christian lives, let alone our long-term efforts to learn Chinese. Yes, to us it is indeed a significantly bad thing that Chinese characters are as hard to learn and remember as they are.
As it says in the recently posted update:
I have just rewritten some of the material under the Meanwhile… subheading of this post. Also, recently, I added Pinyin with tone marks for the Chinese names that were previously written only in English, without tone marks.
I continue to believe that the subject of this post is one of primary importance to those of us who are learning Mandarin for the Mandarin field, and I will likely continue to add to and tweak this post in the future.
I highly recommend coming back and rereading this post once in a while, both to catch any recent additions and tweaks, and also just to refresh your memory about this subject that is of primary importance in our language field.
Again, here is the link to the entire post:
“Pinyin Was Plan A”
To obtain the login information for tiandi.info, request e-mail notification of news regarding available resources, or if you have any questions or comments, you may e-mail me at waynerj@shaw.ca, providing information such as what group or congregation you’re with, who referred you to this site, etc.
The tiandi.info post “Pinyin Was Plan A” has been substantially rewritten. As it says in the recently posted update:
Since this post was originally posted back in January, I have been continuing to research and analyze this subject, since it is of such primary importance in the Chinese field. As one result of this ongoing research and analysis, this post has been substantially rewritten and updated, and a significant amount of material has been added to it. I highly recommend reading it in its current form even if you have already read the original post.
Especially noteworthy is the inclusion of examples cited by Zhou Youguang, who led the team that created pinyin, of Mandarin homophones that have had their pronunciations changed, thus resolving the potential confusion that could be caused by their previously identical pronunciations. This is some of the material added that shows that it is not correct to think that the number of homophones currently in Mandarin is a good reason not to use pinyin.
Also added is information about digraphia, such as the following:
Modern-day pinyin advocates generally see [pinyin totally replacing characters] as unrealistic, or at least very far off, and many of them, such as Victor H. Mair, do not call for that. However, many of them do call for pinyin to be accepted, not just as a pronunciation aid for the characters, but as the full-fledged script (writing system) for Mandarin in its own right that it linguistically qualifies as, and they call for pinyin to be taught, learned, and used as such a full-fledged script (writing system) in parallel with and with more or less the same status as the characters in a scenario known as digraphia (双文制 (shuāngwénzhì, “two-script system”).
The subject of pinyin and the Chinese characters may be one of the most important subjects I will ever write about on tiandi.info, since it deals with facing the most difficult fundamental aspect of the Chinese language, the language that is the reason the Chinese field exists. This rewritten post contains much of the fruitage of months of research and analysis regarding this subject, and I highly recommend that anyone in or interested in the Chinese field read it. Please feel free to pass on the information about this post to any Witness you know who fits that description.
To obtain the login information for tiandi.info, request e-mail notification of news regarding available resources, or if you have any questions or comments, you may e-mail me at waynerj@shaw.ca, providing information such as what group or congregation you’re with, who referred you to this site, etc.
![[source]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hangul_chosongul_fontembed.svg){kind=link}