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-<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head xmlns:h="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><title>Background Notes: About Chinese</title><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.79.2"/></head><body><div class="section"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h1 class="title"><a id="d0e419"/>Background Notes: About Chinese</h1></div></div></div><p><span class="bold"><strong>The Chinese Languages</strong></span></p><p> We find it perfectly natural to talk about a language called "Chinese." We say,
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- for example, that the people of China speak different dialects of Chinese, and that
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- Confucius wrote in an ancient form of Chinese. On the other hand, we would never
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- think of saying that the people of Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal speak dialects
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- of one language, and that Julius Caesar wrote in an ancient form of that language.
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- But the facts are almost exactly parallel.</p><p>Therefore, in terms of what we think of as a language when closer to home,
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- "Chinese" is not one language, but a family of languages. The language of Confucius
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- is partway up the trunk of the family tree. Like Latin, it lived on as a literary
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- language long after its death as a spoken language in popular use. The seven modern
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- languages of China, traditionally known as the "dialects," are the branches of the
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- tree. They share as strong a family resemblance as do Italian, French, Spanish, and
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- Portuguese, and are about as different from one another. </p><p>The predominant language of China is now known as <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Pŭtōnghuà</em></span>, or "Standard Chinese"
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- (literally "the common speech"). The more traditional term, still used in Taiwan, is
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- <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Guóyŭ</em></span>, or "Mandarin"
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- (literally "the national language"). Standard Chinese is spoken natively by almost
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- two-thirds of the population of China and throughout the greater part of the
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- country. </p><p>The term "Standard Chinese" is often used more narrowly to refer to the true
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- national language which is emerging. This language, which is already the language of
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- all national broadcasting, is based primarily on the Peking dialect, but takes in
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- elements from other dialects of Standard Chinese and even from other Chinese
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- languages. Like many national languages, it is more widely understood than spoken,
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- and is often spoken with some concessions to local speech, particularly in
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- pronunciation. </p><p>The Chinese languages and their dialects differ far more in pronunciation than in
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- grammar and vocabulary. What distinguishes Standard Chinese most from the other
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- Chinese languages, for example, is that it has the fewest tones and the fewest final
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- consonants. </p><p>The remaining six Chinese languages, spoken by approximately a quarter of the
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- population of China, are tightly grouped in the southeast, below the Yangtze River.
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- The six are: the Wu group (<span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Wú</em></span>), which includes the "Shanghai dialect"; Hunanese
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- (<span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Xiāng</em></span>); the "Kiangsi
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- dialect" (<span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Gàn</em></span>); Cantonese
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- (<span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Yuè</em></span>), the language of
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- <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Guăngdōng</em></span>, widely
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- spoken in Chinese communities in the United States; Fukienese (<span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Mĭn</em></span>), a variant of which is spoken by
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- a majority on Taiwan and hence called Taiwanese; and Hakka (<span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Kèjiā</em></span>), spoken in a belt above the
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- Cantonese area, as well as by a minority on Taiwan. Cantonese, Fukienese, and Hakka
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- are also widely spoken throughout Southeast Asia. </p><p>There are minority ethnic groups in China who speak non-Chinese languages. Some of
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- these, such as Tibetan, are distantly related to the Chinese languages. Others, such
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- as Mongolian, are entirely unrelated. </p><p><span class="bold"><strong>Some Characteristics of Chinese</strong></span>
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- </p><p>To us, perhaps the roost striking feature of spoken Chinese is the use of
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- variation in tone ("tones" to distinguish the different meanings of syllables which
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- would otherwise sound alike. All languages, and Chinese is no exception, make use of
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- sentence intonation to indicate how whole sentences are to be understood. In
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- English, for example, the rising pattern in "He’s gone?" tells us that the sentence
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- is meant as a question. The Chinese tones, however, are quite a different matter.
