![\"\"](\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/myl\/slipper.jpg\" "\\"Click")
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Jonathan says, \"It's obvious how a computer would make that translation; not clear why a human (at the library!) didn't spot it.\"<\/p>\n
The translation software (or somebody) made this mistranslation (\"Invites the slipper\") because of problems with polysemy, parsing, and homophony.\u00a0 As a matter of fact, depending upon their frame of mind and level of familiarity with Chinese language and characters, even a human being may have to pause for a moment to correctly interpret the intended message.<\/p>\n
The Chinese consists of three characters, each with\u00a0bopomofo<\/a>\u00a0phonetic annotation along the right side):<\/p>\n q\u01d0ng \u8acb (\"please; invite; request\") Google Translate, Baidu Fanyi, and Bing Translator all render it perfectly as \"Please take off your shoes.\"\u00a0 Even iCIBA has \"shoes off; please take off your shoes; take off your shoes; please take your shoes\".<\/p>\n One begins to wonder how this mistake (\"Invites the slipper\") actually occurred.\u00a0 Where did the \"slipper\" in the sign come from, if not from translation software (which doesn't seem to be the culprit in this case)?<\/p>\n The Mandarin word for \"slipper\" is tu\u014dxi\u00e9\u00a0\u62d6\u978b, which consists of two morphosyllables:<\/span><\/p>\n tu\u014d \u62d6 (\"drag; haul; tow; pull; draw; delay\") Thus, it would appear that the homophonous term tu\u014dxi\u00e9\u00a0\u62d6 \u978b (\"slipper\")<\/span>\u00a0interfered with the processing of\u00a0tu\u014d xi\u00e9 \u812b\u978b (\"take off \/ remove shoes\") and replaced it in the English translation.<\/p>\n I asked about two dozen native speakers of Mandarin if they thought that they pronounced tu\u014dxi\u00e9\u00a0\u62d6\u978b (\"slipper\") and\u00a0<\/span>tu\u014d xi\u00e9 \u812b\u978b (\"take off \/ remove shoes\") exactly the same.\u00a0 The results of my survey are rather astonishing.<\/p>\n Nearly all individuals who are highly literate in characters (humanists) and professional language teachers maintained that they pronounced tu\u014dxi\u00e9\u00a0\u62d6\u978b (\"slipper\") and\u00a0<\/span>tu\u014d xi\u00e9 \u812b\u978b (\"take off \/ remove shoes\") in an identical fashion.\u00a0 But there were two categories of native speakers who perceived a difference in their own pronunciation of the two expressions:\u00a0 those who are highly qualified linguists and those who are not very literate in characters.\u00a0 How can we make sense of this phenomenon?<\/p>\n I think that, when native speakers claim they are pronouncing these two expressions in exactly the same way, they are being unduly influenced by the characters, that they are indulging in what we may refer to as \"reading pronunciation\".\u00a0 It's somewhat comparable to someone pronouncing \"Wednesday<\/span><\/span>\" and \"February\" the way they are spelled instead of the way they are spoken in real life.<\/p>\n As for myself (although I am not a native speaker, I possess near native fluency in MSM), I have never felt that tu\u014dxi\u00e9\u00a0\u62d6 \u978b (\"slipper\") and\u00a0<\/span>tu\u014d xi\u00e9 \u812b\u978b (\"take off \/ remove shoes\") were pronounced identically in actual speech.\u00a0 Simply for innate, cognitive reasons, I'm certain that I make a slight pause between \u812b and \u978b of \u812b\u978b (\"remove shoes\"; VO), whereas there is no pause between the two syllables of the disyllabic noun \u62d6\u978b (\"slipper\") in actual speech.\u00a0 For example, in these two sentences:<\/p>\n chu\u0101n tu\u014dxi\u00e9 \u7a7f\u62d6\u978b (\"wear slippers\") I will definitely insert a slight pause between the \u812b and \u978b of \u812b\u978b (\"remove shoes\"), but not between the two syllables of the noun \u62d6\u978b (\"slippers\").