Mistakes in English and in Chinese
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I'm reading Paul Midler's What's Wrong with China (Hoboken, NJ: 2018). Midler has spent two decades as a business consultant in East Asia and speaks Mandarin. His book is replete with penetrating observations about many aspects of society and culture and is solidly based on extensive first-hand experience and deep learning in Chinese history. Its pages are filled with keen observations about language usage in China, but it was only when I got near the very end of the book (p. 224) that I was caught up short by this paragraph:
I have long been curious about a specific cultural difference having to do with language: In the United States, there is a tendency to judge a person's education level by mistakes made in speech, filtering out the good parts. Chinese, quite the opposite, tend to give a speaker the benefit of the doubt and focus only on high-water marks. In the United States, a basic grammatical error might be interpreted as a sign of poor education. In China, mistakes matter not at all. You can trip all over yourself in the linguistic sense, yet be redeemed by tactfully dropping a bit of erudition–an obscure idiom or a line from Confucius usually does the trick. Related to this culture quirk, Chinese in general lay heavy emphasis on showcase achievements at the expense of overall performance."
Since we often point out mistakes in grammar and punctuation here on Language Log, I stepped back and thought about Midler's claim. Upon reflection, I have to agree with Midler that in English we can spend an inordinate amount of time concentrating on the nature and implications of a single error, whereas Chinese usually don't pay attention to them, unless (as I will demonstrate in a forthcoming post about the mispronunciation of a single syllable in the name of the President of the PRC), it is thought to have great political or social consequences.
Meanwhile, it is quite true — as Midler indicates — that if you toss in a literary set phrase (chéngyǔ 成語 / 成语) or classical allusion here and there (one every five or six sentences is plenty enough), you can redeem yourself from endless bungling of tones, syntax, and just about all other aspects of speech. Even if they're not perfectly appropriate to the circumstances, the mere fact that you can rattle off expressions like sàiwēngshīmǎ 塞翁失馬 ("the old man of the passes loses his horse" –> "blessing in disguise") or huàshétiānzú 畫蛇添足 ("drawing a snake and adding legs" –> "gilding the lily; superfluity") will impress your auditors no end, particularly since few Chinese use these pedantic expressions much any longer. Some folks, as I will show in another upcoming post, ridicule the overuse of fixed, four-character expressions.
Laura Morland said,
February 13, 2018 @ 8:52 pm
In a lesser fashion, I believe that the French are closer to the Chinese than to Americans. I live in France half the year, but didn't speak the language until I was 45, and so I naturally make mistakes in pronunciation as well as grammar.
But I *have* mastered the subjunctive (which is, sadly, going out of style), and being able to reeling off phrases like "il faut qu'elle revienne avant que le facteur n'arrive" seems to impress my interlocutors enough that they dock fewer points for my errors.
Victor Mair said,
February 13, 2018 @ 9:07 pm
Note that, in the French sentence quoted by Laura, a negative is used — "doesn't arrive" — where English uses a positive construction. When I was learning French ages ago, I often puzzled over the different mindsets that would lead to such opposite solutions to the same problem of referring to the time before something happens.
Steve Kass said,
February 13, 2018 @ 10:04 pm
The “ne” in Laura’s sentence isn’t really a negative. It’s the “ne expletive.” A negative would require both “ne’ and “pas.” http://bdl.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/bdl/gabarit_bdl.asp?id=2467
John Rohsenow said,
February 13, 2018 @ 10:39 pm
I'm assuming that Midler is talking about native speakers of (Mandarin)
Chinese, and not about their reactions to how we guai-lo speak.
Harking back to Paul Kratochvil's1968 "The Chinese Language Today: Features of an EMERGING Standard" it seems to me that Chinese speakers are used to hearing a number of pronunciations and grammatical variations from speakers of various topological bkgds, as well as (having to) accept/tolerate the grammar/usage of a variety of speakers with various educational backgrounds, given what the CCP has wrought on Chinese society since 1949. On the first point, our senior teachers at the IUP Stanford Center in Taipei in the late 1960s, all carefully chosen "Peip'ing" speakers used to criticize us for "over"- using "you" (to have) as an auxiliary verb, instead of LE, and put it down to our hanging around with native TW speakers outside of class; I suspect they also said the same of their own grandchildren.
In the intervening half century, this construction has become quite common. I often remarked to my U.S. students that the "price" of "universalization" of Putonghua in China has been the incorporation of many features of other (e.g. southern) topolectal features into spoken Mandarin, both phonological and grammatical (and in some cases even lexical). Similarly, when I was a child in New England, I simply (had?) never heard nor could process "Did you eat YET". only "HAVE you eatEN yet"? Time, and a life of linguistic experience, has made me more tolerant.
