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- <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>Background Notes: About Chinese</title><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.79.2"/><link rel="home" href="index.xhtml" title="Standard Chinese"/><link rel="up" href="pr03.xhtml" title="Introduction"/><link rel="prev" href="pr03.xhtml" title="Introduction"/><link rel="next" href="ch01.xhtml" title="Chapter 1. Module 1: Orientation"/></head><body><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.xhtml">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">Introduction</th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="ch01.xhtml">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr/></div><div class="section"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a id="d5e246"/>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 xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Pŭtōnghuà</em></span>, or "Standard Chinese"
- (literally "the common speech"). The more traditional term, still used in Taiwan, is
- <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Guóyŭ</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 xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Wú</em></span>), which includes the "Shanghai dialect"; Hunanese
- (<span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Xiāng</em></span>); the "Kiangsi
- dialect" (<span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Gàn</em></span>); Cantonese
- (<span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Yuè</em></span>), the language of
- <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Guăngdōng</em></span>, widely
- 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
- 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
- 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’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 xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">mǎi</em></span> and the verb "to sell,"
- <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">mài</em></span>, is the Low tone
- (<span xml:lang="cmn-Hani" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Hani" class="foreignphrase"> ̆</em></span>) and the Falling tone
- (<span xml:lang="cmn-Hani" class="foreignphrase"><em xml: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 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,"
- <span xml:lang="cmn-Hani" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Hani" class="foreignphrase">添</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 xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Hànyŭ</em></span>
- <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Pīnyīn</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>ü</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 xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">mā</em></span>
- </p><p>Falling: <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">mà</em></span>
- </p><p>Rising: <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">má</em></span>
- </p><p>Neutral: <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">ma</em></span>
- </p><p>Low: <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">mǎ</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 xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">kǒu</em></span>.
- Here it is as normally written, with the order and directions of the strokes
- indicated.</p><div class="figure"><a id="d5e306"/><p class="title"><strong>Figure 2. Strokes order</strong></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 id="d5e312"/><p class="title"><strong>Figure 3. Running style writing </strong></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
- — the first numbers you learn in this course — 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 id="d5e319"/><p class="title"><strong>Figure 4. Running style writing </strong></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 xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">yáng</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 xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">shuĭ</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 xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">yáng</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 xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">yáng</em></span> and means something like
- "water," is the word <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">yáng</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" id="d5e336"><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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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’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 — either the full name or the surname alone
- — 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>
- </p><p><span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Mă Mínglĭ Xiānsheng</em></span>
- </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>
- </p><p><span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Mă Mínglĭ Tàitai</em></span>
- </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>
- </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 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,
- <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Mă Mínglĭ</em></span>, but at the
- same time she remains <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Fāng
- 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
- "Mrs. Mary Smith." She may, however, add her husband's surname to her own full name
- and refer to herself as <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Mă Fāng
- Băolán</em></span>. At work she is quite likely to continue as Miss
- <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
- parts of the world. The titles carry certain connotations, however, when used in the
- PRC today: <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Tàitai</em></span> should
- not be used because it designates that woman as a member of the leisure class.
- <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Xiăojiĕ</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 xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Tóngzhì</em></span> is used in place of the
- titles <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Xiānsheng</em></span>,
- <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Tàitai</em></span>, and
- <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Xiăojiĕ</em></span>.
- <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Mă Mínglĭ</em></span> would
- 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
- 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>
- </p><p><span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Fāng Băolán
- Tóngzhì</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 xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Mă Mínglĭ</em></span>'s and
- <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Fāng Băolán</em></span>'s grown
- 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>
- </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
- Tóngzhì</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 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
- name that suggests the foreign name phonetically. For example, "David Anderson"
- 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,
- semantic suggestiveness is chosen over phonetic suggestiveness. For example,
- <span xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase"><em xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin" class="foreignphrase">Wáng</em></span>, a common Chinese
- 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
- of their names and Chinese-style names.<span class="emphasis"><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.xhtml">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="pr03.xhtml">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="ch01.xhtml">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">Introduction </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="index.xhtml">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> Chapter 1. Module 1: Orientation</td></tr></table></div></body></html>
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