Given that most traditional cultures were extremely sexist by today’s standards, it is very common to have sexist elements embedded in today’s languages. In English, for example, there is the old peeve about what to call a female fireman. Latin languages with their gender declensions are even more problematic, to the point that some daring Spanish feminists like to write “abogad@”, to cover all the possible sexes of a lawyer.

The old Confucian tradition in China is hardly an example of gender equality, and given the intimate relation between Confucian scholars and the Chinese script over the millennia, it is only natural that the characters should carry some important bias. As we will see, the spoken language is not any better, reflecting a society where the woman had a limited role even among the common people.

I am not going to consider here Confucian notions like the three obediences and four virtues of a woman (三从四德) [1] that every Chinese speaker is familiar with. I discount these things as relics from the past that were discarded in the revolution, and they are not taken seriously today by any normal Chinese family. But even ignoring these relics, it is quite clear that the language has many common words and uses strongly biased against the feminine Half Skies (半边天) [2].

Off the top of my head, I find the following kinds of sexist occurrences in mandarin, see for yourself:

1. The familiar case of the third person pronoun discrimination appears in the written 他 (like in English, the character for “him” is used even when the gender of the person is unknown).
2. The female radical appearing in characters with negative “feminine” meanings like those in 嫉妒 (envy).
3. Words like 丫头 that are widely used to mean “girl” and originally meant “slave” [3]. Words like 弄瓦 and 弄璋 – give birth to a girl (mud) and to a boy (jade) – fall under the same category.
4. Order of words in expressions like mum and dad, brothers and sisters, which in Chinese systematically have the masculine members before the feminine ones (爸爸妈妈, 兄弟姐妹). There is an exception in 女士们先生们 (ladies and gentlemen), but it looks very much like a modern calque.
5. Common words like 嫁给 (marry for a girl) and 娶妻 (marry for a man), which imply that the girl is “married to” someone, whereas the man has the prerogative to actively “get” someone. In the same category, the common term 成家,  to marry, literally to “build a family”, can only be used by men. Women don’t build families, they rather give themselves to a man, and he takes all the credit.

Bear in mind that my level of mandarin is far from native, and I am not particularly gender conscious, so there must be a lot more examples out there I haven’t thought of. Like usual, this Thursday feature is meant to engage the readers, so please lend me a hand to come up with more examples.

I don’t really think that this is among the big problems of Chinese women today, and I am not writing this to promote language feminism. What I do find interesting, however, is the little activism that I have seen in China regarding this subject. Especially compared with the West, where some groups have gone to great lengths to save our languages from their discriminatory legacy.

Given the efforts of Maoism to promote gender equality, and considering the power that Shanghainese women have enjoyed in the recent history of China, it is surprising that there hasn’t been more noise. There are some feminists to be sure, like the thundering delegate Zhang. But they don’t usually take language as a target, as far as I have seen.

What is your opinion? Any idea why this happens? Has this got to do with some conformist trait of the Chinese women, or is it due to the repressive environment?

1. 三从四德: This can be briefly translated as “obey and STFU”. Or if you prefer the classic translation: 3 Obediences- Obey your father before marriage, your husband when married, and your sons in widowhood. 4 Virtues- Morality, Proper speech, Modest manner and Diligent work
2. 半边天: Mao had the brilliant idea of declaring that women where holding half of the sky, and since then they are illogically called “Half Sky” in the PRC
3. 丫头:I believe this must be the origin of the English translation “she has given birth to a slave” that raised so many eyebrows in Pearl Buck’s “The Good Earth”

This is a new feature in my blog. It is a follow up of the initial Language and Culture posts last year, and I commit from now on to continue the series every Thursday that I feel like it. The idea is to post about those language curiosities that I encounter in my study of mandarin and I jot down directly on my study desk.

Professionals like you find in the Language log like to mark the difference between a linguist and a polyglot, and I completely agree with them. While I am a fan of linguistics, particularly those of the descriptive kind, I have never studied the discipline seriously and I couldn’t tell a preposition from a palmiped. I am just a curious language learner, and I’ll stick to what I know.

