I recently found another article that I wish had been given to me as a must-read when starting to learn Chinese. I’ve regretted that no one told me to read at least the first chapter of John DeFrancis’ The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy at the outset. Similarly, I laughed ’til I cried when I read David Mosers’ Why Chinese is So Damn Hard. But there’s certainly some Chinese texts that ought to be handed out in translation the first day of class, such as Lu Xun’s “On the Swear, ‘Your Mother'” (论“他妈的ï¼â€), translated here at From a Singaporean Angle. Anyone who can quote Zhuangzi when remarking on the “richness and subtlety of the national swear” being “limitless like the Milky Way” gets major points from me. Or remarking that the Japanese translation of the Russian equivalent for “your mother” (“your mother is my bitch”) is “just too obscure–in my estimation.” Pure gold. This is core curriculum material, ladies and gentlemen.
Note: apparently two bits are not translated, one because Huichieh isn’t certain how to best go about it.
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By Vishesh Bajaj
Check this out to learn top phrases in cantonese
January 11, 2007 @ 4:30 am | Comment
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By Vishesh Bajaj
Check this out to learn top phrases in cantonese
http://www.geobeats.com/videoclips/view/54
January 11, 2007 @ 4:33 am | Comment
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By Si
It also doesn’t help that Chinese textbooks and learning methods are so crummy. Everyone! Altogether! Let’s chant! The propaganda! About how the Chinese people are polite, hard working, family centred, moral, upright, have five thousand years of historyzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz……..
The Chinese first banned us from learning the language. Now they try to prevent us from learning by producing the world’s most boring textbooks.
January 11, 2007 @ 5:51 pm | Comment
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By shulan
On the other hand are Chinese Characters a quite intelligent way to comunicate in a large empire despite it’s hundrets of different dialects. The character for tree stays the same regardles of how you pronounce it.
January 11, 2007 @ 8:40 pm | Comment
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By otherlisa
I think the new BLCU series is pretty good, actually. Okay the essays aren’t so fascinating – but they introduce new vocabulary and then reinforce it in subsequent lessons – I’m trying to remember the name of another text we used or who put it out – Gaoji Hanyu something or other – and there was so much new vocabulary, it would appear once and then you’d never see it again.
Keeping in mind that I’m a lousy, lazy student, of course.
January 12, 2007 @ 3:06 am | Comment
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By Tom - Daai Tou Laam
On the other hand are Chinese Characters a quite intelligent way to comunicate in a large empire despite it’s hundrets of different dialects. The character for tree stays the same regardles of how you pronounce it.
Posted by: shulan at January 11, 2007 08:40 PM
Thus the need for the Hong Kong Supplemental Character Set (HKSCS). 😉
What’s the character for he/she (3rd person pronoun) in Cantonese?
January 12, 2007 @ 1:34 pm | Comment
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By Si
@ otherlisa
what’s the name of that book? i’d like to check it out (the good one – gaoji hanyu was awful)
January 12, 2007 @ 5:35 pm | Comment
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By OtherLisa
Si, it’s the updated PRACTICAL CHINESE READER – with all of the Sige Xiandaihua references removed!
I’m not sure how many volumes they’ve put out at this point, and again, it isn’t the quality of essays that I think makes it good but the systematic way it introduces vocabulary.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who hated Gaoji Hanyu….well, me and practically everyone in my class.
January 13, 2007 @ 1:29 am | Comment
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By GD
Excellent translation of 论“他妈的ï¼â€. I just love Lu Xun. Always so right on.
January 13, 2007 @ 7:46 am | Comment
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By Mark S.
The first chapter in The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy is indeed a classic. Everyone should read the entire book, especially the central chapter on the ideographic myth, which is available on my website.
Lu Xun fans should also read An Outsider’s Chats about Written Language, which covers some of the same territory as DeFrancis.
January 15, 2007 @ 5:06 pm | Comment