The Simplicity Of Chinese Grammar - 4 (How To Say Yes When You Want To Say Yes)

One of the first things that struck me about Chinese is that, unlike most other languages, there doesn't seem to a simple word for "yes" or "no".

How does one answer yes/no questions, then?

Before we get into that, I want to talk about a few related tidbits.

1. English has a "yes" and a "no", but no clear way to rebut negative questions.

Let me illustrate.

Q. Do you speak English?
A. Yes, I speak English.

Q. Do you speak English?
A. No, I don't speak English.

That's fairly straightforward. But how would one answer a negative question?

Q. Don't you speak English?

If you did speak English, what would you say? And if you didn't, how would you agree? How would you use "yes" and "no" in this situation?

That's not straightforward, is it? (Come to think of it, how would you answer that negative question?)

2. German has a "ja" ("yes") and a "nein" ("no"), and also a third word "doch", which is explicitly used to rebut negative questions.

Q. Sprechen Sie Deutsch? ("Do you speak German?")
A. Ja, ich spreche Deutsch. ("Yes, I speak German.")

Q. Sprechen Sie Deutsch? ("Do you speak German?")
A. Nein, ich spreche nicht Deutsch. ("No, I don't speak German.")

Now watch.

Q. Sprechen Sie nicht Deutsch? ("Don't you speak German?")
A. Nein, ich spreche nicht Deutsch. ("No, I don't speak German.")

Q. Sprechen Sie nicht Deutsch? ("Don't you speak German?")
A. Doch, ich spreche Deutsch. ("Why no, I do speak German!")

3. It's pretty much the same in French. French has an "oui" ("yes") and a "non" ("no"), and also a third word "si", which is used to rebut negative questions.

Q. Parlez-vous Français? ("Do you speak French?")
A. Oui, je parle Français. (Yes, I speak French.")

Q. Parlez-vous Français? ("Do you speak French?")
A. Non, je ne parle pas Français. (No, I don't speak French.")

And watch again.

Q. Vous ne parlez pas Français? ("Don't you speak French?")
A. Non, je ne parle pas Français. (No, I don't speak French.")

Q. Vous ne parlez pas Français? ("Don't you speak French?")
A. Si, je parle Français. (Why no, I do speak French!")

Having a word like "doch" or "si" can be very handy, as we can see.

4. How does one answer such questions in Mandarin, given that there isn't even a "yes" or a "no"?

Check this out.

Q. 你 说 中文 吗？ Nǐ shuō zhōngwén ma? ("Do you speak Chinese?")
A. 说 shuō ("Yes, I speak Chinese", literally just "Speak.")

Q. 你 说 中文 吗？ Nǐ shuō zhōngwén ma? ("Do you speak Chinese?")
A. 不说 bù shuō ("No, I don't speak Chinese", literally just "Not speak.")

Simply repeating the verb is the affirmative answer. Prefixing the verb with 不 bù ("not") is the negative answer. [Remember that the verb 有 yǒu ("to have") is the exception which must be prefixed with the negative 没 méi instead of 不 bù.]

This style of answering a question then deals naturally with negative questions.

Q. 你 不说 中文 吗？ Nǐ bù shuō zhōngwén ma? ("Don't you speak Chinese?")
A. 说 shuō ("Yes, I speak Chinese", literally just "Speak.")

Q. 你 不说 中文 吗？ Nǐ bù shuō zhōngwén ma? ("Don't you speak Chinese?")
A. 不说 bù shuō ("No, I don't speak Chinese", literally just "Not speak.")

5. I remember my father telling me about how questions are answered in Russian.

Q. Это книга? Eto kniga? ("Is this a book?")
A. да, книга. Da, kniga. (literally, "Yes, book.")

You would not answer as in English, "Yes, it is".

Q. Это книга? Eto kniga? ("Is this a book?")
A. да, это. Da, eto. "Yes, this (is).")

That would just be bad Russian.

6. The difference between Russian and Mandarin is the repetition of the verb rather than the noun in the case of Mandarin.

