Honest Enjoyment of a Chinese Novel

"Humans don't know what makes us happy"... or at least that is the way Nick Winter (Skritter co-founder) opens the section On Happiness in his new book The Motivation Hacker. He goes on to explain, with the help of psychologist Daniel Kahneman, that happiness tends to get rather muddled at some point between the "experiencing self" (actually doing an action) and the "remembering self" (how we interpret what we've done in the past). Our "remembering self" is so good at extracting and extrapolating happiness and enjoyment from particular instances and memories that our experiencing self often gets left behind in the dust. What he says makes a lot of sense, especially when you actually take the time to track happiness at given points during the day. Take Nick's whitewater rafting experience that he used in the book as an example. While Nick's "remembering self" might think that hitting rapids (short bursts of 8 on a 1-10 happiness scale) might make the overall experience totally epic... especially to the "remembering self," the reality is that it can't make up for the fact that the entire nine hour trip only netted him an average happiness of 4.47, which fell well below his own average happiness of 6.18 for the previous month.

After reading this section of Nick's book, I couldn't help but start doing my own mental happiness checks at various times during the day. There was nothing really mechanical or scientific about the happiness checks, but the simple action of asking "how happy am I on a scale of 1 to 10 right now" was enough to make me realize that reading a Chinese book before bed, or biking the streets of Taipei without a backpack, are much, much more fun than surfing YouTube when I should be studying or listening to a three hour lecture at school.

While realizing that reading a book at night made me happy was a good start, I wanted to find out a bit more about this experience, so I decided to pick a book a start tracking my happiness while I read and dig a little deeper.

The Book

The book I choose to track just so happened to be the next one on the list. Part of a project of reading at least one novel in Chinese for fun a month, and alternating between translated and native Chinese texts. The book in question was 棋王 (qíwáng: chess master) written by Taiwanese author 張系國 (Zhāng Xìguó) and published in 1978. 

The book tells the story of some 30-something friends living and working in 1970's Taipei. With Taiwan on the economic rise and everyone thinking of new ways of getting ahead in life, the main characters come across a Gobang (a 5-in-a-row game played on a Go board) child prodigy who has not only never lost a game of Gobang in his life, but also seemingly has the ability to predict the future. Over the course of 216 pages 張系國 explores how these friends deal with this astounding discovery, and talks a lot about life in 70's Taiwan along the way.

The Challenge

There are lots of different ways to go about reading in Chinese. Highlighting words we don't know for later study, looking things up as we go, and of course plain and simple cold reading, or not looking anything up at all. I'm of the opinion that different techniques provide learners with different skill sets, and thus all have a specific time and place in study routines. In fact, there is a great guest post written by Sara K. on Hacking Chinese which talks a lot about some different approaches to reading.

My own goals for the challenge were as follows:

• Find overall enjoyment of the book by tracking happiness across every page of the novel on a 1 to 10 scale 
• Underline any unknown word or phrase but do not look them up (unless absolutely necessary)
• Check correlation between unknown items and happiness 

For this tracking challenge I decide to cold read the entire novel without looking up a single word or phrase unless absolutely necessary, or rather if I was frustrated by the fact that a word or phrase I didn't know appeared a gazillion times over a few short pages. My happiness per page, and unknown words or phrases, would then be recorded in a Google Spreadsheet once I finished reading the book.

Impressions while reading:

Without giving anything away about the novel's plot, I will say that I found myself enjoying the book right away. The author painted a very vivid picture of Taipei in the 70's, and his writing style seemed perfect for my reading level. While a word or two that I didn't know would appear on just about every single page, not looking them up allowed me to read more lines of text per minute than I was used to. If context wasn't strong enough to venture a guess I would cruise right by them, knowing that I could always return to learn them at some point in the future.

Part of the motivating factor for not looking up words I didn't know was actually reminding myself just how much information I was taking in without them. I did this by talking about the novel to whomever would listen. In either English or Chinese I realized that it didn't matter if I didn't know that one four character idiom, or what the main character had to eat for lunch, because the main story wasn't hingeing around the little details.

