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   <title xmlns:ng="http://docbook.org/docbook-ng">Background Notes: About Chinese</title><meta xmlns:ng="http://docbook.org/docbook-ng" name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.79.2"><link rel="home" href="index.html" title="Standard Chinese"><link rel="up" href="pr03.html" title="Introduction"><link rel="prev" href="pr03.html" title="Introduction"><link rel="next" href="ch01.html" title="Chapter&nbsp;1.&nbsp;Module 1: Orientation"></head><body bgcolor="white" text="black" link="#0000FF" vlink="#840084" alink="#0000FF"><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">Background Notes: About Chinese</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="pr03.html">Prev</a>&nbsp;</td><th width="60%" align="center">Introduction</th><td width="20%" align="right">&nbsp;<a accesskey="n" href="ch01.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr></div><div class="section"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="d5e246"></a>Background Notes: About Chinese</h2></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,
                for example, that the people of China speak different dialects of Chinese, and that
                Confucius wrote in an ancient form of Chinese. On the other hand, we would never
                think of saying that the people of Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal speak dialects
                of one language, and that Julius Caesar wrote in an ancient form of that language.
                But the facts are almost exactly parallel.</p><p>Therefore, in terms of what we think of as a language when closer to home,
                "Chinese" is not one language, but a family of languages. The language of Confucius
                is partway up the trunk of the family tree. Like Latin, it lived on as a literary
                language long after its death as a spoken language in popular use. The seven modern
                languages of China, traditionally known as the "dialects," are the branches of the
                tree. They share as strong a family resemblance as do Italian, French, Spanish, and
                Portuguese, and are about as different from one another. </p><p>The predominant language of China is now known as <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">P&#365;t&#333;nghu&agrave;</em></span>, or "Standard Chinese"
                (literally "the common speech"). The more traditional term, still used in Taiwan, is
                    <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Gu&oacute;y&#365;</em></span>, or "Mandarin"
                (literally "the national language"). Standard Chinese is spoken natively by almost
                two-thirds of the population of China and throughout the greater part of the
                country. </p><p>The term "Standard Chinese" is often used more narrowly to refer to the true
                national language which is emerging. This language, which is already the language of
                all national broadcasting, is based primarily on the Peking dialect, but takes in
                elements from other dialects of Standard Chinese and even from other Chinese
                languages. Like many national languages, it is more widely understood than spoken,
                and is often spoken with some concessions to local speech, particularly in
                pronunciation. </p><p>The Chinese languages and their dialects differ far more in pronunciation than in
                grammar and vocabulary. What distinguishes Standard Chinese most from the other
                Chinese languages, for example, is that it has the fewest tones and the fewest final
                consonants. </p><p>The remaining six Chinese languages, spoken by approximately a quarter of the
                population of China, are tightly grouped in the southeast, below the Yangtze River.
                The six are: the Wu group (<span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">W&uacute;</em></span>), which includes the "Shanghai dialect"; Hunanese
                    (<span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Xi&#257;ng</em></span>); the "Kiangsi
                dialect" (<span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">G&agrave;n</em></span>); Cantonese
                    (<span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Yu&egrave;</em></span>), the language of
                    <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Gu&#259;ngd&#333;ng</em></span>, widely
                spoken in Chinese communities in the United States; Fukienese (<span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">M&#301;n</em></span>), a variant of which is spoken by
                a majority on Taiwan and hence called Taiwanese; and Hakka (<span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">K&egrave;ji&#257;</em></span>), spoken in a belt above the
                Cantonese area, as well as by a minority on Taiwan. Cantonese, Fukienese, and Hakka
                are also widely spoken throughout Southeast Asia. </p><p>There are minority ethnic groups in China who speak non-Chinese languages. Some of
                these, such as Tibetan, are distantly related to the Chinese languages. Others, such
                as Mongolian, are entirely unrelated. </p><p><span class="bold"><strong>Some Characteristics of Chinese</strong></span>
            </p><p>To us, perhaps the roost striking feature of spoken Chinese is the use of
                variation in tone ("tones" to distinguish the different meanings of syllables which
                would otherwise sound alike. All languages, and Chinese is no exception, make use of
                sentence intonation to indicate how whole sentences are to be understood. In
                English, for example, the rising pattern in "He&#8217;s gone?" tells us that the sentence
                is meant as a question. The Chinese tones, however, are quite a different matter.