This thought has discouraged me for a while from writing about language,  considering the rich selection of linguist blogs already available. But then I thought, there is a certain level right between anthropology and linguistics, a space wide open to the speculation of non specialists, where living in language immersion is as important as formal training.

I am referring to the observation of how Language and Culture interact with each other, and how a certain character and a view of the World gets imprinted into the language, form the fossils of the remote past to the process ongoing even today. This is the point of the Language and Culture Series, which consists more of questions than of answers. Here is an example:

The Holy Fractions

The observation today has to do with the common use of number fractions or percentages in the Chinese language, going much further than what I have seen in any other culture. It is surprising for a language so rich in flowery adjectives that the speakers should prefer to describe things in hard numbers. Especially when applied to fields like love that have up to now resisted the advance of mathematics.

I observed this first when my friend Fu described a couple as loving their daughter only 20%. “That is terrible”, I jumped, “she is 20% loved”. But it wasn’t funny. In fact, she was pretty serious, she had done her homework well and she was adamant: 20% is the love the girl got. And that is just the most accurate way she found to describe it.

Since then I have observed the same phenomenon in many circumstances, probably the most well known are these:

• The CCP’s assessment of Mao after his death, the one that says he was 70% right and 30% wrong. Heroic? Disgraceful? No, just 7/10.
• The well known formula to order your steak in China: 30%, 50% or 70% cooked. No rare or bleu, but numbers.
• The use in Taobao of (very unrealistic) percentages to indicate the state of an article, such as “99.9% new”, or even “99.99% new”.

The main question I have here: does this come from the legacy of Maoist education? Is this a residue of the “scientific” outlook of the Marxist theories, or is it rather an ancient trait that existed long before in the Chinese culture? Any reader of 古文 has seen instances of poet Li Bai describing himself as 75% drunk, or 37% sinking in the lake under the moon?

Let me know if you know of any other example. And why do the Chinese like to see the World in fractions?

Note: I translate all in percentages, but the original expressions are various, including the usual 分 or 成  for 10th fractions.

But languages are vehicles of culture, and that is why we find them fascinating. When you study a language, and especially when you study it in its natural habitat – in a country where it is the mother tongue – you are continuously absorbing the elements of that country’s culture. At the surface level, these learnings are obvious, like when your local barber tells you the story of the Old Fool and the Mountain. But there are deeper levels where the language in itself, through its structure and its semantic relations, carries a cultural load that may go unnoticed by all but the most careful students.

During my practice for the HSK exam these last months, I went through thousands of new words and hundreds of chengyus (the ubiquitous 4-character constructions/idioms that Chinese use almost like words). And when I was fed up of memorizing I would let my mind drift for a while, musing over the learnt vocabulary, and sometimes I ended up finding unexpected meanings.

Here and (perhaps) in future posts I will copy some of the notes I did while studying. Some are just funny misunderstandings, some come loaded with philosophical connotations, and some are surely just the result of my own imagination. Warning: I will indulge in some vast generalizations and home-made anthropology, please bear with me and add your righteous insults in the comments section. Here’s the first three expressions, all baidu linked for examples:

下不了台 - Xia bu liao tai

This is an expression in Chinese that literally means:   Cannot get off the stage. It is used when somebody is embarrassing you in public, particularly when somebody says things that make everyone focus their attention on you. Then he is scolding you, or praising you, or otherwise treating you  ”xia bu liao tai”.

It struck me as very Chinese in the way it is used as a negative expression, similar to the English to embarrass. But in English the negative expression is  more often the opposite, to be “upstaged”  (ie. sent to the back of the stage). Which comes to illustrate this difference between Western and Chinese individuals, the former generally enjoying some degree of public attention while the latter prefer to pass unnoticed and blend in the crowd.

英伦三岛 – YingLun San Dao

This is one of the most perplexing expressions I have come across in Chinese. It literally means “The three islands of England”, using a phonetical approximation of England (“Yinlun”)  that strikes me as pedantic, as it is not the usual name Yingguo 英国.

