'Gongxi' or 'kungsi'
'Gongxi' or 'kungsi'
Posted 11:12pm (Mla time) Feb 08, 2005
By Michael Tan
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A15 of the February 9, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
THE OTHER day a friend told me she wanted her grandchild enrolled in a local Chinese school so he could learn Chinese, which she felt would be an advantage later on.
She's right, yet many Filipinos, including Chinese-Filipinos turn their backs on Chinese, which is offered not just in Chinese schools but, at the college level, for example, at the University of the Philippines.
Locally, the ethnic Chinese constitute only about 2 percent of the total population, but many own large and medium-sized business firms, so it's not unusual to see job advertisements looking for people who can speak Minnan Hokkien, the language spoken by most local ethnic Chinese or the Chinese national language Mandarin (the communist Chinese prefer the more proletarian name, Putonghua, which literally means "ordinary language").
Note that although there are 201 living languages in China, as listed in the Summer Institute of Linguistics' website, most of these use one common script, which has been an important reason why such a large country has stayed unified.
Because of the sheer size of China's population (some 1.3 billion), Putonghua is currently the world's most widely spoken language. To be able to speak Putonghua can mean access to many opportunities, especially with China developing so rapidly.
Putonghua isn't limited to China alone. It's also spoken by many overseas Chinese and is sometimes referred to as Huayi, the language of the "Hua" or Chinese. Many times, in cities as diverse as Bangkok and Bristol, Singapore and Salvador, I'd enter a restaurant or a shop and as soon as I'd have an inkling that the owners might be Chinese, I'd say something in Chinese. Like a magic mantra, I'd find myself getting hefty discounts, special tables in restaurants and dishes not listed on the menu and, quite simply, new friends.
A musical language
Business, shopping and friendships aside, Chinese is worth learning for its own sake. It is a language that is as complex as it is fascinating. Like many Asian languages, most Chinese dialects are tonal, meaning the pitch with which it's spoken determines differences in meaning. In Putonghua for example, depending on which tone is used, "ma" can mean "hemp," "to scold," "mother" or "horse,"
Learning these tonal languages early may have an unexpected benefit. Psychologists at the University of California in San Diego recently released results of research showing that children who learned Putonghua as babies were far more likely to develop perfect pitch than those who were raised to speak English. Perfect pitch is the ability to name or sing a musical note, and is considered to be relatively rare, with only 1 in 10,000 Americans having this gift.
Imagine that, being able to speak Putonghua giving you the advantage of being able to do business with the Chinese, including being a hit at karaoke, which is immensely popular in China. (I have to say, though, my memories of karaoke in China are as unpleasant as those of karaoke here, or maybe it's just that karaoke, in Manila or Beijing, tends to attract those with the most imperfect musical pitch.)
Idea words
Some of you might be asking which Chinese language would be most useful. Hokkien? Putonghua? Cantonese? I'd still suggest Putonghua because it is the national language, and I'd add that you might want to learn to read and write Chinese as well. I've mentioned that one common script is used all throughout China, so whether you're in Hong Kong or Beijing, you can make your way around if you can read the written form. The bad news is that Chinese does not use an alphabet and instead uses thousands of ideographs, which I'll explain shortly.
There have been many attempts to try to Romanize Chinese, meaning get the words spelled out with the Roman alphabet. The title of my column shows two versions of the greeting "Wishing you happiness," which you can use today, Chinese New Year, and on other occasions, from birthdays to graduations. In China today, there is one system called pinyin which has tried to standardize the Romanized versions of the sounds. "Gongxi" is the pinyin version while "kung si" is a Romanized form from another system.
Unfortunately, you can't get by with these Romanized systems. First, the tones have to be learned. Second, the same Romanized word may refer to many different ideographs.
How many ideographs would one have to learn? You could get by with a thousand, but someone truly fluent would know much more. I'm a novice at this, despite several years of Chinese classes at Xavier School, but I've found that learning to read and write Chinese is a lifelong experience... and a voyage of discovery.
Ai
Ideographs are fascinating because you can break them down into their components and, in the process, quite often you learn something about Chinese culture. The character for a male, nan, shows a rice paddy on top and "strength" on the bottom, showing how maleness was defined in an agrarian society. On the other hand, nu, the character for a female, shows a person kneeling, reflecting the feudal low status assigned to women in the past.
The ideograph for a female, when combined with other characters to form other words, speaks volumes about Chinese gender concepts. A female under a roof gives you the word anor, “peace.” Combine "female" with "child" and you have the word hao, which means "good," reflecting the importance of bearing children.
Even if you don't plan on learning Chinese, I'd suggest you pick up "Analyzed Ideographs" by Tinna K. Wu at National Bookstore (the author once lived in the Philippines and went on to become a Chinese language professor in the United States). I have so many favorite examples from her book but I particularly enjoyed the section where she shows how repeated use of the same character generates amazing new ideographs. For example, put three hands together into one word and, goodness, you’d know the feeling if you've lost your cell phone to ... a pickpocket!
With Feb. 14 just around the corner, let's do a bit of analysis around the heart. In Chinese, if you write out the character xin or "heart" three times, you produce the word suo, which means suspicious. Note how in many Asian languages, "heart" refers both to feelings and to thoughts so the message here is that sometimes, maybe around Valentine's especially, we shouldn't bog ourselves down with too much heart.
On the other hand, there's wisdom in the way the Chinese combine the word shou, which means "to endure" with xin, the heart to produce ai. On its own, endurance often means a quiet suffering. But insert the heart-feelings and thinking-and no longer do you just endure, but you have ai, or love. In explaining the construction of the Chinese ai, Tinna Wu, a pastor's daughter, brings East and West together by quoting from 1 Corinthians 13:4: "It suffers long, and it is kind ... It endures all things."
