Autodidact
« previous post | next post »
[This is a guest post by Don Keyser in response to "Sinitic semiliteracy" (6/5/23)]
This one takes me back. In the late 1980s, I served my second assignment at our embassy in Tokyo. The chief of the American Citizens Services unit in the Consular Section, a white lady in her early 50s, asked my assistance. Confirming that I was a Chinese-language officer who read Chinese, she asked if I would read something sent her by one of the Americans incarcerated at Fuchū Prison she saw monthly in fulfillment of her consular responsibilities. The prisoner was an African American male in his early 30s.
So I agreed, and took from her the long message. It was written on notebook paper in clear but child-like Chinese characters. When I first looked at it, it made zero sense to me. Then I figured it out. The prisoner was teaching himself Chinese characters, but without any instruction by tutor or book. He wrote (or thought) out his desired message in English, and then, evidently using an English-Chinese dictionary he was permitted to have in his cell, plugged in a Chinese character (sometimes) corresponding to the meaning of the English word.
Basically, the prisoner was telling the consular officer that her visits and manifest concern for his well-being had caused him to fall in love with her, and so he wished to make known his abiding love for her.
Not something one was apt to encounter every day.
Selected readings
- "Autodidacticism" (Wikipedia)
- "Mispronunciation and autodidacts" (1/03/04)
- "Manchu illiteracy" (4/14/16)
- "Acquiring literacy in medieval Dunhuang" (2/20/21)
david said,
August 7, 2023 @ 11:13 am
It does happen every day with someone among the 7+B people on the planet. I “fell in love” with my car insurance agent this week because of her sensitivity to my condition and her enthusiasm about helping me. I have no intention of changing my marital status or hers but I can easily imagine telling her I love her, even if it required looking up the words in a bilingual dictionary.
It may not be common in the work of a translator for a consular office but it happens frequently among τα πολλα.
Adam said,
August 8, 2023 @ 1:15 pm
Hah I remember doing that with Spanish as a child, and attempting it with a Hebrew lexicon, having no understanding of morphology.
Alyssa said,
August 10, 2023 @ 10:17 am
If she was the intended recipient of his note, why was he attempting to write it in Chinese? Presumably he was aware she didn't speak any more Chinese than he did?
ohwilleke said,
August 10, 2023 @ 10:31 am
Worthy of a mini-series!