Many of the debates over Chinese language issues that keep coming up on Language Log and elsewhere may be attributed to a small number of basic misunderstandings and disagreements concerning the relationship between speech and writing.
During the last few days, there has been a flurry of excitement over the circulation of photographs and information concerning an old Chinese textbook for learning English. Here are a couple of pages from the book (click to embiggen):
I do not wish to analyze the behavior of Chinese tourists at home and overseas. What struck me powerfully about this video is the peculiar pronunciation of what is arguably the most widely known Mandarin expression in the world, viz., Nǐ hǎo 你好 ("hello; hi!"). You can hear it at 0:23 and 0:37 of this 4:04 video.
Here's a photo of a warehouse on Chongming Island, at the northern edge of Shanghai, which deals in various agricultural products, as listed on the two signs:
For a linguist, at least if the linguist is me, it is a thrill to cross for the first time the northern border that separates Austria from Czechia. Immediately after crossing the border last Sunday, my train stopped at Břeclav, and I was able to hear over the beautifully clear announcement PA system my first real-context occurrence of one of the rarest sounds in the languages of the world.
After reading the the latest series of Language Log posts on long range connections (see below for a listing), Geoff Wade suggested that I title the next post in this series as I have this one. If there ever was an occasion to do so, now is as good a moment as any, with the announcement of the publication of Chau Wu's extraordinary "Patterns of Sound Correspondence between Taiwanese and Germanic/Latin/Greek/Romance Lexicons, Part I", Sino-Platonic Papers, 262 (Aug., 2016), 239 pp. (free pdf).
Founded in 1858, Keio is the oldest university in Japan and one of the best, also ranking high in world ratings. Its name is written 慶應 in kanji. That's a lot of strokes to scribble down every time you want to write the name of your university, so Keio people often write it this way: 广+K 广+O (imagine that the "K" and the "O" are written inside of the 广). That makes 6 strokes and 4 strokes instead of 15 strokes and 17 strokes respectively, 10 strokes total instead of 32.
Translators of Chinese poetry are tormented by how to render the term jiǔ 酒. The nearly universal English rendering of jiǔ 酒 in Chinese belles lettres is "wine". The problem is that "wine" is fruit based (usually grapes), whereas jiǔ 酒 is grain based.
This is a topic that has come up tangentially on Language Log many times in the past (see below for some references). I am revisiting it now because, in the fall, I will be participating in an event in New York having to do with tea and wine. In the minds of those who know Chinese, that will be framed in terms of chá 茶 and jiǔ 酒.
Oden (おでん) is a popular Japanese dish. Common ingredients include fishcakes, konjac cakes (or konjac noodles), daikon, and boiled eggs, all stewed in a lightly soy- or mirin-flavored dashi broth. It is also popular in Taiwan, usually called o-lián and written as 黑輪 ("black wheel"), but I don't think I've heard anyone say the word in Mandarin (hei-lún). It is an example of how Taiwanese words are often written: the 黑 in 黑輪 does not represent the sound o͘ – the character 烏 (black, dark) does, and the character 黑 (black) is pronounced hek.
I wonder if you've done, or are aware of, any research relevant to the following observation. In the articulation of a "d" or "t" followed by a schwa, the tongue may or may not leave the alveolar ridge. (I just did some cursory research on parts of the mouth and hope I got that right.) My (highly unscientific) observation over recent years is that, at least in the pronunciation of certain words, such as "student", removal of the tongue is increasingly common. In fact, this trend is so apparent to me that I find it remarkable that most people don't seem to have noticed it. I also have an impression that the trend is especially pronounced (unfortunate choice of words) among younger speakers, but my attempt to support this observation by listening to various pronunciations of "Clinton" over the past four nights failed miserably.
For Times Insider, David W. Dunlap has an article about some of the more entertaining errors and corrections that have graced the pages of The New York Times: "The Times Regrets the Error. Readers Don't."
Among the goofs is this one from a Q&A with Ivana Trump that appeared in the Oct. 15, 2000 New York Times Magazine: