Pīnyīn hǎo!

In my various on-and-off efforts to learn Mandarin Chinese over the years, I've stoutly refused to spend any time or energy on the pinyin romanization system, even eschewing study materials that use it. My reasoning went something like this:

• Native Mandarin speakers don't need it.
• It's nothing but a crutch for English speakers who can't handle learning the characters directly.
• Once the language is mastered, pinyin is useless; therefore it's an artifical and unnecessary intermediate step.

But after some discussion with my coworkers, about 80% of whom are Taiwanese or Chinese, and reading some web material on the subject (including the excellent Wikipedia article referenced above), I discovered that these assumptions are dead wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, to the point where I'm embarrassed at the level of my misunderstanding. Here's why.

Far from being just a tool for Western students of Mandarin, pinyin is actually used in schools in China to teach Mandarin pronunciation to children. After all, it's not as if one can see an unfamiliar character and sound it out as one can with alphabetic languages. The reason I was not aware of this before was that my parents (and I, by extension) learned Mandarin the Taiwanese way, where the Bopomofo phonemic alphabet---which does not use Roman letters at all---is used to represent sounds. So Taiwanese speakers of Mandarin have no exposure to pinyin, and in my life I have associated far more with people from Taiwan than from China.

Furthermore, pinyin is far from useless even once a full vocabulary of Chinese characters is attained. The existence of a standard romanization system eliminates confusion resulting from multiple arbitrary ways of expressing the same sound; the common Chinese surnames Wang and Wong are actually the same, but that's not obvious without a consistent representation. Libraries that carry Chinese language materials use pinyin to alphabetize their books on the shelves. And pinyin is invaluable as a method of expressing Chinese words on a computer, ever more important as we head deeper into the digital age.

I am humbled by my misguided arrogance, and encouraged by the implications of my new knowledge.

Oh my!

My current favorite foreign expression is one I learned on an international online community, in reference to a particularly attractive cellist: "Ich würde ihn nicht von der Bettkante schubsen."
(left untranslated for now, in case I have underage readers...)

Heaven on earth

When I retire, this is where I want to spend my summers.

Back to work

I'm returning to work on-site at my company today for the first time in four months, and have thus rejoined the hordes of techies who fill the highways to converge upon the geographic phenomenon that is Silicon Valley. Now, most people do not consider commuting to be a desirable thing, but for me it is one of the few moments in my day when I have the time and peace to focus on my language studies. My challenge is not to have any English spoken in the car during my 40-minute journey each way, and so I make this drive to the audio accompaniment of the Pimsleur Mandarin II course, various local Spanish radio stations, and the excellent Puerta del Sol audiomagazine.

My experience this morning reminded me that processing another language (which one must do to learn successfully) requires significant concentration and therefore should not be attempted when driving unfamiliar routes. Fortunately for my fellow commuters, I know this one all too well.

Nunc est querendum

It annoys me to no end when people decide they want to use Latin to sound more educated, yet can't take the trouble to make sure they're using it correctly. The most common instance of this is probably the confusion of i.e. (id est, "that is") and e.g. (exempli gratia, "for example"). I don't know why the former is so often used when the latter is correct. If you aren't sure, for goodness' sake, just use the English!

During my graduate work I often had discussions with my colleagues about so-called ab initio calculations, referring to those performed "from first principles." My professor was fond of describing our own work jokingly as "ab nada," never mind that he was mixing a Latin preposition with a Spanish pronoun. I tried getting him to say ab nihil instead, but to no avail.

And finally, what's the deal with the name of the Internet used book seller Alibris? I assume it's supposed to trigger an association with the expression ex libris ("from the books"), but the preposition a also means "from." I've never seen a libris (or ab libris) used in this manner and can only assume it's not idiomatic. If the company's name is supposed to mean "to the books" instead, it ought to have been named Adlibros.