                They belong to individual syllables, not to the sentence as a whole. An inherent
                part of each Standard Chinese syllable is one of four distinctive tones. The tone
                does just as much to distinguish the syllable as do the consonants and vowels. For
                example, the only difference between the verb "to buy," <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">m&#462;i</em></span> and the verb "to sell,"
                    <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">m&agrave;i</em></span>, is the Low tone
                    (<span lang="cmn-Hani" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Hani" class="foreignphrase"> &#774;</em></span>) and the Falling tone
                    (<span lang="cmn-Hani" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Hani" class="foreignphrase">`</em></span>). And yet these words are
                Just as distinguishable as our words "buy" and "guy," or "buy" and "boy." Apart from
                the tones, the sound system of Standard Chinese is no more different from English
                than French is. </p><p>Word formation in Standard Chinese is relatively simple. For one thing, there are
                no conjugations such as are found in many European languages. Chinese verbs have
                fewer forms than English verbs, and nowhere near as many irregularities. Chinese
                grammar relies heavily on word order, and often the word order is the same as in
                English. For these reasons Chinese is not as difficult for Americans to learn to
                speak as one might think. </p><p>It is often said that Chinese is a monosyllabic language. This notion contains a
                good deal of truth. It has been found that, on the average, every other word in
                ordinary conversation is a single-syllable word. Moreover, although most words in
                the dictionary have two syllables, and some have more, these words can almost always
                be broken down into single-syllable units of meaning, many of which can stand alone
                as words. </p><p><span class="bold"><strong>Written Chinese</strong></span>
            </p><p>Most languages with which we are familiar are written with an alphabet. The
                letters may be different from ours, as in the Greek alphabet, but the principle is
                the same: one letter for each consonant or vowel sound, more or less. Chinese,
                however, is written with "characters" which stand for whole syllables -- in fact,
                for whole syllables with particular meanings. Although there are only about thirteen
                hundred phonetically distinct syllables in standard Chinese, there are several
                thousand Chinese characters in everyday use, essentially one for each
                single-syllable unit of meaning. This means that many words have the same
                pronunciation but are written with different characters, as <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">ti&#257;n</em></span>, "sky," <span lang="cmn-Hani" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Hani" class="foreignphrase">&#22825;</em></span>, and <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">ti&#257;n</em></span>, "to add," "to increase,"
                    <span lang="cmn-Hani" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Hani" class="foreignphrase">&#28155;</em></span>. Chinese characters are
                often referred to as "ideographs" which suggests that they stand directly for ideas.
                But this is misleading. It is better to think of them as standing for the meaningful
                syllables of the spoken language. </p><p>Minimal literacy in Chinese calls for knowing about a thousand characters. These
                thousand characters, in combination, give a reading vocabulary of several thousand
                words. Full literacy calls for knowing some three thousand characters. In order to
                reduce the amount of time needed to learn characters, there has been a vast
                extension in the People's Republic of China (PRC) of the principle of character
                simplification, which has reduced the average number of strokes per character by
                half. </p><p>During the past century, various systems have been proposed for representing the
                sounds of Chinese with letters of the Roman alphabet. One of these romanizations,
                    <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">H&agrave;ny&#365;</em></span>
                <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">P&#299;ny&#299;n</em></span> (literally "Chinese
                Language Spelling," generally called "Pinyin" in English), has been adopted
                officially in the PRC, with the short-term goal of teaching all students the
                Standard Chinese pronunciation of characters. A long-range goal is the use of Pinyin
                for written communication throughout the country. This is not possible, of course,
                until speakers across the nation have uniform pronunciations of Standard Chinese.
                For the time being, characters, which represent meaning, not pronunciation, are
                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>&uuml;</strong></span>." The
                spellings of some of the consonant sounds are rather arbitrary from our point of
                view, but for every consonant sound there is only one letter or one combination of
                letters, and vice versa. You will find that each vowel letter can stand for
                different vowel sounds, depending on what letters precede or follow it in the
                syllable. The four tones are indicated by accent marks over the vowels, and the
                Neutral tone by the absence of an accent mark: </p><p>High: <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">m&#257;</em></span>
            </p><p>Falling: <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">m&agrave;</em></span>
            </p><p>Rising: <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">m&aacute;</em></span>
            </p><p>Neutral: <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">ma</em></span>
            </p><p>Low: <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">m&#462;</em></span>
            </p><p>One reason often given for the retention of characters is that they can be read,
                with the local pronunciation, by speakers of all the Chinese languages. Probably a
                stronger reason for retaining them is that the characters help keep alive
                distinctions of meaning between words, and connections of meaning between words,
                which are fading in the spoken language. On the other hand, a Cantonese could learn
                to speak Standard Chinese, and read it alphabetically, at least as easily as he can
                learn several thousand characters. </p><p>Pinyin is used throughout this course to provide a simple written representation
                of pronunciation. The characters, which are chiefly responsible for the reputation
                of Chinese as a difficult language, are taught separately. </p><p><span class="bold"><strong>BACKGROUND NOTES: ABOUT CHINESE CHARACTERS</strong></span>
            </p><p>Each Chinese character is written as a fixed sequence of strokes. There are very
                few basic types of strokes, each with its own prescribed direction, length, and
                contour. The dynamics of these strokes as written with a brush, the classical
                writing instrument, show up clearly even in printed characters. You can tell from
                the varying thickness of the stroke how the brush met the paper, how it swooped, and
                how it lifted; these effects are largely lost in characters written with a
                ball-point pen. </p><p>The sequence of strokes is of particular importance. Let's take the character for
                "mouth," pronounced <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">k&#466;u</em></span>.
