I was having a meeting with my colleague when she uttered this saying 上梁不正下梁歪 (shàng liáng bù zhèng xià liáng wāi in Mandarin and soeng6 loeng4 bat1 zing3 haa6 loeng4 waai1 in Cantonese.)
It means if the upper (上) beam (梁) is not (不) straight (正), the lower (下) beam (梁) will slant (歪).
And if you notice, the word for slant歪 is made up of two words, not straight 不正, one on top of the other.
Such is the beauty of the Chinese language.
And it's poetic too.
I found it interesting that is has a 4+3 meter. I tried to find out the implication of its unevenness but couldn't find anything yet.
What I notice is that Chinese sayings usually have matching meters, i.e. 3+3, 4+4 or 5+5.
But in some sayings, the second portion has one less. And I feel it denotes the negativity and incompleteness of what it wants to convey.
What do you think?
Like in this case, if the upper beam is not straight, if the top is not set right, whatever that is the bottom will not be stable and may fall.
What other such uneven metrics of Chinese sayings come to mind?
I was randomly playing songs in my Apple Music when out of the thousand over songs I have, this was played and I had a nostalgic moment
This is a song by Sam Hui and to me it really showcases the beauty of the Cantonese language. Notice the wealth of meaning with the economy of words.
I like the song except for the part where he says life destines you, which of course I don't agree. I make my decisions in life and in Christ I decide and have life.
And the part on clear conscience and living a just life deserving greatest joy would make a good discussion because it doesn't happen. Who is to say your conscience is clear and your life is just to begin with.
For those who don't know the language, I found the translation here which I've added to the lyrics below.
浪子心聲
Long ji sam seng
From the Heart of a Loafer
難分真與假
Nan fan zhan yu ga
It's hard to tell the true from the false
人面多險詐
Yan min do him za
People's appearances are deceitful
幾許有共享榮華
Gei hui yau gung heong wing wa
Who will share in your glory
簷畔水滴不分差
Sim bun sui dik bat fan ca
Water droplets from the eaves is in one stream (meaning not willing to share success and wealth with others and only enjoy it alone)
無知井裡蛙
Mou zi zheng lui wa
I was as ignorant as a frog in a well
徙望添聲價
Tou mong tim sing ga
Hoping to find fame and fortune
空得意目光如麻
Hoong dak yi muk gwong yu ma
Overeager and short-sighted
誰料金屋變敗瓦
Sui liu gham nguk bin bai nga
Who knew my golden palace would become a wreck of failure
命裡有時終須有
Ming lui yau si zhong sui yau
If life destines something for you, you will have it in the end
命裡無時莫強求
Ming lui mou si mok kheong khau
If life destines you never to have it, there is no point forcing it
雷聲風雨打
Lui sing fung yu da
When lightning strikes, and thunder roars, and wind howls, and rain patters
何用多驚怕
Ho yung do ging pa
There is no need to be afraid
心公正白璧無瑕
Sam gung jing bak bik mou ha
So long as your conscience is clear and your heart is just
行善積德最樂也
Hang sin jik dak zui lok ya
The person who does good deserves the greatest joy
命裡有時終須有
Ming lui yau si zhong sui yau
If life destines something for you, you will receive it in the end
命裡無時莫強求
Ming lui mou si mok kheong khau
If life destines you never to have it, there is no point forcing it
I downloaded the app and it is very promising. It isn’t much at the moment with very limited lessons but if Microsoft continues to build on it, it will be a very useful tool.
The AI allows you to be flexible with the responses required from you and thus giving you more freedom in answering the questions in ways that are more relevant to your context.
The beginner level only has four short sections which I completed in less than 20 minutes, and I have just started on the intermediate level where keywords are given for you to use in the reply required.
I have these words in my Mandarin HSK deck where I get terribly confused when I get them. They all look alike and when I am tired, I will almost always get them all mixed up.