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- They belong to individual syllables, not to the sentence as a whole. An inherent
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- part of each Standard Chinese syllable is one of four distinctive tones. The tone
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- does just as much to distinguish the syllable as do the consonants and vowels. For
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- example, the only difference between the verb "to buy," <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">mǎi</em></span> and the verb "to sell,"
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- <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">mài</em></span>, is the Low tone
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- (<span xml:lang="cmn-Hani" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Hani" class="foreignphrase"> ̆</em></span>) and the Falling tone
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- (<span xml:lang="cmn-Hani" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Hani" class="foreignphrase">`</em></span>). And yet these words are
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- Just as distinguishable as our words "buy" and "guy," or "buy" and "boy." Apart from
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- the tones, the sound system of Standard Chinese is no more different from English
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- than French is. </p><p>Word formation in Standard Chinese is relatively simple. For one thing, there are
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- no conjugations such as are found in many European languages. Chinese verbs have
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- fewer forms than English verbs, and nowhere near as many irregularities. Chinese
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- grammar relies heavily on word order, and often the word order is the same as in
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- English. For these reasons Chinese is not as difficult for Americans to learn to
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- speak as one might think. </p><p>It is often said that Chinese is a monosyllabic language. This notion contains a
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- good deal of truth. It has been found that, on the average, every other word in
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- ordinary conversation is a single-syllable word. Moreover, although most words in
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- the dictionary have two syllables, and some have more, these words can almost always
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- be broken down into single-syllable units of meaning, many of which can stand alone
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- as words. </p><p><span class="bold"><strong>Written Chinese</strong></span>
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- </p><p>Most languages with which we are familiar are written with an alphabet. The
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- letters may be different from ours, as in the Greek alphabet, but the principle is
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- the same: one letter for each consonant or vowel sound, more or less. Chinese,
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- however, is written with "characters" which stand for whole syllables -- in fact,
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- for whole syllables with particular meanings. Although there are only about thirteen
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- hundred phonetically distinct syllables in standard Chinese, there are several
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- thousand Chinese characters in everyday use, essentially one for each
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- single-syllable unit of meaning. This means that many words have the same
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- pronunciation but are written with different characters, as <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">tiān</em></span>, "sky," <span xml:lang="cmn-Hani" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Hani" class="foreignphrase">天</em></span>, and <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">tiān</em></span>, "to add," "to increase,"
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- <span xml:lang="cmn-Hani" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Hani" class="foreignphrase">添</em></span>. Chinese characters are
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- often referred to as "ideographs" which suggests that they stand directly for ideas.
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- But this is misleading. It is better to think of them as standing for the meaningful
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- syllables of the spoken language. </p><p>Minimal literacy in Chinese calls for knowing about a thousand characters. These
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- thousand characters, in combination, give a reading vocabulary of several thousand
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- words. Full literacy calls for knowing some three thousand characters. In order to
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- reduce the amount of time needed to learn characters, there has been a vast
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- extension in the People's Republic of China (PRC) of the principle of character
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- simplification, which has reduced the average number of strokes per character by
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- half. </p><p>During the past century, various systems have been proposed for representing the
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- sounds of Chinese with letters of the Roman alphabet. One of these romanizations,
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- <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Hànyŭ</em></span>
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- <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Pīnyīn</em></span> (literally "Chinese
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- Language Spelling," generally called "Pinyin" in English), has been adopted
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- officially in the PRC, with the short-term goal of teaching all students the
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- Standard Chinese pronunciation of characters. A long-range goal is the use of Pinyin
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- for written communication throughout the country. This is not possible, of course,
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- until speakers across the nation have uniform pronunciations of Standard Chinese.