In regards to new characters and words, however, one cool thing did happen with the character "喫." I swear it had been trolling me for 70+ pages! Determined not to look the character up (it wasn't coming up frequently enough to warrant it), I shouted with joy when on page 79 I came across this sentence:  「其他的人去喫中飯」(I've left out Pinyin and translation so you can venture a guess too!).

Who needs to look words up when the context clues are handed to you on a silver platter like this? I remember thinking that even crazy fonts and variant characters can't stop me!


Results

I finished to book in around two weeks. Reading mostly at night before bed and while eating breakfast in the morning, and spending around 10 hours of total reading time. After everything was tracked and tallied it turns out I encountered 2.63 unknown words or phrases per page, and a total of 502 words or phrases over the entire story. Not a lot by any means, but if and when I decided look up these words that will bring a serious boost to my passive vocabulary!

If you asked me today how much I enjoyed the book, my "remembering self" would probably tell you how great it was and that it's a "must read," but what did my "experiencing self" think? Despite not knowing 502 words or phrases, my average enjoyment of 棋王 came out to a solid 6.3 out of 10. A little lower than I had expected, but certainly readable from cover to cover. I can also say with certainty that chapter 4 was by far the best, earning a solid 7 out of 10 despite having an average of 3.27 new words or phrases per page.

As for correlation between the unknown vocabulary and my ability to enjoy this book?  First impressions would say no way. Being able to talk about the book in two languages, and even read page after page without needing to look things up is a pretty good indicator and the statistics back me up. With a correlation result of r= -.16560 it appears that there is no or at least a negligible relationship between the two. I'm actually curious about this entire concept and will be exploring the relationship in the future.

Conclusion

Tracking my happiness while reading this book was probably one of the more fun things I've done over the past few months. In addition to allowing me to give one of my most honest (and completely subjective) reviews of a book ever, I also re-opened up my eyes to the joy and wonder of cold reading a book in a foreign language. Knowing that I can learn tons of new words whenever I feel like re-opening this book for a closer look is cool, but knowing that I didn't need those words to understand and enjoy the story is even better and I wouldn't have known that without this fun and simple challenge. 

I guess sometimes we've got to check in on our "experiencing self" every now and again, because we never know what they might have to say until we take the time to listen. 

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for next week! 

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Have questions, comments, feedback, or a topic you want covered on the Skritter blog? Please send them to jake@skritter.com. 

Interview with Julien Leyre from Marco Polo Project

I first stumbled upon Marco Polo Project (MPP from here on in) a little over a year ago and knew instantly that I would be spending lots of time on the site in the future. If the tagline "read and translate new writing from China" doesn't have you intrigued, perhaps some of the articles featured on the main page might help do the trick: 

• The hidden logic of luxury in China (English)
• How is academia doing? (English)
• Why does the U.S. have so many superheros? (English)

MPP, a crowd-sourced translation site that aims to share Chinese content with the rest of the world, is the brain child of founder and translator Julien Leyre, who runs the .org with the help of a small team of developers, translators, and supporters from all over the globe. Julien, a French polyglot (he speaks or has studied: French, German, English, Ancient Greek, Latin, Modern Greek, Italian, Hebrew, Chinese and more!) living in Melbourne, Australia started MPP in November of 2011 with a group of like minded individuals, and has been running the site and helping to translate the growing number of blogs posts, essays, and editorials ever since.

I'm not quite sure how it happened, but fate connected Julien and I months ago via Twitter, Skype or something and we've been sharing ideas, and messaging back and forth ever since. After hearing more about his own experience learning Chinese and creating MPP I've been wanting to share his story with Skritter readers. At the end of April we finally were able to make it happen. The following are the highlights of our hour and a half interview. 

I hope you all enjoy! 

Where did the inspiration to create MPP come from? 

"When I arrived (in Melbourne) I was fascinated by this multi-cultural city, which was really a kind of East meets West place. There's a very strong European influence, you see not only the British heritage, but also Italian, Greek, Eastern European, French etc., but there's also a very strong Asian influence, especially a Chinese influence... and so I thought, this would be an amazing place to build a great center for translation dialogue, kind of bring together the European and Asian tradition. And especially now that Asia is rising, China is rising... Melbourne would be an amazing place to bring Chinese literature to Westerners... In 2010 I was working for the government and looking at E-Government models, and looking at ways of delivering government services using the Internet and peer-to-peer models. I went on a Summer study trip to Tianjin in 2010 and the two just kind of fused in my mind. Why not build a collaborative translation platform?"

