Pinyin in the kitchen
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[This is a guest post by David Moser]
We're in the midst of moving to a new apartment. Yuck. So I'm packing boxes with our ayi, who is from Anhui province, and has been helping us with cooking and cleaning house for a few years now. I think she has at least a middle school education, but probably high school as well.
So we're in the kitchen, and want to mark the cardboard boxes with the kitchen utensils in it. I hand her the magic marker and ask her to label the boxes with the word chu2fang2. I notice her holding the marker, waving her hand a bit… and yep, 提笔忘字, she couldn't remember how to write the character. She slaps her forehead in embarrassment, and sheepishly hands the marker to me. "Lai," she says, "Ni kending hui xie." So I grab the marker, and then realize I only remember a few of the components for chu2, "Let's see, a 厂 on top, a 豆 is in there, right? And something to the right of it…." Can't quite retrieve it. So I'm reaching for my cell phone to consult Pleco, but then it occurs to me: Can ayi write it in pinyin? So I ask her to write it in pinyin instead. At first she says "Wo de pinyin bu hao!", but insist that she try. She repeats the first character a few times "chu2…chu2…chu2", and then writes out "chu fng", missing the 'a' in "fang". When I say "You're missing a letter!" she quickly fills in the missing 'a'.
Typical, I know. But just add it into the category of "What kind of a writing system would flummox a native speaker of Chinese, and a foreign Ph.D. in Chinese Studies who has been learning for 30 years, in trying to write an incredibly common word like 'kitchen'???"
Given that both us could both read — and write — pinyin, why in the world were we even struggling with the Chinese characters to begin with?
Notes [VHM]:
āyí 阿姨 ("aunt; auntie; aunty; nanny; maid", etc.)
chúfáng 厨房 ("kitchen")
tí bǐ wàng zì 提笔忘字 ("pick up the pen but forget the character[s]"); some people use this for "character amnesia"
"Lai," she says, "Ni kending hui xie." ("Here / C'mon, you certainly can write it".)
Cf. "Dumpling ingredients and character amnesia" (10/18/14).
Jerry Friedman said,
October 16, 2016 @ 11:46 am
In what kind of writing system would native speakers misspell incredibly common words such as "its", "it's", "there", "their", "they're", etc.?
"Pick up the pen but forget the character(s)." People could just say "Forget the character(s)." I'm sure English has sayings with unnecessary rhetorical flourishes like that, but I put my hands on the keyboard and forgot the examples.
Victor Mair said,
October 16, 2016 @ 11:58 am
@Jerry Friedman
It's not a question of misspelling; it's a question of not being able to write the character at all.
Character amnesia (forgetting how to write characters) is totally different from lack of rhetorical skill.
unekdoud said,
October 16, 2016 @ 12:09 pm
In this case I'd say both of you (David Moser and ayi) were thinking inside the box. You can read 厨 perfectly well without knowing the last component (it's certainly unambiguous next to 房), so why not omit it, or put a scribble there, or a question mark? But this is informal use and you're just labeling a box, so you could draw a fork and spoon, which is no more difficult than doing these Chinese writing gymnastics, and is universal even for those who don't know any Chinese.
Jerry Friedman said,
October 16, 2016 @ 12:35 pm
Prof. Mair: Sorry to be unclear. I did understand that both David Moser and the ayi forgot the character, which is different from misspelling. I was just making a comment on our script.
Likewise I didn't mean to say anything about anybody's rhetorical skill or make any connection between the rhetoric of the phrase the ayi used and anybody's forgetting the character. I was just trying to come up with an English parallel.
Jerry Friedman said,
October 16, 2016 @ 12:36 pm
I mean, a comment on our writing system. (My first paragraph above.)
David Moser said,
October 16, 2016 @ 8:18 pm
@unekdoud Nice pun, there! Yes, but actually we were "thinking outside the box" about how to write "kitchen" on the outside of the box. And you're right, the "solution" that is usually employed is to scribble something that looks roughly like the target character. But how far do we go in making excuses for a writing system that so often fails to perform one of the functions that writing systems are supposed to, namely, to enable all users to write down what they want to say?