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- For the time being, characters, which represent meaning, not pronunciation, are
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- still the most widely accepted way of communicating in writing. </p><p>Pinyin uses all of the letters in our alphabet except "<span class="bold"><strong>v</strong></span>," and adds the letter "<span class="bold"><strong>ü</strong></span>." The
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- spellings of some of the consonant sounds are rather arbitrary from our point of
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- view, but for every consonant sound there is only one letter or one combination of
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- letters, and vice versa. You will find that each vowel letter can stand for
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- different vowel sounds, depending on what letters precede or follow it in the
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- syllable. The four tones are indicated by accent marks over the vowels, and the
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- Neutral tone by the absence of an accent mark: </p><p>High: <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">mā</em></span>
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- </p><p>Falling: <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">mà</em></span>
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- </p><p>Rising: <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">má</em></span>
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- </p><p>Neutral: <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">ma</em></span>
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- </p><p>Low: <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">mǎ</em></span>
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- </p><p>One reason often given for the retention of characters is that they can be read,
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- with the local pronunciation, by speakers of all the Chinese languages. Probably a
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- stronger reason for retaining them is that the characters help keep alive
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- distinctions of meaning between words, and connections of meaning between words,
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- which are fading in the spoken language. On the other hand, a Cantonese could learn
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- to speak Standard Chinese, and read it alphabetically, at least as easily as he can
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- learn several thousand characters. </p><p>Pinyin is used throughout this course to provide a simple written representation
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- of pronunciation. The characters, which are chiefly responsible for the reputation
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- of Chinese as a difficult language, are taught separately. </p><p><span class="bold"><strong>BACKGROUND NOTES: ABOUT CHINESE CHARACTERS</strong></span>
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- </p><p>Each Chinese character is written as a fixed sequence of strokes. There are very
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- few basic types of strokes, each with its own prescribed direction, length, and
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- contour. The dynamics of these strokes as written with a brush, the classical
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- writing instrument, show up clearly even in printed characters. You can tell from
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- the varying thickness of the stroke how the brush met the paper, how it swooped, and
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- how it lifted; these effects are largely lost in characters written with a
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- ball-point pen. </p><p>The sequence of strokes is of particular importance. Let's take the character for
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- "mouth," pronounced <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">kǒu</em></span>.
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- Here it is as normally written, with the order and directions of the strokes
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- indicated.</p><div class="figure"><a id="d0e564"/><p class="title"><strong>Figure 2. Strokes order</strong></p><div class="figure-contents"><div class="mediaobject" style="text-align: center"><img src="FSI-Chinese-MOD1-Textbook/Images/0021-FSI-StandardChinese-Module01ORN-StudentText-4.png" style="text-align: middle" alt="Strokes order"/></div></div></div><p>If the character is written rapidly, in "running-style writing," one stroke glides
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- into the next, like this. </p><div class="figure"><a id="d0e572"/><p class="title"><strong>Figure 3. Running style writing </strong></p><div class="figure-contents"><div class="mediaobject" style="text-align: center"><img src="FSI-Chinese-MOD1-Textbook/Images/0021-FSI-StandardChinese-Module01ORN-StudentText-11.png" style="text-align: middle" alt="Running style writing"/></div></div></div><p>If the strokes were written in any but the proper order, quite different
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- distortions would take place as each stroke reflected the last and anticipated the
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- next, and the character would be illegible.</p><p>The earliest surviving Chinese characters, inscribed on the Shang Dynasty "oracle
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- bones" of about 1500 B.C. , already included characters that vent beyond simple
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- pictorial representation. There are some characters in use today which are
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- pictorial, like the character for "mouth." There are also some which are directly
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- symbolic, like our Roman numerals I, II, and III. (The characters for these numbers
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- — the first numbers you learn in this course — are like the Roman numerals turned on
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- their sides.) There are some which are indirectly symbolic, like our Arabic numerals
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- 1,2, and 3. But the most common type of character is complex, consisting of two
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- parts: a "phonetic," which suggests the pronunciation, and a "radical," which
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- broadly characterizes the meaning. Let's take the following character as an example. </p><div class="figure"><a id="d0e582"/><p class="title"><strong>Figure 4. Running style writing </strong></p><div class="figure-contents"><div class="mediaobject" style="text-align: center"><img src="FSI-Chinese-MOD1-Textbook/Images/0021-FSI-StandardChinese-Module01ORN-StudentText-5.png" style="text-align: middle" alt="Running style writing"/></div></div></div><p>This character means "ocean" and is pronounced <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">yáng</em></span>. The left side of the character,
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- the three short strokes, is an abbreviation of a character which means "water" and
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- is pronounced <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">shuĭ</em></span>. This
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- is the "radical." It has been borrowed only for its meaning, "water." The right side
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- of the character above is a character which means "sheep" and is pronounced yang.
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- This is the "phonetic." It has been borrowed only for its sound value,
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- <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">yáng</em></span>. A speaker of
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- Chinese encountering the above character for the first time could probably figure
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- out that the only Chinese word that sounds like <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">yáng</em></span> and means something like
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- "water," is the word <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">yáng</em></span>
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- meaning "ocean," We, as speakers of English, might not be able to figure it out.