Where do authors and articles featured on MPP come from?

The first articles on MPP we're admittedly quite selfish at first, featuring stuff that Julien wanted to read. Rather than just find articles online, however, he took a round about approach and built a website that would (eventually) find great stuff for him! The origins of the content featured on MPP come from four major sources (for a detailed list check link). Three of the sites are, according to Julien, "the Chinese equivalent of the Huffington Post... so blog aggregators." The articles are usually re-posts from things published in magazines, newspapers or online by Chinese intellectuals, independent journalists etc. After that, the small team at MPP searches for articles that are "relatively easy to translate, quite original, and would appeal to an international audience." 

The fourth source is 豆瓣 (Douban), a "Chinese mix between MySpace and Facebook... the social networking platform where the cool upper-middle-class-urban-Chinese hipsters like to hang out and post film reviews, book reviews, art reviews and write journals" says Julien. With over 500 articles now on MPP, they're starting to get a sense of which authors to follow and and who consistently posts interesting stuff that readers will enjoy. 

How many translators does the site have?

Looking at articles on the site, it seems like Julien has been keeping himself busy, but he's not the only one providing multi-lingual content (the site features articles in English, French, and Spanish). 

There have been 40 or 50 people that have been contributed to Marco Polo Project at some stage. Some of them have done half a text, some of them have done one or two. But I've been doing the bulk of the work translating, partly to pump up the machine, but also party because the model is such that people enjoy reading and don't necessarily take the time to translate. But now we're actually working on collaboration workshops in Melbourne where I bring together people from China,Taiwan and Malaysia etc. and people from here, put them at tables and every team works on one or two paragraphs... and we put them together and then I put it up.

These meetups have brought together a core of people working on applied professional translation; usually a mix of native English and Chinese speakers, who work together on an individual text at every event meetup. 

Does one need any previous translation experience, or language credentials to contribute?

Julien's own background is in education. He taught English and linguistics at Institut Catholique de Paris and Paris-Sorbonne University, but you don't need to have any pervious experience to join in on the fun. MPP is actually about trying to build motivation and confidence in a fun environment where you're translating things you're actually interested in. As he said in the interview, "if you know 1500 characters, you know a bit of Chinese, go ahead... you can start translating now!"

Articles on MPP have a basic hardness rating that is given internally by the editorial team, but they're talking with some other sites and hoping to be able to find an even better system for proving articles that fit more closely with a user's level. Even if you're not ready to translate, that doesn't mean that MPP isn't a great resource for finding interesting articles that are worth reading. Additionally, previously translated articles can be read bilingually, bridging gaps between two languages and creating deeper understanding and meaning.

For Julien, translation is actually the practice of very close reading. When you translate a text "you have to precisely understand the meaning of every sentence in the text. Both in terms of semantics and in terms of how the words work together and how the language operates." Translation will no doubt make you a better reader and a better interpreter no matter what your level.   

After all this translation your Chinese must be really good!

You wouldn't know it by looking at the site, but Julien's Chinese has come a very long way since first starting the site in 2011. In fact, when he first started the site he was "absolutely unable to select the articles, and had no idea what he was doing." He started studying Chinese six years ago when he moved to Australia, but he had a strong background in language and translation. Between self-study, language exchange, and living in Tianjin he has certainly come a long way!  

How long does it take to translate a typical article?

Every article is going to have its own unique challenges, but first starting out it could take anywhere from 6-10 hours for Julien to translate a single article, but now it's anywhere from 3-6 hours on average. The big factor, he says, is the length of the article, but hopefully new features that are being built into the site (see the end of questions for more info) will help make this less of an issue for others wanting to join in on the fun. 

Interviews go faster because "transcribed oral language tends to be easier to translate," but article structure can be a big factor as well. With a solid outline its much easier to find the flow. The first sentence of every paragraph is also a solid indicator. Being able to read and easily understand the first few sentences is a good indication of relatively difficulty overall.  

What kind of tools do you use?