                Here it is as normally written, with the order and directions of the strokes
                indicated.</p><div class="figure"><a name="d5e306"></a><p class="title"><b>Figure&nbsp;2.&nbsp;Strokes order</b></p><div class="figure-contents"><div class="mediaobject" align="center"><img src="../../FSI-Chinese-MOD1-Textbook/Images/0021-FSI-StandardChinese-Module01ORN-StudentText-4.png" align="middle" alt="Strokes order"></div></div></div><br class="figure-break"><p>If the character is written rapidly, in "running-style writing," one stroke glides
                into the next, like this. </p><div class="figure"><a name="d5e312"></a><p class="title"><b>Figure&nbsp;3.&nbsp;Running style writing </b></p><div class="figure-contents"><div class="mediaobject" align="center"><img src="../../FSI-Chinese-MOD1-Textbook/Images/0021-FSI-StandardChinese-Module01ORN-StudentText-11.png" align="middle" alt="Running style writing"></div></div></div><br class="figure-break"><p>If the strokes were written in any but the proper order, quite different
                distortions would take place as each stroke reflected the last and anticipated the
                next, and the character would be illegible.</p><p>The earliest surviving Chinese characters, inscribed on the Shang Dynasty "oracle
                bones" of about 1500 B.C. , already included characters that vent beyond simple
                pictorial representation. There are some characters in use today which are
                pictorial, like the character for "mouth." There are also some which are directly
                symbolic, like our Roman numerals I, II, and III. (The characters for these numbers
                &#8212; the first numbers you learn in this course &#8212; are like the Roman numerals turned on
                their sides.) There are some which are indirectly symbolic, like our Arabic numerals
                1,2, and 3. But the most common type of character is complex, consisting of two
                parts: a "phonetic," which suggests the pronunciation, and a "radical," which
                broadly characterizes the meaning. Let's take the following character as an example. </p><div class="figure"><a name="d5e319"></a><p class="title"><b>Figure&nbsp;4.&nbsp;Running style writing </b></p><div class="figure-contents"><div class="mediaobject" align="center"><img src="../../FSI-Chinese-MOD1-Textbook/Images/0021-FSI-StandardChinese-Module01ORN-StudentText-5.png" align="middle" alt="Running style writing"></div></div></div><br class="figure-break"><p>This character means "ocean" and is pronounced <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">y&aacute;ng</em></span>. The left side of the character,
                the three short strokes, is an abbreviation of a character which means "water" and
                is pronounced <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">shu&#301;</em></span>. This
                is the "radical." It has been borrowed only for its meaning, "water." The right side
                of the character above is a character which means "sheep" and is pronounced yang.
                This is the "phonetic." It has been borrowed only for its sound value,
                    <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">y&aacute;ng</em></span>. A speaker of
                Chinese encountering the above character for the first time could probably figure
                out that the only Chinese word that sounds like <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">y&aacute;ng</em></span> and means something like
                "water," is the word <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">y&aacute;ng</em></span>
                meaning "ocean," We, as speakers of English, might not be able to figure it out.
                Moreover, phonetics and radicals seldom work as neatly as in this example. But we
                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
                of the two dictionary systems used, there are 176 radicals; in the other system,
                there are 2l4. There are over a thousand phonetics.</p><p>Chinese has traditionally been written vertically, from top to bottom of the page,
                starting on the right-hand side, with the pages bound so that the first page is
                where we would expect the last page to be. Nowadays, however, many Chinese
                publications paginate like Western publications, and the characters are written
                horizontally, from left to right.</p><p><span class="bold"><strong>BACKGROUND NOTES: ABOUT CHINESE PERSONAL NAMES AND TITLES
                </strong></span></p><p>A Chinese personal name consists of two parts: a surname and a given name. There
                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
                a two-syllable given name:<a href="#ftn.d5e336" class="footnote" name="d5e336"><sup class="footnote">[2]</sup></a></p><p><span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">M&aacute;o Z&eacute;d&#333;ng</em></span> (Mao
                Tse-tung)</p><p><span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Zh&#333;u Enl&aacute;i</em></span> (Chou
                En-lai)</p><p><span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Ji&#462;ng Ji&egrave;sh&iacute;</em></span> (Chiang
                Kai-shek)</p><p><span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">S&ograve;ng Q&igrave;ngl&iacute;ng</em></span> (Soong
                Ch'ing-ling --- Mme Sun Yat-sen)</p><p><span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">S&ograve;ng M&#277;il&iacute;ng</em></span> (Soong
                Mei-ling--Mme Chiang Kai-shek)</p><p>It is not uncommon, however, for the given name to consist of a single
                syllable:</p><p><span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Zh&#365; D&#277;</em></span> (Chu Teh) </p><p><span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">L&iacute;n Bi&#257;o</em></span> (Lin Piao) </p><p><span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">H&uacute; Sh&igrave;</em></span> (Hu Shih) </p><p><span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Jiang Q&#301;ng</em></span> (Chiang
                Ch'ing&#8212;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 lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">S&#299;m&#259; Gu&#257;ng</em></span> (Ssu-ma
                Kuang) </p><p><span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">&#332;uy&aacute;ng Xi&#363;</em></span> (Ou-yang
                Hsiu) </p><p><span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Zh&#363;g&#277; Li&agrave;ng</em></span> (Chu-ke
                Liang) </p><p>But two-syllable surnames may also be followed by two-syllable given names:</p><p><span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">S&#299;m&#259; Xi&#257;ngr&uacute;</em></span> (Ssu-ma
                Hsiang-ju) </p><p>An exhaustive list of Chinese surnames includes several hundred written with a
                single character and several dozen written with two characters. Some single-syllable
                surnames sound exactly alike although written with different characters, and to
                distinguish them, the Chinese nay occasionally have to describe the character or
                "write" it with a finger on the palm of a hand. But the surnames that you are likely
                to encounter are fever than a hundred, and a handful of these are so common that
                they account for a good majority of China&#8217;s population. </p><p>Given names, as opposed to surnames, are not restricted to a limited list of
                characters, Men's names are often but not always distinguishable from women's; the
                difference, however, usually lies in the meaning of the characters and so is not
                readily apparent to the beginning student with a limited knowledge of
                characters.</p><p>Outside the People's Republic the traditional system of titles is still in use.
                These titles closely parallel our own "Mr.," "Mrs.," and "Miss." Notice, however,
                that all Chinese titles follow the name &#8212; either the full name or the surname alone
                &#8212; rather than preceding it.</p><p>The title "Mr." is <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Xi&#257;nsheng</em></span>. </p><p><span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">M&#259; Xi&#257;nsheng</em></span>
            </p><p><span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">M&#259; M&iacute;ngl&#301; Xi&#257;nsheng</em></span>
            </p><p>The title "Mrs." is <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">T&agrave;itai</em></span>. It follows the husband's full name or surname alone. </p><p><span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">M&#259; T&agrave;itai</em></span>
            </p><p><span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">M&#259; M&iacute;ngl&#301; T&agrave;itai</em></span>
            </p><p>The title "Miss" is <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Xi&#259;oji&#277;</em></span>. The Ma family's grown daughter, <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">D&eacute;f&#275;n</em></span>, would be</p><p><span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">M&#259; Xi&#259;oji&#277;</em></span></p><p><span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">M&#259; D&eacute;f&#275;n Xi&#259;oji&#277;</em></span>
            </p><p>Even traditionally, outside the People's Republic, a married woman does not take
                her husband's name in the same sense as in our culture. If Miss Fang <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">B&#259;ol&aacute;n</em></span> marries Mr. <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Ma M&iacute;ngl&#301;</em></span>, she becomes Mrs,
                    <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">M&#259; M&iacute;ngl&#301;</em></span>, but at the
                same time she remains <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">F&#257;ng
                    B&#259;ol&aacute;n</em></span>, She does not become <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">M&#259; B&#259;ol&aacute;n</em></span>; there is no equivalent of
                "Mrs. Mary Smith." She may, however, add her husband's surname to her own full name
                and refer to herself as <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">M&#259; F&#257;ng
                    B&#259;ol&aacute;n</em></span>. At work she is quite likely to continue as Miss
                    <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">F&#257;ng</em></span>. </p><p>These customs regarding names are still observed by many Chinese today in various
                parts of the world. The titles carry certain connotations, however, when used in the
                PRC today: <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">T&agrave;itai</em></span> should
                not be used because it designates that woman as a member of the leisure class.