Q. 这 是 书 吗？ zhè shì shū ma? ("Is this a book?")
A. 是 shì ("Yes, it is", literally just "Is.")

Q. 这 是 书 吗？ zhè shì shū ma? ("Is this a book?")
A. 不是 bù shì ("No, it isn't", literally just "Not is.")

Q. 这 不是 书 吗？ zhè bù shì shū ma? ("Isn't this a book?")
A. 是 shì ("Yes, it is", literally just "Is.")

Q. 这 不是 书 吗？ zhè bù shì shū ma? ("Isn't this a book?")
A. 不是 bù shì ("No, it isn't", literally just "Not is.")

So that's a unique and probably unambiguous way to answer a yes/no question, regardless of whether it's posed as an affirmative question or a negative question. The answer is always of the same form - just repeat the verb to affirm, or repeat it prefixed with a negative particle to negate.

Words That Sound Alike - I Am Zuo Confused!

I've said a lot of nice things about Chinese grammar being so simple.

Now let me complain about something.

I've heard it said about Japanese that the language "is so phonologically impoverished that it is inundated with an unwieldy number of homophones".

I'm afraid the situation isn't much better with Mandarin. The language has only about 400 distinct syllables, and even differentiating on the basis of tones only yields 1600 syllables at best.

English, by contrast, is estimated to have over 15,000 distinct syllables, or phonemes.

The problem with having a limited set of phonemes is that the language then has a very large number of homophones (words having the same sound but different meanings), which can be confusing to a learner, and perhaps even to seasoned speakers of the language.

French also has this problem of too many homophones, which is why it's said (only half-humorously) that French courts require statements to be written rather than oral.

Less than 40 days into Duolingo, I've already come across at least four variants of "zuo" (pronounced "dzoo-oh"), and this is confusing the hell out of me.

While I appreciate the evocative nature of the ideograph 坐 zuò ("sit"), which seems to depict two 人 rén ("persons") sitting on a bench of some sort, I'm feeling inundated by the number of other zuos.

There are three characters with the fourth (falling) tone - 坐 zuò ("sit"), 做 zuò ("do"), and 作 zuò ("do"). The last two even mean the same thing! (I believe that they differ in the combinations they support with other characters, to produce words with different meanings. Still...!)

Then there's the third (falling-rising) tone 左 zuǒ ("left"), and the second (rising) tone 昨 zuó ("yesterday").

It's hard to tell who's who in the zuo.

A Side-Effect Of Learning Chinese - Bad Puns

I now understand why my dad (who was a linguist) used to make so many bilingual puns. A word or phrase that sounds similar to a word or phrase from another language tends to leap out at you all the time, and it doesn't require a very sophisticated sense of humour to construct some wordplay around them. Presto! Dad jokes that span languages.

Check these out.

1. 皮鞋 píxié means "leather shoes". And of course, it's pronounced "pee-shee-ay", not "pixie", but the pīnyīn spelling does suggest something else.

2. This isn't really a pun, but I was struck by how similar the phrases for "go to sleep" were in Mandarin and Hindi.

3. Here's popular Indian chef Sanjeev Kapoor holding up a plate of roast chicken and inviting his viewers to eat.

4. I must confess that after starting to learn Mandarin, I cannot see the English word "women" without wanting to pronounce it "wǒmen". 我们 wǒmen means "we" or "us", as discussed in an earlier post.

A single word that conveys sisterhood and solidarity

5. The word 饿 è (pronounced "ugh!" and meaning "hungry") inspired this.

6. The words 别 bié ("don't") and 看 kàn ("look", "see", "read") when put together, sound a bit like a container of alcohol.

7. A play on the word 其他 qítā ("other", "the rest"), which sounds like "cheetah".

8. It's important to save face in Eastern cultures. If you grow a beard (耏 nài in Mandarin), a barber (नाइ nai in Hindi) can help you remove it and literally gain face.

9. I'd learnt that the words for various siblings were 哥哥 gēgē ("older brother"), 弟弟 dìdì ("younger brother"), 姐姐 jiějiě ("older sister"), and 妹妹 mèimei ("younger sister"), but that the word for "siblings" was 兄弟姐妹 xiōngdì jiěmèi, not 哥弟姐妹 gēdì jiěmèi. I then learnt that 兄 xiōng was another word for "older brother", and that 兄弟 xiōngdì meant "brothers" (literally "older brother-younger brother"). Knowing that 熊 xióng meant "bear" and 熊猫 xióngmāo meant "panda" (literally "bear cat"), my mind immediately leapt to the Russia-China relationship.

