Pinyin for the Prez
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Watch what happens at the tail end of the 24 second video clip in this Twitter post:
https://twitter.com/sszyz1758/status/1054376432762216448
Chairman Xi is shown delivering a speech at the celebration of the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese People's Liberation Army. The live-action camera accidentally caught the use of Hanyu Pinyin on the teleprompter to phonetically annotate the character kuī 岿 / 巋 ("grand, stately; secure, lasting; imposing") in the expression "kuīrán bù dòng 岿然不动" ("motionless; steadfastly stand one's ground").
Kuī 岿 / 巋 ("grand, stately; secure, lasting; imposing") is not among the top 9,933 highest frequency characters. The fact that Xi's speechwriter(s) felt it was necessary to phonetically annotate the character kuī 岿 indicates that they lacked confidence in his ability to read it correctly. If so, then why did they choose such an obscure character for him to have to read in such broadly exposed circumstances? Clearly, it was to make him seem more learned than he actually is. "Kuīrán bù dòng 岿然不动" ("motionless; steadfastly stand one's ground") is a fixed phrase from the philosophically eclectic classical text known as the Huáinánzǐ 淮南子 ([Writings of] the Masters [at the Court of the Prince of] Huainan), which dates to sometime before 139 BC.
The speechwriters had good reason to take precautions against a misreading by Chairman Xi, since he is well known to have made such gaffes before. See, for example:
"Latin Caesar –> Tibetan Gesar –> Xi Jinpingian Sager" (3/20/18)
Xi Jinping's rendering of "Gesar" as "Sager" reminds one of his famously funny misreading of "agriculture" as "clothing", with salacious undertones:
"Annals of literary vs. vernacular, part 2" (9/4/16)
There's no doubt that Xi is a speaker of MSM (Modern Standard Mandarin). In fact, he is the first president in Chinese history to speak MSM in public. However, from listening to him give speeches, I get the strong impression that his level of literacy is not very high. Xi's delivery is halting and hesitant, especially when he approaches literary expressions. At such moments (when uttering fancy words), he slows down and pronounces deliberately and carefully, as though he were unsure of what he is saying. All of my students from China, undergrads and graduate students alike, read Chinese more fluently and with greater assurance than Xi Jinping.
Although a thesis titled Zhōngguó nóngcūn shìchǎnghuà yánjiū 中国农村市场化研究 ("Tentative Study of Agricultural Marketization") is attributed to Xi Jinping, there are many questions surrounding whether he actually wrote it himself (see here, here, here, and here).
Xi Jinping is not the only high-ranking communist official whose academic credentials have been called into question. See:
"Peking University president misreads an unobscure character: monumental implications" (5/5/18)
If we take into account the social chaos and educational disarray in which men of their generation grew up, it is a wonder that their literacy reached the functional degree that it did.
[Thanks to Jichang Lulu]
Benjamin E. Orsatti said,
October 25, 2018 @ 7:53 am
Good morning, Professor,
This part caught my attention:
"There's no doubt that Xi is a speaker of MSM (Modern Standard Mandarin). In fact, he is the first president in Chinese history to speak MSM in public."
What did Chinese Presidents speak before Xi? — their local dialects?
Guy_H said,
October 25, 2018 @ 8:46 am
From memory, the last two presidents (Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin) had vaguely Shanghainese sounding accents. Their Mandarin was perfectly understandable, just regionally accented. Earlier presidents probably had even stronger accents. The analogy would be if Theresa May was the first British PM to speak RP.
Y said,
October 25, 2018 @ 11:31 am
Must be tough on comedians doing impressions of politicians, when the president is speaking an unmarked variety. That is, assuming making fun of Xi publicly is tolerated.
AntC said,
October 25, 2018 @ 7:08 pm
a fixed phrase from the philosophically eclectic classical text …
So is this something like including a Latin or mediaeval French quote in a speech in Modern English? I suppose English speechifying is odd for including untranslated phrases from those languages, but not expecting audiences to recognise Beowolf or even Shakespeare in original pronunciation.
… not among the top 9,933 highest frequency characters.
I continue to be puzzled by Professor Mair's observations about the metrics of Sinography. ~10,000 sounds like a reasonable working vocabulary. Whereas in the piece on the new ODCC it was claimed
1,500 characters + 300 semantic components covers the bulk of Chinese characters occurring in typical texts that one might encounter in daily usage.
So if I was wanting to talk about "grand, stately; secure, lasting; imposing" without needing to make a literary reference, would I find a suitable character a) amongst the 9,933; b) amongst the 1,500+300?
In terms of 'character amnesia' would the average MSM-speaker (which would appear to exclude President Xi) be able to write that suitable character, or would they need to hunt for it on via some app?
liuyao said,
October 25, 2018 @ 9:47 pm
巋然不動 also appears in one of Mao's poems (a lyrics, or 詞, to the tune of 西江月):
山下旌旗在望，山头鼓角相闻。
敌军围困万千重，我自岿然不动。
早已森严壁垒，更加众志成城。
黄洋界上炮声隆，报道敌军霄遁。
Someone with Xi Jinping's upbringing would have known all of Mao's poems by heart.
Victor Mair said,
October 26, 2018 @ 3:25 am
"~10,000 sounds like a reasonable working vocabulary."
No, it's not at all a "reasonable working vocabulary".
You're confusing characters with words. 9,933 is the number of different characters in the data base used for the frequency calculations that I have cited. With those 9,933 characters one could form hundreds of thousand of words.
I doubt that any human being can fully master 8,000 characters, much less 10,000.
With 1,500-3,000 characters, you can form enough words to say practically anything you want or need to express..
The average length of a word in MSM is almost approximately.
I hope, now, that you're no longer "puzzled".
Victor Mair said,
October 26, 2018 @ 3:28 am
"Someone with Xi Jinping's upbringing would have known all of Mao's poems by heart."
All the more, one wonders why Xi's managers felt that they had to phonetically annotate kuī 岿 / 巋 ("grand, stately; secure, lasting; imposing").
Ellen K. said,
October 26, 2018 @ 9:01 am
The average length of a word in MSM is almost approximately.
Something got lost in that sentence.