Crazy English signs and poorly translated restaurant menus might be a strong indication of just how long we'll be waiting before machine translation takes over, but that doesn't mean that it can't help us mere mortals do some of the work. The number one tool for Julien is actually Google Translate. As he said in the interview: 

I translate quickly... and the reason is because I use Google Translate, which I absolutely adore. It's got very bad press, people hate it, it's very fashionable to bash it... I think it's an amazing tool. The way I translate is take a paragraph and pop it into Google Translate... about 1/3 or it is perfect translation, 1/3 is okay translation that needs to be re-framed, and 1/3 makes absolutely no sense at all... When you're a machine, or when you don't know any Chinese and pop something into Google Translate it's terrible because you don't know what makes sense and what doesn't, but if you know enough Chinese you're immediately able to see what works and what doesn't. So 1/3 of your work is already done for you! One third of your work is almost done because the meaning is almost there... and so you're no longer faced with 'this task is infinite and really long,' and so you gain speed and confidence.

But Google Translate isn't only for full bodies of text. In fact, another great trick is "jumping lines" (hitting Shift of Return) at punctuation points or grammatical words (like 是), which keeps Google from translating the entire sentence and instead turns it into a character or single word dictionary. This is great for keeping all of your work on a single page and ultimately helps save lots of time.

Any tips for people who would like to start translating?

The difficulty doesn't come from translating as such, but rather the psychology of translating, or "how to not give up." Finding motivating factors is going to be a much bigger influence for people who are just starting out. If a sentence is too hard, "just skip it and start with the easy part," says Julien. And since the site is crowd-sourced translation, you can always tweet the really hard stuff by using #MPPolo and find other users who are willing to lend a hand.

Another great tip to is to try and first get a feel for an article by translating the first sentence of every paragraph. Finish that and you'll have a great idea of where the article is headed and what it's about. A new paragraph by paragraph translation interface, due to come out in the next month or so, should also make the task less daunting for aspiring translators.

For more tips and tricks, check the dedicated page on the Marco Polo Project site.  

Any favorite or must-read articles on your site?

Once you've made your way over to MPP I'm sure you'll be able to find tons of great articles that fit your personal interests, but here are three articles that Julien highly recommends. Head over and take a look!

1. There's a void called the countryside
2. The tears of animals 
3. Fragments of Sanlitun

What's the future look like for Marco Polo Project?

There are some big plans and big improvements coming down the road for MPP: user profiles, badges (and other gamification elements), better usability, and new languages (German and Italian) just to name a few. Also, with many more readers than translators on MPP the goal is now to get more people helping out. Hopefully the new translation style will help make that a reality.  

 Up until know you were translating a whole text... and people felt a little bit overwhelmed... but now we've changed it so you will be able to edit one paragraph so now the content that you're working on is much more manageable... just five lines of Chinese! 

The updates all sound like they're going to make MPP an ever better and more fun user experience. As for translating five lines of Chinese rather than an entire text... who doesn't have time to try that at least once? A huge thanks to Julien for taking time out to conduct the interview, and for building such a great cultural and linguistic resource. For those who are interested in more information be sure to check the links below.

Marco Polo Project blog

Twitter

Facebook

Weibo

Parter Website: Language Connection 

10 Simple Phrases for Improving Your Conversational Skills

I had a good laugh the other day when I came across this graphic of typical "first words" you learn in a foreign language. It certainly applies to my own experience studying basic Japanese, Cantonese, and German.

Image Source: http://cheezburger.com/2439075072

Once we get past "你好吗" (how are you?) and "我不会说中文" (I don't speak Chinese) it seems the sky's the limit, but what kinds of language can we use to improve conversational skills and extract even more information out of language exchange partners, language teachers and native speakers? Today we'll be trying to answer that question by providing 10 phrases that'll be sure to improve your Chinese conversational skills.

1. Excuse me, could you say that again?

(S) 对不起，请再说一遍。

(T) 對不起，請再說一遍。

(P) Duìbùqǐ, qǐng zài shuō yí biàn.

Did you miss a chunk of information or the tone for a specific word? This extremely versatile phrase is perfect for any occasion and beats having to pretend you understood everything someone just said.

2. I'm sorry, I don't understand

(S) 对不起，我听不懂。

(T) 對不起，我聽不懂。

(P) Duìbùqǐ, wǒ tīng bù dǒng.