10. I wonder why I hadn't thought of this before. 不 bù means "no" or "not". That would be a really ironic answer to the question, "Do ghosts exist?"

"To Fly" - Another Evocative Ideograph

I'll just leave this one here.

The Simplicity Of Chinese Grammar - 3 (A Lego Approach To Vocabulary)

The sheer number of characters in Chinese is daunting to a beginner. One needs to learn hundreds of characters, maybe over a thousand, in order to be functionally literate in the language.

(I personally don't believe it's that bad. My vocabulary at present doesn't exceed 300 characters, and yet I often find that 50% to 80% of the characters I come across in a piece of text are those I already know. I think by the time I learn about 800 characters, I should be able to read long passages without having to resort to Google Translate.)

One cheering aspect, though, is that the Chinese approach to vocabulary resembles a Lego-style assembly of simple characters.

I read on another learner's blog that he was searching for the word for "bottle-opener" in French. He knew that the word for "bottle" was "bouteille", and that for "to open" was "ouvrir". He was wondering how to conjugate the words to combine them into a single word, until he learnt that the French word for "bottle-opener" was in fact "décapsuleur". There was no way he could have derived that from the words he already knew.

In Mandarin, though, he found that the word for "bottle-opener" was 开瓶器 kāi píng qì, literally "open bottle device".

What could be simpler?

Here's another example:

洗手间 xǐ shǒu jiān ("toilet", literally "wash hand room")

Yet another example:

飞 fēi ("to fly") (Check out this post.)

飞机 fēijī ("aeroplane", literally "fly machine")

飞机场 fēijī chǎng ("airport", literally "fly machine field")

But of all the examples I've heard, the best is "plumber".

水管工人 shuǐguǎn gōngrén (literally, "water pipe work person")

When Thinking In Chinese Starts To Become Natural

It's Saturday. I woke up this morning feeling luxuriously lazy, and thought to myself, "It's the weekend. I don't want to do anything at all!"

Then, an instant later, these words came into my head:

这 是 周末. 我 什么 都 不 想 做. zhè shì zhōumò. Wǒ shénme dōu bù xiǎng zuò. (literally, "This is weekend. I what all not want do.")

I was myself surprised that the words came to me so naturally. I got out of bed and went to my computer (电脑 diànnǎo, literally "electric brain") to test my sentences on Google Translate.

Google Translate agreed with me that the sentences I had formulated meant pretty much what I had intended.

"This is the weekend. I don't want to do anything."

That was a pleasant surprise, because I hadn't expended any conscious effort in thinking about the words. They just popped into my head, and in the right order.

This is partly thanks to consistent effort. I have been putting in an hour every day on Duolingo for 32 days at a stretch, and the practice is paying off. (Of course, my current stint is my third go at learning the language; I've spent a few months on it earlier, in 2013 and again in 2016, but this is the first time I'm seeing good progress.)

But another reason is the utter simplicity of Chinese grammar. The words are like Lego blocks. They don't mutate, and they fit together in certain defined ways. Once you internalise those patterns, you can simply slot words into their assigned places without conscious effort, and the sentence just works!

If this is my progress after a month of consistent yet only moderate effort, it gives me hope that I can achieve my goal of speaking Mandarin fluently in a year.

The Cutest Ideograph

What do I think is the cutest Chinese ideograph?

It's 小 xiǎo, the symbol for "small".

To my eyes, it appears like a cute little kid gazing up at their parent, arms out by their side, with a "pick me up" look on their face.

Thanks to Google Translate:

最可爱的汉字是“小”。 它看起来孩子一样。 zuì kě'ài de hànzì shì “xiǎo”. tā kàn qǐlái háizi yīyàng. ("The cutest Chinese character is "小" (xiǎo, small). It looks like a child.")

When The Chinese Invented The Lightbulb

I was reading a text on Du Chinese yesterday, and the passage ended with 你觉得呢? nǐ jué dé ne? ("What do you think?")

I was struck by the symbol 觉 jué, which I learnt could be used to mean "think", "feel" or "awaken".

I thought it looked like a person wearing a cap that was shining bright. A lightbulb!

Remember that the ideograph for "person" is 人 rén, a minimalistic stick figure with just two legs to represent a human being.

We can see the two legs representing the person in 觉 jué too. The person is wearing a hat, and the hat is radiating something. That looks so much like a lightbulb, it's uncanny.

I guess, in addition to the Four Great Inventions of paper, gunpowder, the compass and the printing press, the Chinese also invented the lightbulb (at the very least, the concept of a light source above a person's head to represent a thought or idea).

Does The Map Of China Look Like A Rooster Or A Hěn?

The Internet is full of references to the shape of China's map, and how it resembles a rooster. Some Chinese Quorans have confirmed that their schoolteachers introduced the map to them in this way, by asking them to visualise a rooster looking East. (I've always thought China's map resembled Mao's face looking West and nibbling at Aksai Chin, but that's another matter.)

But that question has inspired a dad joke based on some wordplay. During my journey learning Mandarin, I came across the word 很 hěn (pronounced "h-uh-n", not "h-eh-n").

[The words for "hen" and "rooster" in German are Hühn and Hahn, respectively, and you can forget that factoid immediately since it's utterly irrelevant to this post.]

Some amateur artwork to support my weak joke

1. At first, I thought the word 很 hěn meant "very". That's what the initial lessons said too.

我 很 高兴 wǒ hěn gāoxìng "I (am) very happy"

I wondered why there was no use of a word to represent "am", or more generally, the verb "to be".

2. As I went along, I learnt that the word 是 shì, which means "to be", is only used to connect nouns to nouns, not nouns to adjectives.

So it's OK (in fact, mandatory) to use 是 shì in such a context:

a. 我 是 学生 wǒ shì xuéshēng ("I am (a) student") (because both "I" and "student" are either nouns or noun-equivalents)

b. 那 是 你 的 丈夫 吗? nà shì nǐ de zhàngfū ma? ("Is that your husband?", literally "That is you's husband (question particle)" (because both "that" and "husband" are nouns or noun-equivalents)

But it's wrong to use 是 shì to connect a noun with an adjective:

我 是 高兴 wǒ shì gāoxìng ("I am happy") [Note that this is wrong, people. Don't learn this.]

我 很 高兴 wǒ hěn gāoxìng is the correct form.

It doesn't actually mean "I very happy", even though 很 hěn is supposed to mean "very".

In this context, 很 hěn is just a connector that joins a noun to an adjective, as in all these examples.

a. 我 很 高兴 wǒ hěn gāoxìng "I (connector) happy"

b. 王 医生 早上 很 忙 wáng yīshēng zǎoshang hěn máng ("Dr. Wang is busy in the mornings", literally "Wang doctor morning (connector) busy")

c1. 今天 很 冷 jīntiān hěn lěng ("It's cold today", literally "Today (connector) cold"

I'm reminded of the very similar sentence structure used in Tamil:

c2. innikki kuLuru (literally, "today cold")

In fact, such a sentence seems a bit "bald", so in Tamil too, there is the compulsion to use the word romba ("very") as a connector.

c3. innikki romba kuLuru (literally, "today very cold")

In all the above cases, a noun is being connected to an adjective ("happy", "busy", "cold", etc.), and hence the connector word 很 hěn should be used rather than the verb 是 shì ("to be").

3. The 很 hěn disappears in the negative form.

To say "I am not happy", you would use

我 不 高兴 wǒ bù gāoxìng

You wouldn't say

我 不 很 高兴 wǒ bù hěn gāoxìng [This is wrong. Please don't learn this.]

4. The 很 hěn similarly disappears in the interrogative form, i.e., when you form a question.

你 高兴 吗？nǐ gāoxìng ma? ("Are you happy?", literally "You happy (question particle)")

You wouldn't say

你 很 高兴 吗？nǐ hěn gāoxìng ma? [This is wrong. Please don't learn this.]