<\/p>\n When I asked my semi-literate or illiterate (in characters) friends who are native speakers of Mandarin why they thought tu\u014dxi\u00e9 \u62d6\u978b and tu\u014d xi\u00e9 \u812b\u978b were not identical in pronunciation, most of them could not articulate any particular reason, but when I pressed them further, several of them said that it was due to the fact that tu\u014d xi\u00e9 is a verb-object construction, whereas tu\u014dxi\u00e9 is a noun.\u00a0 Incidentally, I elicited their responses simply by wearing a pair of slippers and by taking off one of my shoes, and asking them to say what I was doing in each case, then asking them to tell me if they thought the word for \"slipper\" and the words for \"take off\" sounded exactly alike.<\/p>\n Now, when it comes to the linguists, we get much more sophisticated explanations, such as this one from Jiahong Yuan<\/a>:<\/p>\n Attached is a recording I made. It contains two sentences:\u00a0 sh\u0101ngdi\u00e0n l\u01d0 m\u00e0i tu\u014dxi\u00e9 \u5546\u5e97\u91cc\u5356\u62d6\u978b (\"in stores that are selling slippers\"), and j\u00ecnm\u00e9n y\u00e0o tu\u014d xi\u00e9 \u8fdb\u95e8\u8981\u8131\u978b (\"when you go inside you have to take off your shoes\"). The words \"tuoxie\" are marked in the textgrid file. \u62d6\u978b and \u812b\u978b are probably slightly different in my pronunciation, but the intuition is vague.<\/p>\n San Duanmu<\/a>'s proposal is that in Mandarin Chinese disyllabic words have a stress on the first syllable; compounds have a stress on the non-head word. So in \u62d6\u978b (a disyllabic word) the first syllable should be stronger, and in \u812b\u978b (VO compound) the second syllable should be stronger (The phonology of Standard Chinese<\/em>: pp.136). And the relationship between\u00a0\u978b and\u00a0\u62d6\u978b is\u00a0related to what San calls \"elastic word length\": see his papers\u00a0\u73b0\u4ee3\u6c49\u8bed\u8bcd\u957f\u5f39\u6027\u7684\u91cf\u5316\u7814\u7a76<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span>[A quantitative study of elastic word length in Modern Chinese] and \"How many Chinese words have elastic length?<\/a>\".<\/span><\/p>\n Catherine, Yanyan and I did a study on the stress patterns of polysyllabic words in Mandarin, and we found that the first syllable of a disyllabic word is stronger:\u00a0Catherine Lai, Yanyan Sui & Jiahong Yuan, \"A Corpus Study of the Prosody of Polysyllabic Words in Mandarin Chinese<\/a>\", Speech Prosody 2010.<\/p>\n BTW, the drawing on the sign seems to suggest that patrons are encouraged to go barefoot in the library, which would be frowned upon in most American libraries.\u00a0 On the other hand, I don't know how one might visually indicate that patrons are requested to enter the library in stocking feet.<\/p>\n [Thanks to Zhao Lu, Maiheng Dietrich, Grace Wu, Melvin Lee, Liwei Jiao, Rebecca Fu, Wei Shao, Ziwei He, Jiajia Wang, Andy Lee, and several informants who wish to remain anonymous]<\/p>\n Update —<\/p>\n From Karen (Kaiyan) Yang:<\/p>\n As for \u62d6\u978b and \u8131\u978b, in Putonghua I do pronounce them exactly alike. I asked some of my friends from Beijing and they said in Beijing Fangyan [VHM: Pekingese] it's also the same. But I think in real daily-life conversation, there are also cases when we emphasize on \"\u62d6\" in \u62d6\u978b, in order to distinguish it from other types of shoes, or emphasize on \"\u978b\" in \u8131\u978b, in order to emphasize the mood to make the person take his shoes off. Despite this, I still think it's the exactly alike in Putonghua.