Prince of Han cont'd

[flemmings]

My eyes my eyes my-eyes-my-eyes-my-eyes. (Doesn't hurt if I pause it at every line, but that does make for sloooow viewing.)

Also, Chinese? A word with you. 就, 對(对), 從(从), and all combinations of 為(为), 什 and麼(么): we hates them, my precious, we does, we does. Japanese may have five different readings for any character, but Chinese has five different meanings. At least. And all of them either interrogatives or connectives.

Comments

[petronia.livejournal.com]

It's easier than going from Chinese to English and not realizing that the five meanings are conceptually distinguishable and therefore can be represented by different words in the foreign language. XD

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

I will believe you, since I'm not likely to have that experience myself. So what did you do? Use the one foreign word you knew to express all the various shades of the Chinese?

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I was young enough that I absorbed English grammar organically. But for a lot of adults I've seen... yeah. ^^;

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Like, 酸 is "acid", "sour" and "ache" (as in muscles). So my dad would say, "My back feels sour."

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

I can see the problem indeed. French false friends aside, I've never come across that phenomenon with any other group of ESL speakers. Transposed grammar from the original language, yes. It was a Sri Lankan who finally made me see how the 行ってきます construction works, mentally.

[paleaswater.livejournal.com]

It's interesting, because it's the first time I'm aware of it. I guess I was always unconsciously translating the same character in different context to different words. A pretty neat trick, considering that I was totally unaware. I'm always conscious of the opposite problem -- the multitude of Chinese characters that all must be rendered into the same bland English word. for example 秀，丽，芳.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

As a very broad generalization, I find that sensorial-experience words are less precise in Chinese, and aesthetic-judgment words are less precise in English.

[paleaswater.livejournal.com]

*thinks about this* You have a point, and I wonder if it's because the mode of expression in literature is so predominantly allusive that sensory experiences are often expressed using aesthetic-judgement words as well.

[mmoneurere.livejournal.com]

I have a hard enough time going between English and French (especially all of those damn theory people who make points hinging on distinctions between sets of terms which don't correspond to sets of concepts in English...) -- I think I'll pass on trying to learn Mandarin for a while, at least.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

I've always nurtured a small vain hope that the theory people actually made no sense to their compatriots either. I expect two languages separated by the width of the world to be different. But when your first cousin starts speaking in tongues (as, come to that, the theory people do in English when they try to apply the French method) a cold chill goes down my spine: This man is mad. Am I next?

[mmoneurere.livejournal.com]

It's funny -- some of the most horribly incomprehensible stuff started to make more sense when I poked at the French a little bit. All of those people seem to like playing with language to make their points -- which makes everything almost impossible to translate. (Ugh, my whole grad seminar kept trying to figure out what the hell was going on in our translation of de Saussure until we figured out that the translator had picked a less-than-clear policy on how to translate langue vs. language vs. parole, which really isn't as vague in French. And I suspect that Deleuze went to great lengths to make everything he wrote completely incomprehensible in translation.)

[petronia.livejournal.com]

French theory is so dependent on the French language I'm not sure how anyone outside of France was ever convinced.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

I doubt they were. I was around when it first hit academia, and there were strong overtones of Oohhhh SHINY!!! that (cough) fitted ill with the profession's notions of its inherent dignity. Guys drooling over the brand new Porsche, basically.

Worse that it was treated as the Masonic handshake that only insiders could understood; and if you didn't understand it instinctively, it was useless to try and explain. Now, I realize that they couldn't explain the stuff themselves; then, there were friends I lost track of because they became incapable of speaking standrd English. Literature is fine, guys, but when you can't talk about a basketball game without using semiotic jargon? Pathetic.