Elessorn said,
October 16, 2016 @ 11:21 pm
@David Moser
But just add it into the category of "What kind of a writing system would flummox a native speaker of Chinese, and a foreign Ph.D. in Chinese Studies who has been learning for 30 years, in trying to write an incredibly common word like 'kitchen'???"
I don't begrudge you your opinion on characters, but I submit this is misleading.
I'm sure you're aware that the difficulty stems from (1) the mismatch between (what seems like) the phonetic component 豆＋寸 and the rime of the pronunciation chú, plus (2) the fact that 豆 alone is a far more common and reliable phonetic complement for the rime -ou (e.g. 頭, 逗).
But 厨 is actually a simplification of 廚, whose phonetic complement 壴 does pair it more accurately with words like 樹 shù (though not in the PRC, where this has been simplified alternatively to 树). In any case, the original phonetic complement 壴 is uncommon enough to give trouble all on its own.
So: you have an originally meaningful "spelling" (phonetic complement 壴) lost to a "spelling reform" (simplification to 豆＋寸) that inadvertently exposed it to interference from a different but graphically similar and more common "spelling" (phonetic complement 豆).
In other words, not that different from the situation that makes "believe" hard to spell despite its frequency in English.
Call it crazy a priori if you like, but "common" doesn't figure into it. Even in alphabetic systems, after all, the commonness of the word "kitchen" (or any word) in discourse is no reliable index to the predicted transparency of its spelling– the English word "kitchen" itself being a good example, come to think of it.
Elessorn said,
October 16, 2016 @ 11:25 pm
(no edit button)
"phonetic complement 壴" should be "phonetic complement 尌"
Apologies.
flow said,
October 17, 2016 @ 6:31 am
@Elessorn I agree with you in principle that PRC 'simplified characters' are not necessarily simpler than the 'more complete' 'traditional' forms; yet things are rather more complicated.
For one thing, many PRC forms have century long histories, whereas not a small number of decidedly 'traditional' forms really originate more or less in the KangXi Dictionary's promulgation of hypercorrected forms (that purport to be correct renderings of Shuowen character structures, in itself a questionable goal, which has not been done consistently, and at any rate relies on forms whose authenticity is at times questionable).
To keep this brief, head over to http://shufa.guoxuedashi.com/5EDA/ and compare the calligraphic samples with both 厨 and 廚. I did a quick check with dictionaries originating from Japan and Hong Kong, and I think you will agree that 厨 is by no means an invention of the PRC writing reform committee. I mean I do not personally favor PRC character forms, I may agree that the character for kitchen should historically rather have 壴 than 豆, and that the former is rather the better phonetic element in this case. But historically, writing 厂豆寸 instead of 广壴寸 people in fact did.
flow said,
October 17, 2016 @ 6:48 am
Update: The rather impressive Database of Stone Rubbings 拓本文字データベース has many more examples at http://coe21.zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/djvuchar?query=%E5%BB%9A
Observe that although 廚 and 厨 are apparently treated as two distinct variant forms in that database, the exhibits are in fact not cleanly sorted between the two. I count 13 'traditional' : 41 'simplified' : 6 unclear : 60 forms altogether in that sample, with 厨 winning 3 : 1 (now someone go and provide years for all the exhibits to make this meaningful, but my guess is we're looking at primarily Jin/Tang to Qing times calligraphy here).
Simon P said,
October 17, 2016 @ 6:49 am
@Elessorn
The critical difference is that even when she misspelled the pinyin, she managed to write it. With the characters, though, she was completely stumped and then handed over the pen. I've had similar such episodes, where I cannot put down even the first stroke of a character.
Victor Mair said,
October 17, 2016 @ 8:20 am
@Simon P
Touché!
@flow
Thank you very much for the deeper and more finely grained elucidation of the "simplified" and "traditional" characters used to write the first syllable of the Mandarin word for "kitchen".
Wang Yujiang said,
October 17, 2016 @ 9:07 am
@David Moser
(Given that both us could both read — and write — pinyin, why in the world were we even struggling with the Chinese characters to begin with?)