Jonathan Silk said,
February 14, 2018 @ 12:02 am
So perhaps off topic, but @John Rohsenow:
"Time, and a life of linguistic experience, has made me more tolerant."
Really? I should certainly have thought "have made"….
Keith said,
February 14, 2018 @ 2:26 am
In English, I hear a lot of expressions and constructions that my British idiolect would never allow.
Just like John Rohsenow, I never heard "did you eat yet", but always "have you eaten yet"; it grated on my ears to hear, in NJ, "have you ever went there before" instead of "have you ever been there before".
Lastly, for me there is a difference between singular and plural in following phrases.
Time, and a life of linguistic experience, has made me more tolerant.
Time and a life of linguistic experience have made me more tolerant.
In the first, there is singular noun, "time", followed by a parenthetic clause that can be omitted without greatly changing the sense of the phrase: so the verb is singular.
In the second, there is a list of two nouns; so the verb is plural.
But that might just be my usage; Jonathan Silk's usage seems to be different. I'm fine with that, because, like, tolerance, innit?
Robert Davis said,
February 14, 2018 @ 3:13 am
Steve is right about "n'arrive". I was taught that it is a "pleonastic ne" and I still don't know what it means, but it is VERY unique. (My pet error in English . Unique is one of a kind. It cannot be more oner of a kind.)
SO said,
February 14, 2018 @ 8:22 am
The case of "avant que" plus the so-called "ne explétif" reminds of how e.g. Classical Japanese expresses the same kind of "before X does Y" as opposed to Modern Standard Japanese: CJ "V+An.u saki=ni, …" (= with negated verb) vs. MSJ "V+Ru mae=ni, …" (= without negation).
I guess the "ne explétif" here (and possibly elsewhere) is just a remnant of the Old French negation by means of "ne" alone, so that "avant que … ne" is more or less parallel to the CJ expression in origin?
Frédéric Grosshans said,
February 14, 2018 @ 8:57 am
@Laura Morland: As a French, I have the feeling that we are closer to Americans when considering native French speaker, easily criticizing people which are not speaking “proper French” (No one actually speaks proper French, but no one is ready to acknowledge this.)
On the other hand, when a foreigner, and especially a native English speaker, speaks French, we are so happy and impressed that we behave like the Chinese. I indeed feel that mastering the subjunctive is not a small feat for a native English speaker !
Note that “native speaker” and “foreigner” are distinguished by the accent, which is not totally reliable. The British stand-up comedian Paul Taylor (http://paultaylorcomedy.com/ ) spent enough time in his childhood in France to have a native French accent, but enough time abroad to make gender mistakes and ignoring some basic vocabulary. He explains in a sketch that it causes strong reactions by French people, and that it sometimes leads him to fake a British accent.
Chris Button said,
February 14, 2018 @ 9:21 am
I therefore think Victor Mair's original comment can stand as is. The "ne" in French is the only actual negative component in "ne… pas" and hence can be used in a similar way in other negative expressions like "ne… plus", "ne… que", ne… jamais", "ne… rien" etc in which the second components, just like "pas", are not negatives at all in spite of sometimes superficially appearing to be so via "ne dropping" in speech.
Anarcissie said,
February 14, 2018 @ 10:55 am
But they do actually function as negatives in some informal speech.
RP said,
February 14, 2018 @ 11:36 am
In formal French, "pas" isn't always needed: citing Jean Dubois et René Lagane, La nouvelle grammaire du français, Larousse, 1973, Wikipedia says that "Dans un registre soutenu, on peut employer NE seul pour exprimer une négation totale". You don't have to go back to Old French to find examples.
Presumably, finding certain negations illogical, grammarians chose to name them "ne explétif", but this does not necessarily mean that we should not see them as a form of grammatical negation. It seems to me that it is going too far to call them "unique".
Jonathan said,
February 14, 2018 @ 12:01 pm
I'm very curious about the French question. When a group of French co-workers were helping me to sound less like a language textbook one of the first things they taught me was that "Je ne sait pas." should be said as "Je sait pas", or even "J'ai pas." if the context would prevent confusion, but "Je ne sait.' would not work. That sounds like a direct contradiction of what Chris Button has said.
Chris Button said,
February 14, 2018 @ 12:46 pm
@ Jonathan
I actually addressed that when I said the following:
You can look at the etymology of "pas" here:
https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=pas§ion=56#French
Compare "ne… jamais" as "not… ever" or "ne… plus" as "no… more/longer" etc…
RP said,
February 14, 2018 @ 2:29 pm
@Chris Button,
Still, I think Anarcissie is right. The fact that "pas" isn't etymologically negative doesn't mean it doesn't function as such in modern French. "Not negatives at all" isn't an accurate description. Etymology isn't what determines how we regard a word in current usage.