                    <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Xi&#259;oji&#277;</em></span> should not be
                used because it carries the connotation of being from a rich family. </p><p>In the People's Republic, the title "Comrade," <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">T&oacute;ngzh&igrave;</em></span> is used in place of the
                titles <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Xi&#257;nsheng</em></span>,
                    <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">T&agrave;itai</em></span>, and
                    <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Xi&#259;oji&#277;</em></span>.
                    <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">M&#259; M&iacute;ngl&#301;</em></span> would
                be:</p><p><span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">M&#259; T&oacute;ngzh&igrave;</em></span></p><p><span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">M&#259; M&iacute;ngl&#301; T&oacute;ngzh&igrave;</em></span></p><p>The title "Comrade" is applied to all, regardless of sex or marital status. A
                married woman does not take her husband's name in any sense. <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">M&#259; M&iacute;ngl&#301;</em></span>' s wife would be: </p><p><span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">F&#257;ng T&oacute;ngzh&igrave;</em></span>
            </p><p><span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">F&#257;ng B&#259;ol&aacute;n
                T&oacute;ngzh&igrave;</em></span></p><p>Children may be given either the mother's or the father's surname at birth. In
                some families one child has the father's surname, and another child has the mother's
                surname. <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">M&#259; M&iacute;ngl&#301;</em></span>'s and
                    <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">F&#257;ng B&#259;ol&aacute;n</em></span>'s grown
                daughter could be </p><p><span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">M&#259; T&#335;ngzh&igrave; </em></span></p><p><span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">M&#259; D&#277;f&#275;n T&oacute;ngzh&igrave;</em></span>
            </p><p>Their grown son could be </p><p><span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">F&#257;ng T&oacute;ngzh&igrave;</em></span></p><p><span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">F&#257;ng Z&igrave;qi&aacute;ng
                T&oacute;ngzh&igrave;</em></span></p><p>Both in the PRC and elsewhere, of course, there are official titles and titles of
                respect in addition to the common titles we have discussed here. Several of these
                will be introduced later in the course. </p><p>The question of adapting foreign names to Chinese calls for special consideration.
                In the People's Republic the policy is to assign Chinese phonetic equivalents to
                foreign names. These approximations are often not as close phonetically as they
                might be, since the choice of appropriate written characters may bring in
                non-phonetic considerations. (An attempt is usually made when transliterating to use
                characters with attractive meanings.) For the most part, the resulting names do not
                at all resemble Chinese names. For example, the official version of "David Anderson"
                is <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">D&agrave;iw&#277;i &#256;nd&eacute;s&#275;n</em></span>. </p><p>An older approach, still in use outside the PRC, is to construct a valid Chinese
                name that suggests the foreign name phonetically. For example, "David Anderson"
                might be <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">An D&agrave;w&egrave;i</em></span>. </p><p>Sometimes, when a foreign surname has the same meaning as a Chinese surname,
                semantic suggestiveness is chosen over phonetic suggestiveness. For example,
                    <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">W&aacute;ng</em></span>, a common Chinese
                surname, means "king," so "Daniel King" might be rendered <span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">W&aacute;ng D&agrave;ni&aacute;n</em></span>. </p><p>Students in this course will be given both the official PRC phonetic equivalents
                of their names and Chinese-style names.<span class="emphasis"><em></em></span></p><div class="footnotes"><br><hr style="width:100; text-align:left;margin-left: 0"><div id="ftn.d5e336" class="footnote"><p><a href="#d5e336" class="para"><sup class="para">[2] </sup></a>The first version of each example is in the Pinyin system of romanization.
                        The second parenthesized version is the conventional, or anglicized,
                        spelling.</p></div></div></div><div class="navfooter"><hr><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="pr03.html">Prev</a>&nbsp;</td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="pr03.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right">&nbsp;<a accesskey="n" href="ch01.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">Introduction&nbsp;</td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top">&nbsp;Chapter&nbsp;1.&nbsp;Module 1: Orientation</td></tr></table></div></body></html>