苹果 菜单 开始 并且
打扰 讨论 才从 双
结束 结果 结婚
王主生住往注姓谁 生活 生命 生病
生意 注意 主意 愿意 意见 意思
休息 消息 信息
I hope by grouping them like this would help. And this list here will surely grow and grow to a larger and larger set as I move along in my HSK deck.
In my attempt to learn Mandarin, my colleague recommended me to use the pinyin keyboard rather than the writing one.
The good is that I type much faster but the bad is that I take the lazy way and not really want to learn how to write.
But the other problem though is this: I can read, listen and understand the words and I can say them quite accurately but I could not for the life of me spell them in the correct pinyin symbols.
Especially these nine sounds that comes in three triplets: z, zh and j; c, ch and q; s, sh and x.
So I thought if I can memorize nine common and familiar words, I could slowly figure out which is which.
I came up with these:
zū 组 zhū 猪 jù 句 (rent, pig, sentence)
cù 醋 chū 出 qù 去 (vinegar, out, go)
sù 诉 shū 书 xū 需 (tell, book, need)
I then realized that the u sound of the last triplet of each set is not pronounced the same as in the first two. The first two are always pronounced with an oo sound whilst the third is always with an ü sound.
I need memorize them in these two sequences:
1. 组 猪 句 醋 出 去 诉 书 需
2. 组 醋 诉 猪 出 书 句 去 需
It's a good thing as long as I don't look in the mirror.
I have been using the Decipher Chinese app everyday since I found out about it and I'm happy with it even though I have not paid to subscribe, which I don't think I will.
This is because I'm quite invested in using Anki and I don't need another SRS app to complicate my learning of the language. What I need to do now is to figure Anki out a bit on its technical side and use it more effectively.
For example, now I can add words and phrases from Decipher to Anki and reposition it to appear first without having to wait until I reach the 6000th card!
Decipher does have some interesting articles, like this one. I wondered before why are "things" in Chinese called 东四 dòng xi or literally east west, andnot 南北 nán běi or south north.
It is because of the Chinese 五行 wǔ xíng, whichis the five phases of Chinese philosophy vis-à-vis wood, fire, earth, metal and water, the five elements that are believed to represent everything on earth.
And these elements are represented by the directions: east being wood, south fire, west metal and north water.
And because the only two items that can be held are wood and metal, things are therefore represented by east and west, hence 东四 dòng xi.
I had another serendipitous (this is fast becoming my favourite English word) find: an excellent Chinese reading app called Decipher Chinese.
It is a service that provides HSK graded articles written by Mandarin teachers through a learn-as-you-read activity that you can do on a daily basis with their new articles posted everyday.
I think this would work better than the HSK-based books I found earlier, which I have not purchased any yet.
This is how the app looks like today:
I am still using the free version and therefore, I do not get access to all their articles. Each article is marked with the HSK level, which you can choose to attempt reading.
And this is one of the articles I was reading today. Each word is marked with the HSK level and as such I should know all the words in grey and green, which is from HSK1-3 and some of the words in yellow, which is HSK 4. When you tap on each word, you will have its meaning, pinyin and audio.
I am also able to add words into a vocabulary list that can be used as an SRS-based flashcard deck.
But alas, as it is with free apps, there are limitations to it. Articles I have read will become inaccessible after a few days and I have a limit of only 30 words in the vocabulary list.
Subscription is at RM20.90 per month, which isn't too bad but I think I will try it out further before I decide.
I have been asked this question many times: why are you studying a language?
I was asked the question again by my colleague at work today. And I gave her my usual answer, that's it's something I've always wanted to do--which if you think about it, does not actually answer the question!
So why am I learning languages?
I need to give it much more thought but I do find that I have been doing it rather serendipitously now, having the aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident.
Well, I won't say it's all accidental but I seem to somehow find the right tools or maybe we are now in a golden time where there is a flood of language learning resources out there.