Andy said,
February 14, 2018 @ 3:22 pm
@Chris Button: Well, you're describing the historical situation; a synchronic description of French negation would surely be justified in treating 'pas' as the main negator and giving 'ne' a redundant, or secondary role, the main reason being that 'ne' cannot be used by itself in negations in Modern French (with the exception of a handful of verbs in literary contexts and the odd fossilized expression). Where we find 'ne' retained, considerations of prestige speech forms aside, there are often good syntactic and phonological reasons for doing so -it's not adding any semantic content. By the by, Jespersen's Cycle has already run it's course in Occitan, so that the sole marker in basic negative sentences is postverbal 'pas'.
Alex said,
February 14, 2018 @ 6:35 pm
Meanwhile, it is quite true — as Midler indicates — that if you toss in a literary set phrase (chéngyǔ 成語 / 成语) or classical allusion here and there (one every five or six sentences is plenty enough), you can redeem yourself from endless bungling of tones, syntax, and just about all other aspects of speech.
I actually think tv is a big influence. Many local popular TV series like miyue always have the characters say a chengyu and then the people nod as if saying oh how wise. Even modern shows do this.
I can think back to the days of my youth and being sucked into Master Po of the tv show Kungfu with David Carradine. He always seemed so wise when he said his English chengyu.
I wonder if there are Androids with AI being developed to be able to appropriately use these chengyu.
John Rohsenow said,
February 14, 2018 @ 8:08 pm
Writing in 1914, the American missionary A.H. Smith (1914: 247-248)
said something like "the effect of a well-placed proverb, 'let off' as it were in the face of an angry Chinese mob, has to be seen to be believed." Wish I had been there to see it.
Jonathan said,
February 14, 2018 @ 8:10 pm
@Andy, thanks for letting me know about Jesperson's Cycle – so cool to see that it happens in multiple languages.
Chris Button said,
February 14, 2018 @ 10:40 pm
@ RP & Andy
I'm in agreement from a synchronic perspective (although that does remind me why I tend to prefer analyses of language that incorporate at least some diachronic perspective); the point was really about how "ne" should be treated as a negative in its own right. Note also how the potential ambiguity with "plus" in a sentence like "J'en veux plus" is resolved by the different pronunciations of "plus" as /plys/ for "I want more" but /ply/ for "I don't want any more". Now can anyone tell me when those two different pronunciations emerged and whether it was tied to the "ne" dropping or not?
Mark Hansell said,
February 15, 2018 @ 10:11 am
As it applies to foreign speakers, I think several things are behind this phenomenon. One is the marking of a prestige dialect and fetishizing certain features of it. In Taiwan, Mandarin has merged retroflexes with dentals, so even though people are told that "proper Mandarin" distinguishes "chi" from "ci", they don't/can't distinguish them themselves. So when a bumbling foreign speaker (like yours truly) can distinguish those sounds, even while massacring the syntax and using all the wrong words, people are full of praise (你國語講得好標準啊！)
Another thing is the popular perception that Chinese is hard (I think they are right, but anyway) and that for a foreigner to be able to say anything is a great achievement that deserves praise (if only to encourage them to learn more!) Compare that with the general American notion that everybody should learn English perfectly and any foreign-sounding deviation from "proper" grammar is shameful.
Frédéric Grosshans said,
February 15, 2018 @ 11:48 am
@Jonathan: “Je ne sait” only works for 18th century (or earlier) literature: it is understood, but sounds really strange to my French ears. For “J’ai pas”, I think you mean “Ch’ais pas” (which is usually not written), which is different: the first is “I do not have”, the second is “Je sais pas” with the begining having aoccured the following changes (all possible in colloquial French) ʒəsɛ > ʒsɛ > ʃsɛ > ʃɛ . Similar changes but the latter happen with other voiceless consonants.
These (and many other) aspects of spoken French are discussed in Rodney Ball’s excellent book «Colloquial French Grammar: A Practical Guide” (e.g. https://www.amazon.fr/Colloquial-French-Grammar-Practical-Guide/dp/0631218831 ). He spends several pages on the “ne” and explains “ch’ai pas” by a cliticization of the pronouns in French, which has followed the following stages :
(a) Optional (emphatic) pronouns and compulsory verb endings: i.e. the Latin system, which is preserved in Spanish (yo) trabajo, (tu) trabajas, (ellos) trabajan.
(b) Compulsory pronouns and compulsory verb endings: standard written French je travaille, tu travailles, ils travaillent.
(c) Compulsory (clitic) pronouns and no verb endings: colloquial French
[ʃtʀavaj], [tytʀavaj] [itʀavaj].