<\/p>\n However, if you have interest on the situation in other topolects, such as mine, the Lower Yangtze Mandarin, the difference between the two is distinctive, for \"\u8131\" is pronounced out in entering tone in my topolect. There are also other examples of such cases when the pronunciations of two words show no difference in Putonghua, while differ a lot in topolect. Here's a table of some examples.<\/p>\n (my topolect)<\/td>\n Except for the last pair, the pronunciations of all the other pairs are exactly alike in Putonghua they while differ distinctly in my topolect. The point is that, \"\u4e0d\" in \"\u5168\u4e0d\"\u00b7, \"\u5bdf\" in \"\u68c0\u5bdf\", \"\u529b\" in \"\u6743\u529b\", \"\u8131\" in \"\u8131\u978b\" are pronounced out in entering tone, which does not exist in Putonghua now. I don't know if cases in other topolects are similar or not, but I guess at least in topolects that have entering tones, the two pronunciations won't be exactly alike.<\/p>\n Sorry I wrote so many irrelevant things hahaha…. I don't know if you have interest or not, but I do feel proud that Lower Yangtze Mandarin, as well as other topolects, show more delicacy in pronunciation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jonathan Dushoff sent in this photograph of a sign in the Lukang (L\u00f9g\u01ceng \u9e7f\u6e2f) public library in Taiwan (apologies for the reflection off the surface):<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-phonetics-and-phonology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13567"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13576,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13567\/revisions\/13576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\ntu\u014d \u812b (\"take off; remove; shed; doff; escape; get away; come off\")
\nxi\u00e9 \u978b (\"shoe\")<\/p>\n
\n<\/span>xi\u00e9 \u978b<\/span>\u00a0(\"shoe\")<\/p>\n
\nq\u01d0ng tu\u014d xi\u00e9 \u8acb\u812b\u978b (\"please take off [your] shoes\")<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\n\n\n
\n <\/td>\n Lower Yangtze Mandarin<\/p>\n Putonghua<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n \u5168\u4e0d<\/td>\n \u02a8\u02b0\u0169 p\u0259\u0294<\/td>\n \u02a8\u02b0y\u025bn pu<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n \u5168\u90e8<\/td>\n \u02a8\u02b0\u0169 p\u028b\u026f<\/td>\n \u02a8\u02b0y\u025bn pu<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n \u68c0\u5bdf<\/td>\n \u02a8\u0129 ts\u02b0\u025b\u0294<\/td>\n \u02a8i\u025bn t\u0282\u02b0a<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n \u68c0\u67e5<\/td>\n \u02a8\u0129 ts\u02b0a<\/td>\n \u02a8i\u025bn t\u0282\u02b0a<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n \u6743\u529b<\/td>\n \u02a8\u02b0\u0169 li\u0294<\/td>\n \u02a8\u02b0y\u025bn li<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n \u6743\u5229<\/td>\n \u02a8\u02b0\u0169 l\u027f<\/td>\n \u02a8\u02b0y\u025bn li<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n \u8131\u978b<\/td>\n t\u02b0\u028a\u0294 x\u025b<\/td>\n t\u02b0uo\u00a0\u0255i\u025b<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n \u62d6\u978b<\/td>\n t\u02b0\u028a x\u025b<\/td>\n t\u02b0uo\u00a0\u0255i\u025b<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n \u53d1\u94b1<\/td>\n f\u025b\u0294 \u02a8\u02b0\u0129<\/td>\n fa \u02a8\u02b0i\u025bn<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n \u7f5a\u94b1<\/td>\n f\u025b\u0294 \u02a8\u02b0\u0129<\/td>\n fa \u02a8\u02b0i\u025bn<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\nThe opposite case is the last pair. In Putonghua, \u53d1 and \u7f5a differ in their tones, while in my topolect, they are both pronounced in entering tone, thus in the case of this pair, the pronunciations are exactly alike in my topolect, while they differ in Putonghua.<\/p>\n