Before Cultural Revolution, the leading linguists in China, like Lu Shuxiang 吕叔湘 Zhou Youguang周有光, knew the gap between Chinese and English, and then the government supports the writing reform (adopting pinyin).
Now the mainstream of Chinese linguistics does not know the gap, so the adopting pinyin stopped. If they knew, the government would support adopting immediately.
I believe that day is coming soon because more and more Chinese people go abroad and more and more foreigners like you live in China after reopening.
FM said,
October 17, 2016 @ 9:32 am
This is not exactly relevant, but in these Chinese character posts I always have trouble magnifying the characters to where I can actually see the radicals. This time I finally found the solution to my problems:
http://bigtextbox.com/
Victor Mair said,
October 17, 2016 @ 12:35 pm
@FM
bigtextbox is cool!
I use an old fashioned, but high quality, magnifying glass.
Alex said,
October 17, 2016 @ 8:29 pm
Another example that i encounter fairly regularly on the reading literacy (so perhaps I dont believe the numbers) is that to go to many places at night I use large chinese character address images. I do this because many taxi drivers do not have good vision. Or if I am walking around looking for somewhere.
Many guards take a look and say can you just tell me after i show them the address. The issue is I cant read some of the names of the roads too.
Elessorn said,
October 17, 2016 @ 8:31 pm
@flow
Yes, you're definitely right about that, and I should have clarified that by "simplified" I wasn't specifically referring to the Big One. After all, Japanese uses the same simplified form, too.
@Simon P
So I take it you concede the point, then? That the claim was misleading?
Victor Mair said,
October 18, 2016 @ 7:43 am
@Elessorn, asking Simon P
"the claim was misleading?"
It's not a question of misspelling / miswriting; it's a question of coming up empty, i.e., failing to write the character altogether.
Usually Dainichi said,
October 18, 2016 @ 5:42 pm
Simon P:
"The critical difference is that even when she misspelled the pinyin, she managed to write it. With the characters, though, she was completely stumped and then handed over the pen."
That's a false comparison. She was urged to try to write the Pinyin, but not the character, at least if I'm correct that there's an "I" missing in "but [] insist that she try". It's quite possible that she might have been able to write, say, 厨 with a ? instead of the 寸.
SB said,
October 19, 2016 @ 1:35 am
The notes don't translate "Wo de pinyin bu hao", but I'm going to guess from my extremely rudimentary Mandarin that it means "my pinyin [is] not good".
Elessorn said,
October 19, 2016 @ 8:27 am
@Victor Mair
To requote David Moser::
But just add it into the category of "What kind of a writing system would flummox a native speaker of Chinese, and a foreign Ph.D. in Chinese Studies who has been learning for 30 years, in trying to write an incredibly common word like 'kitchen'???"
To quote myself:
Call it crazy a priori if you like, but "common" doesn't figure into it. Even in alphabetic systems, after all, the commonness of the word "kitchen" (or any word) in discourse is no reliable index to the predicted transparency of its spelling– the English word "kitchen" itself being a good example, come to think of it.
Let him object if he will, but I think it's absolutely fair to say that Moser's implicit proposition in the above quote can be accurately paraphrased: "(1) Common words should be easy to write. (2) The fact that even common words can be hard to write in Chinese characters is a significant mark against them."
The first might be argued for as a normative principle, and it might hold true in general as a statistical trend, but as a descriptive principle it's obviously wrong. You know it's wrong. Moser knows it's wrong, Every English speaker knows it's wrong. Who would argue that "through" is a common word? Who would deny it's kinda hard to spell? The alchemy of sound change and orthographic conservatism creates hard-to-spell words in the strangest of places.
@Simon P and you are essentially arguing, "but that's not the point. The point is that she couldn't write something "
I submit this is questionable philology. Surely you would never dream of suggesting that academic articles, for example, should be evaluated by "what they really meant to say" rather than by what they actually argue?
Victor Mair said,
October 19, 2016 @ 10:25 am
@Elessorn
There are a lot of presumptions and ex cathedra statements in what you have written, so many that it's not worth pointing them out.
When you wrote, "Who would argue that 'through' is a common word?", did you mean "Who would argue that 'through' is not a common word?"?