Cool German physics words

It is a tradition with the UC-Berkeley physics department that the first-year graduate students put on a skit every year. The class one year behind me did a particularly creative "Family Feud" type thing, surveying all graduate students on issues like "Who is the scariest professor to have for the preliminary oral exams?" My favorite of the questions was "What is the coolest German word used in 221A [the first-year quantum mechanics course]?" Among the top answers were "Zitterbewegung" and "ansatz" (an assumed form for the solution to an equation). I would also have added "bremsstrahlung" to the list, which translates as "braking radiation," not "breaking radiation" as some of my non-German-speaking classmates thought.

And yes, it has been long enough since I studied this stuff that it's all Greek...err, German to me now.

Color them misguided

My favorite radio station recently ran a trivia quiz about the three colors that have had their names changed by Crayola. They are "prussian blue" to "midnight blue," "flesh" to "peach," and "indian red" to "chestnut." The "flesh" change is merited, and I applaud the company for making it. But the other two? "Prussian blue" was changed upon request by elementary school teachers who claimed that students could "no longer relate to Prussian history." Is the word "periwinkle" any more meaningful to a five-year-old? It seems to me that this would be a fantastic way to connect a history lesson to something more familiar and interesting to kids.

As for "indian red," the color refers to a pigment from India, not to the skin color of Native Americans. When it comes to questions of possibly offensive language I like to err on the side of caution, but not when the offense-taker does so out of ignorance. It's uncomfortably similar to the controversy several years ago over a DC staffer's use of the word "niggardly," a word which is absolutely, completely unrelated to the term "nigger." If you're going to take offense to a term, educate yourself first.

¡Feliz Cinco de Mayo a todos los mexicanos!

And as long as I'm on the subject of Spanish, let me take this opportunity to educate any readers who have the common misconception that Cinco de Mayo celebrates Mexican independence. In fact, Mexican Independence Day is September 16, and is shared by several Central American countries such as El Salvador and Guatemala. Cinco de Mayo, however, commemorates a battle that took place in Puebla in 1862, in which a poorly equipped and vastly outnumbered Mexican army managed to defeat invading French forces. Though France was eventually victorious in the war, Cinco de Mayo serves as a reminder of Mexican courage and unity in the face of oppression, a great source of orgullo indeed.

Rolling the r's

The hardest thing about pronouncing Spanish for me has always been rolling my r's. For years I was convinced I'd never be able to do it. Now I've got a respectable (if not always reliable) rr, so I thought I'd share my tips for others who have struggled with this maneuver.

First, you must be able to "flip" your r's. I believe this is something every native English speaker can do, and it's a reasonable fake until you master the roll. It is something like a very quickly spoken d between two vowels; say "yadda yadda yadda" fast and you'll produce it. This is what the single r sounds like in Spanish, as in the word cara. Never pronounce the r as it is done in English. This will mark you as a gringo faster than you can say "car-uh."

Now, the rr is theoretically just this sound repeated, but that's much easier said than done. One great discovery for me was that the rr is much more easily pronounced after certain vowels. Unfortunately, most Spanish students encounter the sound first in the word perro, when I find it much easier to produce the rr after the vowels a and o. When I feel myself "losing" the roll, I say ahorro or gitarra several times and it almost always comes back. Start by using the flip, then slow down the word until the flip turns into a roll. It won't come immediately, but it will happen. I am living proof.

I am you, you are me, we're a happy family

My two-year-old daughter is way ahead of the curve in her language skills. She had a 150+ word vocabulary at an age when the pediatrician would have been happy with ten, and now regularly strings together fifteen-word sentences with multiple dependent clauses.

One thing we're still working on, however, is the appropriate use of pronouns. She hasn't yet grasped the concept that "I" refers to the speaker and "you" to the addressee, hence statements like "You don't want to take a nap" and "Want me to carry you" (that would be a feat!). So far we've tried just restating things correctly, but maybe we ought to just sit her down and explain how it works. She understands more than we think.

"V" is for versatile

The letter V is pronounced like "b" in Spanish, like "f" in German, and like "w" in classical Latin.