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- Moreover, phonetics and radicals seldom work as neatly as in this example. But we
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- can still learn to make good use of these hints at sound and sense. </p><p>Many dictionaries classify characters in terms of the radicals. According to one
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- of the two dictionary systems used, there are 176 radicals; in the other system,
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- there are 2l4. There are over a thousand phonetics.</p><p>Chinese has traditionally been written vertically, from top to bottom of the page,
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- starting on the right-hand side, with the pages bound so that the first page is
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- where we would expect the last page to be. Nowadays, however, many Chinese
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- publications paginate like Western publications, and the characters are written
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- horizontally, from left to right.</p><p><span class="bold"><strong>BACKGROUND NOTES: ABOUT CHINESE PERSONAL NAMES AND TITLES
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- </strong></span></p><p>A Chinese personal name consists of two parts: a surname and a given name. There
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- is no middle name. The order is the reverse of ours: surname first, given name last. </p><p>The most common pattern for Chinese names is a single-syllable surname followed by
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- a two-syllable given name:<a href="#ftn.d0e616" class="footnote" id="d0e616"><sup class="footnote">[2]</sup></a></p><p><span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Máo Zédōng</em></span> (Mao
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- Tse-tung)</p><p><span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Zhōu Enlái</em></span> (Chou
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- En-lai)</p><p><span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Jiǎng Jièshí</em></span> (Chiang
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- Kai-shek)</p><p><span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Sòng Qìnglíng</em></span> (Soong
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- Ch'ing-ling --- Mme Sun Yat-sen)</p><p><span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Sòng Mĕilíng</em></span> (Soong
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- Mei-ling--Mme Chiang Kai-shek)</p><p>It is not uncommon, however, for the given name to consist of a single
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- syllable:</p><p><span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Zhŭ Dĕ</em></span> (Chu Teh) </p><p><span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Lín Biāo</em></span> (Lin Piao) </p><p><span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Hú Shì</em></span> (Hu Shih) </p><p><span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Jiang Qĭng</em></span> (Chiang
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- Ch'ing—Mme Mao Tse-tung) </p><p>There are a few two-syllable surnames. </p><p>These are usually followed by single-syllable given names: </p><p><span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Sīmă Guāng</em></span> (Ssu-ma
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- Kuang) </p><p><span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Ōuyáng Xiū</em></span> (Ou-yang
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- Hsiu) </p><p><span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Zhūgĕ Liàng</em></span> (Chu-ke
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- Liang) </p><p>But two-syllable surnames may also be followed by two-syllable given names:</p><p><span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Sīmă Xiāngrú</em></span> (Ssu-ma
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- Hsiang-ju) </p><p>An exhaustive list of Chinese surnames includes several hundred written with a
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- single character and several dozen written with two characters. Some single-syllable
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- surnames sound exactly alike although written with different characters, and to
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- distinguish them, the Chinese nay occasionally have to describe the character or
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- "write" it with a finger on the palm of a hand. But the surnames that you are likely
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- to encounter are fever than a hundred, and a handful of these are so common that
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- they account for a good majority of China’s population. </p><p>Given names, as opposed to surnames, are not restricted to a limited list of
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- characters, Men's names are often but not always distinguishable from women's; the
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- difference, however, usually lies in the meaning of the characters and so is not
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- readily apparent to the beginning student with a limited knowledge of
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- characters.</p><p>Outside the People's Republic the traditional system of titles is still in use.