Don't mess around with having someone repeat things again. Instead, just tell them you haven't got a clue and give the person you're speaking with a chance to re-phrase, simplify, or repeat what they just said for clarification. 

3. You just said ____, right? 

(S) 你刚才说＿＿，是吗（对吗）？ 

(T) 你剛才說＿＿，是嗎（對嗎）？

(P) Nǐ gāngcái shuō ＿＿, shì ma (duì ma)?

Put your conversational skills on the offensive and re-clarify what someone just said using words and language you already know. This is also an awesome way to test your chops on a word or phrase you just heard. Why have someone repeat something when you can repeat it for them?

4. What I mean is... 

(S) 我的意思是....... 

(T) 我的意思是....... 

(P) Wǒ de yìsi shì .......

Are getting a blank stare from across the table? Give your self another shot at explaining something with this gem of a phrase.

5. How do I say _____ in Chinese?

(S) ____用汉语怎么说？

(T) ＿＿用漢語怎麼說？

(P) ____ yòng Hànyŭ zěnme shuō?

Before you run to your dictionary to look up a word, try using this phrase to find out how something is said in Chinese. *Note: If the person you're talking to doesn't speak your language, you're probably still going to need to run to a dictionary. 

6. What does _____ mean?

(S) ___是什么意思？

(T) ___是什麼意思？

(P) ___ shì shénme yìsi?

Do you how to read a character but don't know what the heck it means?  Have you been hearing a phrase over and over again but still don't know it? If so, than phrase number six is the one for you! 

7. What is this/that called?

(S) ___这个／那个叫什么？

(T) ___這個／那個叫什麼？

(P) ___ zhège/nàge jiào shénme? 

Don't have a clue what to call something? Start pointing and say this phrase and get ready to write down what ever the heck you hear. A perfect weapon for restaurants and shopping centers alike. 

8. Can you write that down for me? 

(S) 请问，您可以帮我写下来吗？

(T) 請問，您可以幫我寫下來嗎？ 

(P) Qǐngwèn, nín kěyǐ bāng wǒ xiě xiàlái ma?

With this phrase you'll be making connections between spoken and written language in no time. Perfect for adding new vocabulary to your journal or remembering that impossibly long address. 

9. Can you speak a little slower please? 

(S) 您可以说得慢一点吗？

(T) 您可以說得慢一點嗎?

(P) Nín kěyǐ shuōde màn yì diǎn ma?

Sometimes it isn't the content that trips us up, but rather the speed of delivery. Slow things down down with this easy-to-master phrase! 

10. Can I say ____?

(S) 可以说___吗？

(T) 可以說___嗎？

(P) Kěyǐ shuō ___ ma?

There is no doubt in my mind that taking risks is  great way to learn a language fast. But how the heck do you know if what you said is correct or not--aside from blank stares and funny looks? This simple phrase allows you to check sentences with others and often leads to even more information.

If you have any more phrases for upping your conversation skills be sure to leave them in the comments below and be sure to stay tuned for next weeks blog post!

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Have questions, comments, feedback, or a topic you want covered on the Skritter blog? Please send them to jake@skritter.com.

Actually Good Chinese/English Comics

A month ago, Jake posted Finding Suitable Reading Material for Your Level. I have an addition: bilingual iPad comic books. I just met up with Yen Yen and Colin from Dim Sum Warriors, which apart from looking awesome and having a lot of cool story material also has a free iPad app that lets you read and listen in Chinese while checking the English with tap-and-hold.



If you're interested in making a Skritter list for the first issue of Dim Sum Warriors, post in the comments and let's get one started collaboratively--they provide the vocab from the comic on the site.

Why comic books? John Pasden explains it: you want stuff that's easy, engaging, and has pictures to help you follow what's going on even when you don't get all of the text. Most Chinese comics are not actually easy (Skritterman Doug lent me a Chinese Mickey Mouse comic a couple years ago that almost killed me), and the ones that are supposed to be easy still aren't easy because of crazy vocabulary. And then the stories often aren't any good, either. Plus, they're not digital.



So you should also check out John's Chinese Picture Book Reader which contains an elementary story involving gorgeous art and steampunk post-apocalyptic dinosaurs.