5. In contrast to the connector word 很 hěn, the verb 是 shì ("to be") remains intact in all sentence forms - affirmative, negative and interrogative.

a. 我 是 学生 wǒ shì xuéshēng ("I am (a) student")

b. 我 不是 学生 wǒ bùshì xuéshēng ("I am not a student", literally "I not am student")

c. 你 是 学生 吗？nǐ shì xuéshēng ma? ("Are you a student?", literally, "You are (a) student (question particle)"

Along the way, notice how simple the structure of a Chinese sentence is, and how standard the negative and interrogative forms are.

6. In this context, it's worth introducing another interrogative form. It's of course possible to simply tack on the question particle 吗 ma (which has no tone, by the way), and a sentence miraculously turns into a question. But it's also possible to use the form "adjective-not-adjective" or "verb-not-verb" to ask the same question.

a1. 你 高兴 不 高兴 ? nǐ gāoxìng bù gāoxìng ("Are you happy or not?", literally "You happy not happy?")

Contrast this with the earlier form using the question particle 吗 ma:

a2. 你 高兴 吗? nǐ gāoxìng ma ("Are you happy?", literally "You happy (question particle)")

b1. 你 是不是 学生? nǐ shìbùshì xuéshēng? ("Are you a student?", literally "You are-not-are student?")

Contrast this with the earlier form using the question particle 吗 ma:

b2. 你 是 学生 吗? nǐ shì xuéshēng ma? ("Are you a student?", literally "You are student (question particle)")

When turning sentences with compound verbs into questions, only the "outer" verb is put into the "verb-not-verb" form.

a. 我 会 去 中国 wǒ huì qù zhōngguó ("I will go (to) China", literally "I (future particle) go (to) China")

b1. 你 会不会 去 中国? nǐ huì bù huì qù zhōngguó ("Will you go (to) China?", literally "You will-not-will go (to) China?", not "You will go-not-go (to) China?")

Of course, it's always possible to use the standard interrogative form using the question particle 吗 ma:

b2. 你 会 去 中国 吗? nǐ huì qù zhōngguó ma? ("Will you go (to) China?", literally "You will go (to) China (question particle)")

As a final dad joke, since "pecked" is an adjective, perhaps a man could say:

"wǒ hěn pecked"

Review Of Movie "My People My Homeland" (我和我的家乡)

I love rags-to-riches stories, and China's is the biggest rags-to-riches story of our times.

The story of how 400 million (or more) people were lifted out of poverty into the middle class in a single generation never fails to amaze and move me. The 2020 movie 我和我的家乡 wǒ hé wǒ de jiāxiāng (literally "Me and my hometown" but officially titled "My People My Homeland") is a collection of five stories of small towns and villages from five different regions of China, which uses humorous (yet touching) situations to show various aspects of China's development over the past generation.

Many scenes left me with a lump in the throat.

My People My Homeland - an anthology of five short movies

It's propaganda for sure, but based on reality. No one doubts that the progress the movie shows off is genuine. And as a bonus, the narrative isn't contrived or boring but quite entertaining throughout, so this is a movie that educates even as it entertains.

Story 1 - 北京好人 Běijīng hǎorén ("The Good People of Beijing")

Region: Beijing (North)

Aspect highlighted: Universal state-subsidised healthcare

The name of the protagonist is Zhang Beijing, and so the title can also be interpreted as "Good guy Beijing". Indeed, he is a good friend to his country cousin who needs an expensive surgery done. He tries a variety of tricks to smuggle his cousin into the medical system under his identity so he can have the procedure done without cost. This leads to many a hilarious situation, and an increasingly messy imbroglio for both the men. All turns out well in the end, however, and the moral of the story that we're left with is that the Chinese state provides an insurance-based healthcare scheme that covers everyone, both city folk and rural folk.

A second message is that everyone in Beijing is nice, understanding and helpful, including cops, doctors and nurses.

Okay.