I mentioned many times before that I have been trying to learn Mandarin all my life. But for some reasons, I could suddenly able to pick it up so much faster and easier than before with the tools that I have.
To mark my progress. This was how it looked like back in June 2017, after learning it for 3 months, growing from zero to 3033 mature cards.
And after another 4 months now in October 2017--don't ask me why the pie chart has grown larger--it took me much longer to gain only another 1083 mature cards. It is much more difficult as I progress on.
There isn't any finish line when it comes to acquiring a language. And it looks like I will still be trying to learn Mandarin all my life.
I feel that in order to progress in my Mandarin, other than gathering the guts to just speak it, which I am still not doing, is to get some reading materials.
I found out about these Mandarin Companion books but they cost about RM16-20 per copy.
But before I start spending, I thought it'd be good if I could find some free online first, which I did here: Short Stories in Just Learn Chinese.
Let me know if you know of any other online resources.
I need to be disciplined (which I am not not!) to read often enough to improve my reading speed. I find myself reading too slowly.
As I moved on to the more difficult Chinese words, I find that I actually know them in Cantonese, which did surprise me.
So I started to check them out in Cantonese as well to help learn and remember the words but I do not know how to differentiate or read the Cantonese Jyutping tones.
Time to learn!
I thought it'd be useful to have a Cantonese sentence with the 6 tones in sequence that I can use whenever I need any of the tones. I began searching for it but it was not easy to find.
The sentences with the tones in sequence as are follows and I'm going with the one with the meat! It is brilliant!
1. \san1 fan2 zing3 ng4 wui5 wun6\
身份証唔會換 ID
card does not need to be renewed
2. \zu1 pa2 pui3 ngao4 nam5 faan6\
豬扒配牛腩飯
Pork chop with beef belly rice
3. \syu1 zo2 kui3 ng4 pa5 jing6\
輸咗佢唔怕認
Defeated, he is not afraid to admit.
4. \gaau1 cin2 hoei3 hang4 zing5 bo6\
交錢去行政部
Pay (money please) go to the administrative office
A musical score is even provided!
But when I tried playing the tune/tones in my keyboard, they don't really match. It's close but I don't think the last note for the 6th tone is the right one. I tried to find the right note but it seems to be in between notes.
It has already been two months since I started my HSK Level 4 Chinese deck and it is tough.
I had it easy with HSK1-3 since I'm quite familiar with most of the words and I only need to memorize and recognize the characters.
But moving into HSK4, I am encountering words I am not familiar with. I have reduced the number of new cards per day from 30 to just 6! Every word and sentence card in Anki comes with 2 flashcards, and that means I'm only learning or reading 3 new cards per day, down from 15 with HSK1-3.
But I'm still finding it tough. I keep forgetting some of the words. I also keep mixing them up and I am not able to tell the difference between similar looking characters. With that, I have switched off the daily introduction of new cards.
So I am now at zero new cards per day. And it will stay that way until I feel a bit more comfortable with it.
I took time today to view the words in my StickyStudy list and I'm quite surprised I have actually done 179 words out of the 600 in HSK4!
I may have put them in the green bucket but I have yet to fully recognize them all. I will give myself one week to get further acquainted with them in Anki and I will evaluate and see if I will be ready to go back to my 6 new cards per day arrangement.
Learning Mandarin is the hardest thing I've ever done but I hope I will still stick to it or the work and effort I have put in for the past 6 months would have been wasted.
It has been three months since I started on the HSK (Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi/Chinese Proficiency Test) decks and today marks the day I complete all the HSK3 cards in my Anki deck.
That will be a total of 617 characters, 600 words and 1800 Anki cards from HSK1 to 3. That is not too many but definitely a good start considering I've been attempting to learn Chinese my whole life.
With this achievement, I first thought I'd stop here to just revise and practice writing the characters, which by the way is the toughest.
But now I think I should not stop but to proceed on at a slower pace. I did maximize my time to cover the Anki HSK1 to 3 decks in the shortest time possible and to complete that in 3 months is something for me to celebrate.