Posted 11:12pm (Mla time) Feb 08, 2005
By Michael Tan
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A15 of the February 9, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
THE OTHER day a friend told me she wanted her grandchild enrolled in a local Chinese school so he could learn Chinese, which she felt would be an advantage later on.
She's right, yet many Filipinos, including Chinese-Filipinos turn their backs on Chinese, which is offered not just in Chinese schools but, at the college level, for example, at the University of the Philippines.
Locally, the ethnic Chinese constitute only about 2 percent of the total population, but many own large and medium-sized business firms, so it's not unusual to see job advertisements looking for people who can speak Minnan Hokkien, the language spoken by most local ethnic Chinese or the Chinese national language Mandarin (the communist Chinese prefer the more proletarian name, Putonghua, which literally means "ordinary language").
Note that although there are 201 living languages in China, as listed in the Summer Institute of Linguistics' website, most of these use one common script, which has been an important reason why such a large country has stayed unified.
Because of the sheer size of China's population (some 1.3 billion), Putonghua is currently the world's most widely spoken language. To be able to speak Putonghua can mean access to many opportunities, especially with China developing so rapidly.
Putonghua isn't limited to China alone. It's also spoken by many overseas Chinese and is sometimes referred to as Huayi, the language of the "Hua" or Chinese. Many times, in cities as diverse as Bangkok and Bristol, Singapore and Salvador, I'd enter a restaurant or a shop and as soon as I'd have an inkling that the owners might be Chinese, I'd say something in Chinese. Like a magic mantra, I'd find myself getting hefty discounts, special tables in restaurants and dishes not listed on the menu and, quite simply, new friends.
A musical language
Business, shopping and friendships aside, Chinese is worth learning for its own sake. It is a language that is as complex as it is fascinating. Like many Asian languages, most Chinese dialects are tonal, meaning the pitch with which it's spoken determines differences in meaning. In Putonghua for example, depending on which tone is used, "ma" can mean "hemp," "to scold," "mother" or "horse,"
Learning these tonal languages early may have an unexpected benefit. Psychologists at the University of California in San Diego recently released results of research showing that children who learned Putonghua as babies were far more likely to develop perfect pitch than those who were raised to speak English. Perfect pitch is the ability to name or sing a musical note, and is considered to be relatively rare, with only 1 in 10,000 Americans having this gift.
Imagine that, being able to speak Putonghua giving you the advantage of being able to do business with the Chinese, including being a hit at karaoke, which is immensely popular in China. (I have to say, though, my memories of karaoke in China are as unpleasant as those of karaoke here, or maybe it's just that karaoke, in Manila or Beijing, tends to attract those with the most imperfect musical pitch.)
Idea words
Some of you might be asking which Chinese language would be most useful. Hokkien? Putonghua? Cantonese? I'd still suggest Putonghua because it is the national language, and I'd add that you might want to learn to read and write Chinese as well. I've mentioned that one common script is used all throughout China, so whether you're in Hong Kong or Beijing, you can make your way around if you can read the written form. The bad news is that Chinese does not use an alphabet and instead uses thousands of ideographs, which I'll explain shortly.
There have been many attempts to try to Romanize Chinese, meaning get the words spelled out with the Roman alphabet. The title of my column shows two versions of the greeting "Wishing you happiness," which you can use today, Chinese New Year, and on other occasions, from birthdays to graduations. In China today, there is one system called pinyin which has tried to standardize the Romanized versions of the sounds. "Gongxi" is the pinyin version while "kung si" is a Romanized form from another system.
Unfortunately, you can't get by with these Romanized systems. First, the tones have to be learned. Second, the same Romanized word may refer to many different ideographs.
How many ideographs would one have to learn? You could get by with a thousand, but someone truly fluent would know much more. I'm a novice at this, despite several years of Chinese classes at Xavier School, but I've found that learning to read and write Chinese is a lifelong experience... and a voyage of discovery.
Ai
Ideographs are fascinating because you can break them down into their components and, in the process, quite often you learn something about Chinese culture. The character for a male, nan, shows a rice paddy on top and "strength" on the bottom, showing how maleness was defined in an agrarian society. On the other hand, nu, the character for a female, shows a person kneeling, reflecting the feudal low status assigned to women in the past.
The ideograph for a female, when combined with other characters to form other words, speaks volumes about Chinese gender concepts. A female under a roof gives you the word anor, “peace.” Combine "female" with "child" and you have the word hao, which means "good," reflecting the importance of bearing children.
Even if you don't plan on learning Chinese, I'd suggest you pick up "Analyzed Ideographs" by Tinna K. Wu at National Bookstore (the author once lived in the Philippines and went on to become a Chinese language professor in the United States). I have so many favorite examples from her book but I particularly enjoyed the section where she shows how repeated use of the same character generates amazing new ideographs. For example, put three hands together into one word and, goodness, you’d know the feeling if you've lost your cell phone to ... a pickpocket!
With Feb. 14 just around the corner, let's do a bit of analysis around the heart. In Chinese, if you write out the character xin or "heart" three times, you produce the word suo, which means suspicious. Note how in many Asian languages, "heart" refers both to feelings and to thoughts so the message here is that sometimes, maybe around Valentine's especially, we shouldn't bog ourselves down with too much heart.
On the other hand, there's wisdom in the way the Chinese combine the word shou, which means "to endure" with xin, the heart to produce ai. On its own, endurance often means a quiet suffering. But insert the heart-feelings and thinking-and no longer do you just endure, but you have ai, or love. In explaining the construction of the Chinese ai, Tinna Wu, a pastor's daughter, brings East and West together by quoting from 1 Corinthians 13:4: "It suffers long, and it is kind ... It endures all things."
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