The benevolent city slicker Zhang Beijing is played by the well-known comic Ge You, with Zhang Zhanyi providing a good foil as the bumbling country bumpkin 

Story 2 - 天上掉下个UFO tiānshàng diào xià gè UFO ("A UFO Falls from the Sky")

Region: Qiannan, Guizhou (South)

Aspect highlighted: Improved transportation and connectivity, innovation

This story was funny too, but it was my least favourite of the five. A certain village becomes a tourist attraction after a UFO sighting. We follow two investigative photojournalists who are trying to expose what they suspect to be a fraud. Along the way, we learn about the traditionally impassable terrain of the southern province of Guizhou, which makes even nearby places inaccessible to one another.

But of course, most of those problems of transportation and logistics are now a thing of the past, which is what the movie is trying to tell us.

Indeed, China has been a world leader in the speed at which it rolls out kilometre after kilometre of roads, so I won't grudge them a bit of boasting.

Story 3 - 最后一课 zuìhòu yī kè ("The Final Class")

Region: Qiandaohu, Zhejiang (East)

Aspect highlighted: Universal primary education, alleviation of rural poverty

This short movie and the next were my favourites in this series. Both deal with education, and with inspiring, dedicated teachers. Lao Fan (played by comedian Fan Wei) is an old professor at the Swiss campus of a Chinese University. He lives in Switzerland with his son and daughter-in-law. When he suffers a strange neurological disorder, his doctor advises his family to take him back to the place and the point in time where his mind seems to have become stuck, so that he can recover.

The place was a small village, now a well-developed town, and that point in time was a few decades earlier, when he was posted out of the city to a rural area as a schoolteacher. Although he was initially shocked at the backwardness of the village, he stayed on for a full decade rather than leave when his official term was over. He wanted to see the children of the village educated, and he succeeded. Those very children, now grown up, help his family recreate the environment of a ramshackle school building, now long replaced by a huge and gleaming one. The camerawork showing the Potemkin school juxtaposed against the real school that existed so many years ago is very powerful.

The movie's title is from what teacher Lao Fan writes on the board, as he exhorts his class to imagine what they would like their hometown to look like - "Me and my hometown"

Sincerity personified. I wouldn't knock this portrayal, since I have seen teachers like this in my own childhood.

One of the children draws his vision of what his school should look like, but lacks paints to colour it with.

No one in the class has a full set of paints or colour pencils

The younger Lao Fan (in the flashback) attempts to bring colours to help the boy

Juxtaposed against the present day, where Chinese schoolchildren want for nothing

Story 4 - 回乡之路 huí xiāng zhī lù ("The Road Back Home")

Region: Shaligou, northern Shaanxi (West)

Aspect highlighted: Reversal of desertification, development of backward regions

Two people meet while travelling back to a village in Shaanxi province for their school reunion. One, played by comedienne Yan Ni, is a celebrity entrepreneur with her own popular Internet channel. The other, played by comedian Deng Chao, is a loudmouth show-off who doesn't seem to be half the success he claims to be.

Another teacher turns out to be the inspiration for the students returning to the school. Madam Gao is long dead, but her words have inspired Yan Ni's character to greatness.

The girl was inspired by her teacher's words

The surprise twist in the story is the role of Deng Chao's braggart character, and what it turns out he has done.

Story 5 - 神笔马亮 Shén bǐ mǎ liàng ("The Magical Touches")

Region: Huixiang village, Xihong municipality (Central China)

Aspect highlighted: Preservation of ethnic minority identity

This was the funniest story of the five. The literal translation of the title is "Ma Liang's magic brush". A classic deception sit-com, the audience can laugh along all the way.

Henpecked artist and local party secretary Ma Liang (played by comedian Shen Teng) gains admission to a prestigious Russian art school, which his wife (played by the equally talented Ma Li) insists he should not turn down, but his instincts lead him instead to take up a posting in his old village, where he helps to develop the place with his art and his general administrative skills. The elaborate ruse he and his friends put up, to convince his wife that he is in fact in Russia, provides the bulk of the laughs. очень приятно (ochen' priyatno, very nice), as the characters often say.

There is a serious message, though, and it's about the role of the party in not only developing villages and attracting young people back from the cities to live in them, but also in preserving the cultures of ethnic minorities, in this case the Hui people.