But the pedantic speaker (or the “Autentic Engrish Vila” advert) is, I am afraid, making a fool of himself. I might be missing something, but last time I checked England was not an island, nor were there three islands in the British Isles, however you look at it. The garbled definition on Baidupedia doesn’t help much either.

This seems to be an old expression, so my guess is someone in the times of the Qing decided thatEngland was a Kingdom of 3 islands. And no amount of  insistence nor letters from ambassador Macartney would change the minds of the mandarins.  So I believe this expression shows another particular trait of Chinese culture, and particularly of Chinese politics.   It can be summarized in the phrase  ”This is what the party says, and we don’t care what reality thinks”. A nice little example with pigeons can be found here.

北京，背景 and the tones of English

This one is a problem of pronunciation. I have observed that everytime I hear the word bèijǐng (背景), meaning “background”,  I automatically think of  běijīng (北京), meaning “Beijing”.  And even though I am perfectly aware of the tones employed by the speaker  (the 4th tone in bei is usually very obvious),  I still can’t help myself from thinking of the city of Beijing, and often pushing the misunderstanding to absurd extremes.

After many times of unconsciously making this mistake, I came to the consclusion that I was influenced by the English pronunciation: Usually when we say Beijing in English we tend to pronounce it in a way that sounds almost like a 4th tone/3rd tone,  that is “Bèijǐng”.  So inevitably my brain is hard-wired to associate this sound with the capital of China, and I am lost in conversation everytime it comes up.

And one question in case somebody knows: what tones do we normally use when speaking in a non-tonal language like English? My guess is that most of the times, in neutral, non interrogative sentences, we use a combination of the 4th and the light tone for the stressed and non-stressed syllables respectively.

And more to come

I still have lots of notes in my studybooks so if I get some good feedback I will roll them out little by little. Let me know what is your interpretation of the above.

Today for example, I completely panicked when I stumbled into one of the bugs of wordpress. For some reason, when you add a “click to read more” tag next to a section in bold, it goes and turns the whole blog to bold, including sidebar, titles and header. So yes, I think I have gone bold for a few hours,  but it was not intended. I hope I didn’t hurt any feelings.

The Goose Huggers

But this bolding effect is nothing compared to the vicious attack that this blog is suffering from an international band of Goose Huggers. 

I have been wondering for a while what is going on with my Goose post. It is attracting more clicking action than anything else around here, and by now it has become already the most popular of my posts. 

An embarrassing situation altogether, because, much as I am proud of my gaggling skills, I always fancied this post does not reach the heights of my otherwise highbrow blog. What will new visitors think? 

These days I have been spending some time  in the control room, tinkering a bit with my layout, and I’ve taken the chance to look into this perplexing phenomenon. There is not a single link on the internet to this post, and I have found out it is the image of the Goose that attracts all the hits. Perverts, I should have known.

Unfortunately, these rascals leave no trace of their dirty deeds, as they are coming from Google image search, so the incoming stats don’t show which is the search string in this case. But I would appreciate it if someone can give me a hint to find out why this simple image of a naked mother goose is getting so much attention.

The Books

And finally, in case you are wondering what has changed after all this tinkering. I have added a new book review section with the covers of the books on the sidebar, and I have taken the chance to go commercial with amazon. But fear not, this is for a good cause, and I am not abandoning my revolutionary principles to walk the road of capitalism. Amazon does not give me any money for this, but instead it gives me points to get discounts on their books. Considering the monthly expenses for books in this house, I am afraid this was a necessary measure.

Apart from this, I have decided to shift the attention of the blog from economy into literature. Most of my posts up to now have dealt with Crisis Watching, contributing no little to the general confusion of the Chinese internet. I will continue writing about that once in a while, but I think I can offer a more valuable contribution dealing with books. And even if my book reviews may be nothing to write home about, I am happy to bring to the people some interesting pieces that are far from amazon’s best sellers lists and might otherwise go unnoticed.

I take pleasure in reviewing books. It gives you a strange feeling of power when you can judge in a few paragraphs the hard work that a writer has taken months to complete. When I write about a book it is because I like it, so whatever I say,  you can take it as a recommendation. I admire all the writers  I review, and I hope I can be fair with them.