Jonathan said,
February 15, 2018 @ 12:59 pm
@Frédéric Grosshans – Yes, I think you and my co-workers agree, “Je ne sait" does not work for modern French ears.
As for "Ch'ais pas", I could feel/hear that something was happening to the "J" sound as the sentence got reduced from "Je ne sais pas", but I didn't know how to write it (I don't know IPA). Would writing "Ch'ais pas" be at about the same level of informality as writing 'Keskasay", (which I've seen in bédés).
And thanks for the book link. It'll help put me at the "great accent, horrible grammar and vocabulary" level.
Andy said,
February 15, 2018 @ 2:42 pm
@Chris Button: The earliest mentions I've been able to find of /plys/ vs. /ply/ are from the 19th century (in the Trésor de la Langue Française online), but these examples don't feature the loss of 'ne' (but this proscription from Littré could perhaps be relevant: 'Quelques-uns font sentir l's quand plus termine un membre de phrase. (…) il faut dire, il en a plû').
It's interesting how 'plus' as a mathematical term is always plys/. Whenever exactly this mathematical use of 'plus' came into being (the Romans didn't go around saying things like 'duo plus duo'), it goes back at least a couple of centuries in Neo-Latin (where the final s would have been pronounced), so I think that the pronunciation with s became established in the vernacular because mathematical 'plus' was perceived as a Latin borrowing. This pronunciation could then have spread quite naturally to some semantically similar positive instances of 'plus' (such as 'j'en veux plus'). Just a random idea; and it doesn't preclude your suggestion that the progressive loss of 'ne' had some part to play in this.
Bob Ladd said,
February 15, 2018 @ 5:16 pm
The restoration of written-but-unpronounced final consonants in French applies to quite a few words (e.g. but 'goal') so it's not just a question of compensating for the loss of ne in ordinary speech. But it certainly is true that if the S is pronounced plus means 'more' and if it's not pronounced it means 'no more'.
The "pleonastic ne" in Laura Morland's original example is historically an actual negative, so Victor Mair's question is justified, and Chris Button's comparison to Classical Japanese seems plausible. In Italian you get non in very similar contexts to Laura's French example (e.g. Rimaniamo qui finche non arrivi il postino 'we'll stay here until the postman arrives'), and non is still (unlike French ne) a fully functional negative.
Paul Midler said,
February 15, 2018 @ 9:56 pm
John R –
You might be interested to know that Arthur Smith (Chinese Characteristics) is quoted several times in What’s Wrong with China. You might say my book is a send up of old China hands who wrote on such observations.
On your point more specifically, a foreigner who drops some ten-kuai idiom may be met with some a response…but this is only when the usage is positive and the occasion benign. In a business context where much is at stake, and where a foreign has been treated in an especially egregious manner, a meaningful idiom is used to (rightfully) shame the local into doing the right thing, the response can be genuine and intense anger. “How dare you use my language against me,” is the basic message.
This issue is something covered in my book, as well. American diplomats continually use their own language to make points. Chinese diplomats do not do this at all, but rather reach into the linguistic toolkit of their counterparts. Precisely because linguistic pilfering is the smart thing to do, Chinese tend to hate when it is done (successfully) against them.
Jonathan Smith said,
February 15, 2018 @ 10:17 pm
Coming back to Chinese, colloquial Mandarin itself has parallels to Laura Morland's French: 沒V之前, etc., lit. "before having not Ved." (Relatedly, clauses with perfective/imperfective indication alone are often simply temporal: after X / before X.)
Also somewhat Jespersenian is the change 非V不可 (lit. "to not V is unacceptable") 'absolutely must V', where 不可 can be dropped but meaning retained such that 非(要/得)V (lit. "not [need/intend to] V") paradoxically means 'absolutely must V'.
TheLong1930s said,
February 16, 2018 @ 3:05 am
@Bob Ladd Isn't the negative required here because 'finché' = '[for] as long as'?
Rimaniamo qua finché piove (We'll stay here while it's raining [for as long as it rains]) = Rimaniamo qua finché non c'è sole (We'll stay here until the sun comes out [as long as there's no sun]).
Thus, Rimaniamo qua finché piove = Rimanioamo qua finché non spiove.
Chris Button said,
February 16, 2018 @ 10:38 pm
@ Andy
Thanks for that. I also found the following entry regarding the pronunciation of "fils" on CNRTL which suggests a similar kind of desire to avoid homophony (in addition to the vocative remark):
"La forme actuelle représente l'anc. cas sujet conservé en raison de son emploi fréq. comme vocatif et prob. aussi pour éviter la confusion avec fil."
A specialist in the evolution of French must have written a paper on this somewhere…
@ Bob Ladd
Well the poster "SO" should get credit for pointing that out – I just took up the mantle from a French internal perspective.