The scene showing a bullet train whizzing past a huge agri-art mural of a classic steam train, was a bit unsubtle, but again, the Chinese have earned such bragging rights.

Conclusion

All said and done, I think this was a very watchable film, and the fact that it was a propaganda film is largely mitigated by the indisputable fact that China has developed enormously in a very short time, so it's not inauthentic.

3.5 stars out of 5.

The 二胡 Èrhú - A Stringed Instrument That Pulls At The Heartstrings

One of the most soulful musical instruments I have heard is the Chinese stringed instrument called the 二胡 èrhú （"two strings").

"Rain in Jiāng Nán"
From our previous post on Chinese province names, we can see that 江南 jiāng-nán means "South of the river".

The èrhú hasn't gone unnoticed by the rest of the world. The popular Bollywood song "Suraj hua maddham" features the instrument right at the start.

You can't unhear it once you become conscious of it.

When I Didn't Have (没有 méiyǒu) The Appreciative Audience I Deserved

In a previous post, I had mentioned that the only exception to the use of the word 不 bù ("not") to negate a verb is when the verb is 有 yǒu ("to have"). In that case, the correct negation word is 没 méi. 没有 méiyǒu is used to mean "don't have".

I watched both the Chinese war action movies "Wolf Warrior" and "Wolf Warrior II" some months ago. (The second movie was better, but one may need to see them both in order to be properly introduced to the characters.)

I was watching "Wolf Warrior" (the first movie) late one night. I was alone in my living room, my entire family having retired to bed earlier.

There's a tense scene where the hero (played by Wu Jing) is caught in a desperate situation and is under heavy enemy fire. It's not clear he will survive. He's in radio contact with the Chinese control room, and his commanding officer is a woman (played by Yu Nan) on whom he has a crush.

It was the classic melodramatic movie scene where the question had to be popped.

Above the noise of gunfire, he asks her, "Do you have a boyfriend?". The entire control room is silent, including his crush. He repeats the question.

I guess he must have asked, "你有男朋友吗? nǐ yǒu nán péngyǒu ma?".

I confess I only understood the question from the English subtitles, but I blurted out her expected answer in Chinese, "没有 méiyǒu (Don't have)".

I'm a veteran of enough movies to be able to guess at corny dialogues.

An instant later, she said, "méiyǒu".

"Méiyǒu!" I won the lottery that day

I was ecstatic and looked around the room, seeking the admiringly astonished faces that were my due. Alas, I was alone, and my jaw-dropping linguistic accomplishment went unacknowledged and unapplauded.

Psst! It's Never Been Easier To Write Chinese

Confession: I have never actually put pen to paper and written a Chinese character myself, but I find I'm able to write whole sentences containing complex characters, and at speed. How??

The answer is technology.

To be precise, it's technology aided by a standard notation called pīnyīn (literally "spell-sound"). Pīnyīn is a romanised transliteration of Chinese characters that is easy to read, because it also supports diacritical marks to denote tones.

[Hey, why doesn't China just adopt the Roman script, like Vietnam, Turkey and Indonesia have done? Unfortunately, while pīnyīn can show how a word is pronounced, it loses a lot in the translation from the corresponding Chinese character. More than one Chinese character is pronounced the same way. It's only the written form that disambiguates them, or context in the spoken realm. Abandoning the original Chinese characters for pīnyīn will result in huge confusion.]

In today's world of computers and software-mapped keyboard input, it's possible to type using the Roman script, and have the computer automatically present us with a set of candidate characters. It's far easier to recognise a character than to write it, and since the software is generally smart enough to show us the most likely character first, all we have to do is press the spacebar to select it and move on to the next.

I type the Roman characters "w" and "o", and the software keyboard automatically pops up a set of Chinese characters that are pronounced "wo" (all tones included). The most likely word is 我 wǒ ("I"), so I just press the spacebar to select it.

I'm told this is how Chinese Millennials do all their "writing".