For some fun ones that have English (but not necessarily audio), there's the hilarious and often obscene Chinese Superman and everything else at HorseDragonFish. There's also MandMX, which often riffs on fun cross-cultural differences and can be delivered right to your inbox. If you want to get more into authentic Chinese comics, then there are tons of options discussed at Chinese Forums, and our own Chris posted some indie Chinese comic recommendations on the forum.

Know any other good digital, bilingual comics for Chinese or Japanese? Post them in the comments, yo.

Language Parroting: Part 2

This week on the Skritter blog we'll be exploring part two of the language parroting post. This week goes beyond the basic struggles we face mimic foreign sounds as beginners and explores some more tips and resources to improve in our language mimicking tasks.

In the last post we covered the following topics:

• The struggles of hearing foreign sounds
• The need for actual feedback (especially among beginners)
• Observing native speakers 
• Assessing your own speech production

If you haven't had a chance to read the article, you can find it here. 

Managing how you listen to and mimic the language

As I mentioned in first post, it is important that we actually take the time to listen to ourselves speaking the language in order to increase awareness of how we actually sound and make adjustments accordingly. When you're having a conversation with someone, or giving a speech in front of a class, it's incredibly hard to assess your own mistakes as they're taking place. Thankfully, modern technology has made personal language assessment easier than ever. Just about every smartphone, computer, or tablet PC on the market today comes with some kind of audio recording function. Next time you're having a language exchange or giving a presentation, why not ask if you can record the conversation for later analysis?

Once you've recorded the sounds you want to listen to, it helps to have a good program that allows you listen to particular segments over and over again. Audacity is a great free program that is easy to use and full of some pretty amazing features. I highly recommend you try it out. In addition to being able to slow down a recording without losing sound quality, it also allows you record your own voice track and compare between the two. Wanna nail those nasty tone changes in a sentence? Have a native speaker record themselves reading the material and then practice over and over again from the comfort of your own home!

Another great application for listening assessment is Parrot Player for the iPod touch and iPhone (works fine on iPad as well). According to the website:

Parrot Player is an audio player for language learners. It enables you to quickly break down long or complicated audio into a list of short repeatable clips. You can listen to and repeat these clips individually or play them back one after the other, with or without a short pause to give you time to think, understand and repeat.

What's more, it's totally free for a limited time! If anyone knows of anything similar for Android of Windows's mobile devices, be sure to let me know and I'll update this post accordingly. While Parrot Player doesn't actually give you the option to record your own audio, it does help alleviate the largest hurdle of parroting--finding the appropriate number of words or sentences you try to parrot at once. Rather than trying to parrot an entire dialogue right off the bat, break the clip into small manageable chunks and practice away! I would highly recommend you try the same thing on Audacity or any other listening/ recording device you're using.

Finding appropriate material to parrot

While the tools you use are important to learning to successfully parrot native speakers and correcting mistakes, having appropriate material to parrot is crucial for success. A good language learning textbook should provide you with an audio CD to practice along with and that is certainly a great way to get started on your language parroting journey. Resources like ChinesePod or Popup Chinese, are also obvious choices for finding suitable parroting material.

If you're looking to stray off the Second Language Learner path, however, you might want to consider pulling audio from TV shows or movies. Again, be sure to keep your parroting goal short and to the point. Start by focusing on just your favorite phrases to keep your interest. Rip the audio to Audacity and get down to business. Remember, language parroting should be fun, so only pick the stuff actually worth parroting and forget the rest for now, unless you have to memorize a dialogue for class, in which case, use parroting to blow your teaching and classmates away. If you don't have a favorite TV show yet, you might consider scanning FluentU's list of videos for a bit of inspiration. Not only do they have fun, level appropriate videos, but you can also download an entire transcript of the video you're watching to ensure that you can nail all the tones and words with ease.

Something that I would recommend to intermediate and advanced learners is trying to find a language muse: someone who you aspire to sound or speak like in the future. It could be a famous actor, a friend, or that awesome dude/dudette who sells baozi just down the road from your house. A good muse should have tons of material for you to practice from, and capture your interest in the same way that a movie or TV clip might.