But HSK4 comes with 447 characters, 600 words and 1200 Anki cards, bringing the accumulated total to 1064 characters, 1200 words and 3000 Anki cards.
At a much slower pace, it will take me 9 months to complete HSK4. But when I do, I will be able to "discuss a relatively wide range of topics in Chinese and are capable of communicating with Chinese speakers at a high standard."
I have so much to revise every day it is getting tough to find the time to complete my daily Anki cards requirement, let alone the Clavis Sinica app to practice my writing.
But that is the norm when it comes to language learning, isn't it?
It is good to talk music with this colleague of mine. Where the last time he introduced me to my now favourite Bai Ann's What Brings Me to You, this time he brought up the artiste called Wang Feng and when I searched for his music, I fell in love with his Nowhere to Settle.
So much for trying to read a novel in Chinese, I should have just stuck to the Bible in Chinese. The beauty of it that I don't even have to read whole book, like a novel, or even whole chapters at any one time.
A verse a day is good enough.
Using the Tecarta bible app, they only have the Chinese Union Version available, which I have just purchased at only RM3.90.
However, what is the preferred Chinese bible translation?
Clockwise from top left: StickyStudy Chinese (HSK Hanzi SRS Flashcard), AnkiMobile Flashcards, Clavis Sinica Xiezi HSK Levels 1-3, TrainChinese: Dictionary & Flashcards
Since I started getting more serious in learning Mandarin, I am now addicted to these apps! I cannot go by one day without using them. And that is amusing since I have always hated studying Chinese.
The catalyst to it all is the Anki app. I uploaded 5 pre-built flashcards decks from Chinese Audio Flashcards and these flashcards worked for me because they come in sentences giving context to the words I'm learning.
HSK Flashcard in Anki
I progressed so well with the decks that I re-downloaded the StickyStudy app to help me view it character by character and word by word as and when I like. I can't do that with Anki, with it being a true Spaced Repetition System (SRS) app, where you will only see the cards when it's time for you to see the card. You can't call it up by choice.
HSK Vocabulary Cards in StickyStudy
I have also began to use a lot of TrainChinese which I find is the best of all Chinese dictionary apps. The free version allows you to keep two lists of words in flashcard form. I wonder if there is a word limit to the free version.
Screenshots of TrainChinese
I blogged a few days ago about Chinese writing being at risk. About a week before reading that BBC article, I did start using a notebook to practice my Chinese writing, but I found carrying a physical book with me quite cumbersome.
So me being me, I naturally went hunting and found the Clavis Sinica Chinese character trainer app. In just 2 days, I have already practiced and put to memory 153 characters, compared to just 22 words I have in my notebook after one week.
The only thing I'm not happy with it is that the app has not been updated since 2012. I hope they will update it soon with the upcoming iOS 11.
Screenshots of CS Xiezi Character Trainer
These apps are money well spent, since I am not taking any classes or hiring any teachers anyway.
I had lunch with my colleague and we started chatting about language, which you know by now is my current favourite topic.
In the course of our conversation, I recommended him to download Memrise as I find it the best app to begin learning a language. It is a good way to start and when you are more familiar with it, you can then begin to expand your resources to help your progress in the language.
But when he began his Mandarin deck in his Android phone, I was intrigued by how different and how much more interesting the interface is compared to the iOS version. How I wish we get the same in iOS!
The Android version has this thing which they called "Mems". It is something that you can upload to help you remember the word better, and these are provided by users themselves.
Look at what this user did with the Chinese word 很好, which means "very good" or "very well". It is brilliant and so, so funny. Kudos to Kitwiggin!
It claims that the Chinese handwriting is at risk because most people who text in Chinese now use the romanized Hanyu Pinyin keyboard to write and send text, and this may reduce the fluency of the written language of the Chinese.