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- These titles closely parallel our own "Mr.," "Mrs.," and "Miss." Notice, however,
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- that all Chinese titles follow the name — either the full name or the surname alone
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- — rather than preceding it.</p><p>The title "Mr." is <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Xiānsheng</em></span>. </p><p><span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Mă Xiānsheng</em></span>
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- </p><p><span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Mă Mínglĭ Xiānsheng</em></span>
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- </p><p>The title "Mrs." is <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Tàitai</em></span>. It follows the husband's full name or surname alone. </p><p><span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Mă Tàitai</em></span>
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- </p><p><span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Mă Mínglĭ Tàitai</em></span>
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- </p><p>The title "Miss" is <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Xiăojiĕ</em></span>. The Ma family's grown daughter, <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Défēn</em></span>, would be</p><p><span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Mă Xiăojiĕ</em></span></p><p><span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Mă Défēn Xiăojiĕ</em></span>
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- </p><p>Even traditionally, outside the People's Republic, a married woman does not take
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- her husband's name in the same sense as in our culture. If Miss Fang <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Băolán</em></span> marries Mr. <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Ma Mínglĭ</em></span>, she becomes Mrs,
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- <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Mă Mínglĭ</em></span>, but at the
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- same time she remains <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Fāng
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- Băolán</em></span>, She does not become <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Mă Băolán</em></span>; there is no equivalent of
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- "Mrs. Mary Smith." She may, however, add her husband's surname to her own full name
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- and refer to herself as <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Mă Fāng
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- Băolán</em></span>. At work she is quite likely to continue as Miss
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- <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Fāng</em></span>. </p><p>These customs regarding names are still observed by many Chinese today in various
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- parts of the world. The titles carry certain connotations, however, when used in the
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- PRC today: <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Tàitai</em></span> should
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- not be used because it designates that woman as a member of the leisure class.
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- <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Xiăojiĕ</em></span> should not be
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- used because it carries the connotation of being from a rich family. </p><p>In the People's Republic, the title "Comrade," <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Tóngzhì</em></span> is used in place of the
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- titles <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Xiānsheng</em></span>,
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- <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Tàitai</em></span>, and
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- <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Xiăojiĕ</em></span>.
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- <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Mă Mínglĭ</em></span> would
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- be:</p><p><span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Mă Tóngzhì</em></span></p><p><span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Mă Mínglĭ Tóngzhì</em></span></p><p>The title "Comrade" is applied to all, regardless of sex or marital status. A
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- married woman does not take her husband's name in any sense. <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Mă Mínglĭ</em></span>' s wife would be: </p><p><span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Fāng Tóngzhì</em></span>
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- </p><p><span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Fāng Băolán
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- Tóngzhì</em></span></p><p>Children may be given either the mother's or the father's surname at birth. In
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- some families one child has the father's surname, and another child has the mother's
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- surname. <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Mă Mínglĭ</em></span>'s and
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- <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Fāng Băolán</em></span>'s grown
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- daughter could be </p><p><span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Mă Tŏngzhì </em></span></p><p><span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Mă Dĕfēn Tóngzhì</em></span>
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- </p><p>Their grown son could be </p><p><span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Fāng Tóngzhì</em></span></p><p><span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Fāng Zìqiáng
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- Tóngzhì</em></span></p><p>Both in the PRC and elsewhere, of course, there are official titles and titles of
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- respect in addition to the common titles we have discussed here. Several of these
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- will be introduced later in the course. </p><p>The question of adapting foreign names to Chinese calls for special consideration.
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- In the People's Republic the policy is to assign Chinese phonetic equivalents to
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- foreign names. These approximations are often not as close phonetically as they
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- might be, since the choice of appropriate written characters may bring in
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- non-phonetic considerations. (An attempt is usually made when transliterating to use
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- characters with attractive meanings.) For the most part, the resulting names do not
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- at all resemble Chinese names. For example, the official version of "David Anderson"
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- is <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Dàiwĕi Āndésēn</em></span>. </p><p>An older approach, still in use outside the PRC, is to construct a valid Chinese
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- name that suggests the foreign name phonetically. For example, "David Anderson"
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- might be <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">An Dàwèi</em></span>. </p><p>Sometimes, when a foreign surname has the same meaning as a Chinese surname,
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- semantic suggestiveness is chosen over phonetic suggestiveness. For example,
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- <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Wáng</em></span>, a common Chinese
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- surname, means "king," so "Daniel King" might be rendered <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Wáng Dànián</em></span>. </p><p>Students in this course will be given both the official PRC phonetic equivalents
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- of their names and Chinese-style names.<span class="emphasis"><em/></span></p><div class="footnotes"><br/><hr/><div id="ftn.d0e616" class="footnote"><p><a href="#d0e616" class="para"><sup class="para">[2] </sup></a>The first version of each example is in the Pinyin system of romanization.
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- The second parenthesized version is the conventional, or anglicized,
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- spelling.</p></div></div></div></body></html>
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