Love the way your friend curses people out? Have them lay down a track for you and see just how closely you can parrot their tone and inflection. Remember, language parroting is about more than just proper pronunciation  it's about actually sounding like a native! The goal should be to move beyond speaking "Chinese," and trying to give your Chinese that little extra feeling or flavor. My own personal language muse is an artist and poet by the name of Jiang Xun (蔣勳). I first stumbled on a YouTube clip of his over winter and have been trying to sound more like him ever since. For more on my own personal parroting journey, check out a post I wrote on my personal blog here.

In sum, language parroting is a great activity that helps to not only increase awareness of how others speak Chinese, but also helps to identify your own problem areas at the same time. By using the right tools, and picking appropriate language parroting challenges, you'll not only start to sound more "Chinese," but you'll have a blast along the way.

Thanks for reading, and be sure to stay tuned for next week's post!

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Have questions, comments, feedback, or a topic you want covered on the Skritter blog? Please send them to jake@skritter.com.

Yamato Kotoba, Jukujikun, and Irregular Readings

As you become increasingly familiar with kanji and their readings, it's not surprising when you can pronounce a word for the first time at a guess and be correct. There are also times where you might be completely wrong, however. This post is about those times, and the reasoning behind what might have caused you to be wrong, which could be because of either Yamato kotoba or jukujikun, and their "irregular" readings.

If you haven't heard of Yamato kotoba before (大和言葉、やまとことば), they are old Japanese words that were around long before the adaptation of Chinese loan words and were used even before kanji was implemented as a writing system in Japan. The word Yamato itself (大和) is an "irregular" reading (of course).

If forced to make an association linking the sounds to images (or kanji), "Yamato" to me could strike the image of 山戸, maybe, or possibly something else that makes some sort of sense if based on the sounds. How about "mountain-tomato" (やま plus トマト)? Why not? Haven't you heard of ビルク, a word created from ビール and ミルク, or beer milk--A.K.A. "bilk"?

The word Yamato was actually a name for Japan at that time, but today is of course known as Nihon (日本), literally meaning "origin of the sun". Another historical name for Japan was 和 (wa) or 和国 (wakoku), meaning "country of harmony", and can refer to Yamato.

Back in the day (250-538AD), when kanji was first being used in Japan, the word Yamato was written with one single kanji, "倭". It was then during the Asuka period after 538AD that Japan started standardizing place names with two character compounds, and 大和 was selected to replace 倭. The two new kanji in 大和 would represent "great harmony", or more accurately "greater Japan".
As a note, in addition to "和" meaning harmony or peace, it can also represent Japan or Japanese, where words like 和風（わふう）mean "Japanese style" or "Japanese influenced", and 和製 means "Japanese made". There is also "和語", or "wago", meaning "native Japanese word(s)", or in other words, Yamato kotoba.

With the two kanji chosen to represent "Yamato" being "大和", a reader unfamiliar with the word might embarrass themselves and read "daiwa", or "oowa", since most words abide by certain rules on how they are pronounced. Yamato kotoba are words that use kanji, but have no universal rule on how they are pronounced, meaning you simply must remember: "when those kanji are stuck together like that, it's just pronounced that way." It's a bit like the opposite of 当て字, or ateji, where words are spelled using phonetic sounds of kanji, like in 亜米利加 (あめりか ・ America) or 伊太利亜 (イタリア ・ Italy), but don't necessarily carry the meaning of the kanji.

On the other hand, just because a word is spelled using kanji and has an "irregular" reading doesn't automatically make it a Yamato kotoba-- there are older loan words like "glass" (硝子） or "tobacco" 煙草 which have been historically spelled using kanji (but are now spelled using katakana). These kind of words are considered jukujikun (熟字訓), which are words spelled using kanji that preserve meaning but not pronunciation. Some more examples of jukujikun are 七夕 (star festival) from the characters "seven" and "evening", or 仙人掌 (cactus) from the first two characters meaning "immortal wizard" and the last character meaning "hand".