For example, if you want to send a text saying you'll be coming tomorrow, all you need to do is to type w m t h l and the keyboard will give you 我明天会来, which is exactly what I just did here.
When I started learning Mandarin, I used the handwriting Chinese keyboard that requires me to write out the entire character before the keyboard will give me the word. This means I will need to know the exact strokes of the words.
But recently, my colleague recommended me the romanized Hanyu Pinyin keyboard and I found it so easy to use because I no longer need to know exactly how to write the words. I only need to know how it looks like more or less.
Therefore, I can identify with the BBC article and video. All because of the proliferation of smartphones, the Chinese writing may be at stake.
However, this reminded me of a TED Talk I have seen before that asked the question if texting is killing language.
John MacWhorter who is a renowned linguist claims that texting is an entirely new language altogether. I found it so interesting when he said that "texting is not writing at all. Humanity began with just speech...and in a traditional estimate, if humanity had existed for 24 hours, writing only came along at about 11:07pm."
He says that conversationally, we don't talk like we write. But if we can formally speak as we write, we should also then write as we speak and that is where texting comes into the picture. He claims that it is an entirely different language, a finger speech.
However, I am not sure if this applies to Chinese, which is an isolating language, with a 1:1 relationship in its morpheme to meaning. In other words, there are no inflections in the Chinese language and how you speak is how you write, and it is also how you text. Therefore, in the modern world of texting, it may not be good news for the Chinese language.
Or could it be what has always been just mere complaints of many over the decades and even centuries that never came true. These were shared by MacWhorton in his TED Talk:
As you can see, the worries over the centuries were uncalled for. Humanity changed and moved on and language in the same way gets adapted along the way.
We may be using our languages differently across the years, but we will never be bereft of it.
My hubby quipped the other day, "Where is my wife (who only used to listen to English songs like I do)? I want her back."
I still have playlists of my usual favourite English songs, mostly melancholic and sad ones, and many of them by Ed Sheeran, still love him, as well as a whole lot of classical and sacred songs.
But my latest playlists do not have a single English song in them. And I have created a playlist today with just these four songs that I really, really like--for now--and which I can listen to over and over and over again.
I don't really understand much of this song yet by Eric Chou. I couldn't find any English translation of its lyrics and Google Translate was hopeless. Anyone can help?
This one by Yoga Lin is what distopia is to a movie. It talks about destroying the world and just letting the useless self be, it is hopeless anyway. Not a good message and yet, there is some truth in it what with the state of the world we are in right now. And I find the musicality and lyricality of the song very interesting, and it has a really good tune too.
I've blogged about this by Bai Ann several days ago. I simply love her deep rich voice and it how it talks about how one can find love even if they themselves are lost in vastness of the universe.
Ah...who cannot but adore a love song, when one pours out one's heart and adoration to another. And how lovely it would be when someone like Seo In Guk calls you his flower.
I sometimes find it extremely hard to remember certain Chinese characters.
I use the TrainChinese app to find out the meaning of the different parts of the character in order for me create a picture out of it to aid my memory.
But I know it will not be as accurate as it would be in Traditional Chinese but as long as it helps, it doesn't bother me.
And I found this excellent poster on Simplified Radicals Chart for easy reference.
I found a good way to read stuff in Chinese: comics! And since I am a Doraemon fan, I need to get my hands on these comic books.
I have "read" these in my childhood days every time I visited my cousin sister, which was very often and I devoured them with fervour. The only difference was that since I couldn't read Chinese back then, I only looked at the pictures to figure out the stories. And I had no problems with that and thoroughly enjoyed the comics.
But for now, since I'm getting along quite moderately well in my learning of the language, I would love to get my hands on them and start actually reading them. Except that I think compared to my cousin's days, where each copy would probably cost less than RM5 or less, I saw them in the Kinokuniya website at more than RM20 each. I read somewhere that there are 45 volumes of them, and that will cost me a total of almost RM1,000!