For those who don’t do Chinese, 牛 means “Ox” or “Cow”, and in mandarin it is pronounced “Niu”, which sounds similar to the English “New”.  So Happy 牛Year is basically what Chinese picture when they say Happy New Year. Except that, like usual, characters carry a richer load of meaning.

The reasons why this year it is particularly suitable to say Happy 牛 Year are 3fold:

1- Of course, 2009 (starting January 26) will actually be the year of the Ox, or 牛.

2- 牛 in internet slang also means “confident, daring, impressive, amazing”. Usually applied to a person, I see no reason why we shouldn’t apply it to a whole year.

3- The term 牛, as in 牛市, is gaining acceptance as a translation of bull market. 2008 was the year where Shanghai Index crashed. Wishing some 牛 in Shanghai, where even taxi drivers have their economies strapped in the stock market, is sure to get you a warm welcome.

So there you go, it is only once every 12 years that you have so many excuses to say Happy 牛 Year. Carpe diem and grab every chance. Just remember when you say 牛 to stress the ascending tone, to make sure it is clear that you are not saying simply “New”. You can check out my 3Goose lesson for a comprehensive training in rising tones.

As a sidenote, although I don’t really believe in horoscopes I have googled the Ox for a bit to find out what the stars have to say of 2009. I ended up on the website of one well known Singapore Fengshui Consultant, and was quite shocked to read his forecast for 09, which starts and finishes like this:

2009 The year of the Ox will be arriving on Jan 26th. 2009 The year of The Ox will be a very intense year. The many significant incidents that occur will be sudden and deadly.

[...]

Wishing you all the best and good luck for the year of the Ox.

So, like Mr. Han, I wish you all the best for this Bull year, and hope to see you around on Chinayouren once in a while.

Happy 牛Year !!

Fortunately, we still have the Learn Chinese post of the week to do. So here we go. Today’s tip is sponsored by Chinese uber-teacher Fu Ting.

It is called: The Goose, the Goose, the Goose!

Anyone brought up in China will be familiar with this little poem, but surprisingly few foreigners know about it. It has a very interesting story that you can read in detail here. The poet Luo Binwang wrote it about 1400 years ago, when he was only 7 years old. It goes like this:

Now, the essential thing to remember is the Rising Tone of the Goose: 鹅. You have to pronounce it stretching your neck and pulling your head back, just like a Gandle would do if he caught you messing with his Goslings.

It is very important to master the gaggling technique before we can proceed. Practice in front of the mirror or go to the Bird and Flower Market in Shanghai and find a professional Goose to coach you. Beware: a slight mispronounciation of the Rising Tone can have you saying extreme things such as: Hungry (饿), or Disgusting (恶), or just plain Crocodile (鳄).

OK, now we are ready, here are the INSTRUCTIONS. The Goose Trick can be used for the following purposes:

1- If you want to see how your Chinese friends looked at age 7.

Have them recite the Goose. This is a poem that many generations of Chinese children have learnt by heart, memorized in that childish singing way. You will be surprised with the results. I got some spectacular performance from the old flower lady down the road, she got carried away. Didn’t work so well with the bicycle repair man.

2- If you want to sound cocky and in control of the situation.

For example, when you are stuck in the Shanghai Taxi Comic Dialogue:

- Dai wo qu YuYuanLu!
- WuYuanlu?
- YuYuanLu!
- YueYangLu?
- YuyuanLu!!!
- Huh Huh huh ??
- 鹅, 鹅, 鹅!! -> Qu xiang xiang tian ge…etc.

3- When you are in the wild and you encounter an aggressive Goose, the kind that would snap at your picnic sandwich before you have the time to open your electronic Dictionary and Thesaurus.

Final tips: In case your mandarin mental age is under 7, you probably can’t figure out the quackings of a 7 year old poet. Here you have some rather creative tranlations from Baidu. I especially like the last one, by a blogger called wangwuming. It comes with rhyme and all:

Quack Quack, merrily sings the goose,
Raising its head a tune from its mouth pours.
Bule water moors the white feathers,
Its red palms ply the waves as oars.

So that’s all for today. Have a nice weekend and happy gagglings!