While on the subject of kanji and their readings, although not Yamato kotoba or irregular, it wouldn't be completely unrelated to also throw in 御・お・ご, the honorific prefix, where the pronunciation changes depending on which word it's in. It's pretty formal to write the honorific as 御, and so is often seen as simply ご or お, getting rid of the ambiguity of the kanji's pronunciation. Keeping that in mind, if I were to write the word 御飯, would you pronounce it ごはん or おはん? There is something interesting about which sound the honorific takes, and whether it is either お or ご, which is, words that are of Japanese origin take the お sound, while words of Chinese (loanword) origin take the ご sound.
(Note: it has been pointed out in the comments that this often not true, and the origin is ignored. For instance お茶 is of Chinese origin, yet takes on お, which is said to be used with words of Japanese origin).

Here are some words with irregular readings, along with what they might be pronounced like, if ignoring they have their own specific pronunciations.

Word	Definition	Wrong Pronunciation
大和 （やまと）	Yamato; Japan	おおわ ・ だいわ
相応しい （ふさわしい）	Appropriate; adequate	そうおうしい
相撲 （すもう）	Sumo wrestling	そうぼく ・ あいぼく
真っ青 （まっさお）	Deep blue	まあお ・ しんあお
流鏑馬 （やぶさめ）	Horseback archery	りゅうかぶらば
素人 （しろうと）	Amateur; novice	すじん
浴衣（ゆかた）	Light-weight kimono	よくきぬ
手繰る （たぐる）	To pull in (rope)	てぐる
大人 （おたな）	Adult	だいじん ・ おおひと
今朝 （けさ）	This morning	いまあさ
明日 （あした）	Tomorrow	めいひ
昨日 （きのう）	Yesterday	さくひ
今日 （きょう）	Today	いまひ
一昨日（おととい）	Day before yesterday	いっさくひ
明後日 （あさって）	Day after tomorrow	めいごひ
二十歳 （はたち）	Twenty years old	にじゅうさい
二十日（はつか）	20th day of the month	にじゅうにち

If there are other words that you can think of that have their own readings, be sure to leave them in the comments!

Culture Corner: 清明时节雨纷纷

Today on the Skritter blog we'll be exploring a phrase that is both culturally and seasonally relevant, Du Mu's opening line from his poem "清明" (Qīngmíng: Tomb Sweeping Festival); a time for people to go out and enjoy the greenery of springtime and pay respects to their ancestors by "sweeping the tombs" and offering food, paper money, and other gifts. For a great article on the holiday, which falls on April 4th this year, be sure to check out the recent article on The World of Chinese blog. For now, however, let's take a look at the famous opening line:

清明時節雨紛紛/ 清明时节雨纷纷 

qīngmíng shíjié yŭ fēnfēn

Vocabulary:

1. 清明 (qīng míng): Tomb Sweeping Day

2. 時節/ 时节 (shí jié): season; time; occasion

3. 雨 (yǔ): rain

4. 紛紛/ 纷纷 (fēnfēn): one after another; in succession

Translation:
1. A drizzling rain falls on the Mourning Day (Wikipedia)
2. Pure Brightness time rain disordered and confused (Chinese-Poems)
3. At the time of the Pure Brightness festival, the rain is swirling round (Chinese-Poems)
4. In Qingming season it rains fine and fast (Cultural China)
5. Rain keeps falling during the Qingming season (FluentU)

As you can see there is no shortage of translations and interpretations for Du Mu's opening line, but one thing is clear throughout--the poem takes place around Tomb Sweeping Festival, and it's raining. When I first learned this poem back in 2008 I didn't pay much attention to what the weather was like during Tomb Sweeping Festival, but the past week of on and off rain has certainly got my attention.

What really surprised me, however, was a conversation I had over breakfast the other day. It had been raining all morning and it was quite cold (at least by Taiwan standards). As I sipped my morning coffee, with both hands searching for warmth from my cup, I expressed my disapproval with the cold dreary morning when the person setting across from me said: "清明时节雨纷纷," a subtle reminder that it's the spring festival season... it's going to rain!

After that morning conversation, I've heard the opening line of the poem reference at least 2 times in passing, and used it a few times myself. So language learners, take a note from Du Mu's playbook and every time that Tomb Sweeping Festival rolls around and it's (inevitably) raining, use this opening line and show off your Chinese talent!

For those of you aren't familiar with the poem, check out the picture below. Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for next weeks post!

Image Credit: 中國反邪教網

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Have questions, comments, feedback, or a topic you want covered on the Skritter blog? Please send them to jake@skritter.com.