I used Google's Pinyin keyboard plugin on Ubuntu to type this sentence:

我能写中文得很快 wǒ néng xiě zhōngwén dé hěn kuài ("I can write Chinese (very) fast")

[Update: One of my Chinese friends read this post and suggested an improvement to the last sentence:

由于科技有进，我能把中文写得快多了 yóuyú kējì yǒu jìn, wǒ néng bǎ zhōngwén xiě dé kuài duōle ("Thanks to advances in technology, I can write Chinese much faster")]

The Simplicity Of Chinese Grammar - 2 (Not, Also, All)

Unlike English, Chinese uses the same word to cover similar situations, even if they are slightly different.

Too (Also) and Either

Consider these four situations expressed in English.

1. I like it.

2. I like it too.
I also like it.

3. I don't like it.

4. I don't like it either.

Now check out the Chinese forms.

1. 我喜欢 wǒ xǐhuān ("I like (it)")

2. 我也喜欢 wǒ yě xǐhuān ("I also like (it)"). There is no equivalent to "I like it too". The word for "also" 也 yě must always come before the verb.

3. 我不喜欢 wǒ bù xǐhuān ("I not like (it)")

4. 我也不喜欢 wǒ yě bù xǐhuān ("I also not like (it)"). The "not" 不 bù must immediately precede the verb, and the "also" 也 yě must be placed before this negated verb.

There is thus no need for a distinction between "too" (affirmative) and "either" (negative).

Both, All, Neither and None

Now consider these situations in English.

1. My dog and cat are both cute.

2. My dog, cat and fish are all cute.

3. Neither my dog nor my cat likes cold weather.

4. My dog, my cat, my fish - none of them likes cold weather.

1. 我的狗和猫都很可爱 wǒ de gǒu hé māo dōu hěn kě'ài ("My dog and cat all very cute") [The word hěn literally means "very" but is used to mean "is" when connecting nouns to adjectives. More on this in a future post.]

2. 我的狗、猫和鱼都很可爱 wǒ de gǒu, māo hé yú dōu hěn kě'ài ("My dog, cat and fish all very cute")

Notice that there is no difference between "both" and "all". the word 都 dōu covers both situations. In retrospect, English appears to have created a distinction without a difference.

3. 我的狗和猫都不喜欢寒冷的天气 wǒ de gǒu hé māo dōu bù xǐhuān hánlěng de tiānqì ("My dog and cat all not like cold's weather")

4. 我的狗、猫和鱼都不喜欢寒冷的天气 wǒ de gǒu, māo hé yú dōu bù xǐhuān hánlěng de tiānqì ("My dog, cat and fish all not like cold's weather")

There is again no distinction between "neither" and "none". It's just a combination of "not" 不 bù and "all" 都 dōu. Another English-language distinction without a difference. And as before, the 不 bù ("not") must immediately precede the verb, and the 都 dōu ("all") must be placed before the negated verb.

Every Single

都 dōu ("all") can also be used in conjunction with 每 měi ("every") to mean "every single".

我 每天 都 学习 中文 wǒ měitiān dōu xuéxí zhōngwén ("I learn Chinese every single day", literally "I every day all learn Chinese").

Summary

Just three characters, 不 bù ("not"), 也 yě ("also") and 都 dōu ("all") cover all the situations for which one would need "not", "also", "too", "either", "neither", "both", "all", "none", and "(every) single" in English. Plus the rules on where they should go in a sentence are clear and without exceptions.

[To be fair, there is one exception to the use of 不 bù as a negative prefix for verbs. The verb 有 yǒu ("to have") is negated with the word 没 méi ("not") instead of 不 bù.

Thus, one would say:

我不喜欢 wǒ bù xǐhuān ("I don't like")

我没有 wǒ méiyǒu ("I don't have"). In fact, the two words go together so often that the pīnyīn (romanised form) is written as one word. Check out this post for more.]

The Simplicity Of Chinese Grammar - 1 (Pronouns)

Pronouns in Mandarin are really simple. Take a quick look.

Person	Singular	Plural
First	我 wǒ (I, me)	我们 wǒ-men (we, us (exclusive)) 咱们 zán-men (we, us (inclusive))
Second	你 nǐ (you (familiar)) 您 nín (you (honorific))	你们 nǐ-men (you)
Third	他 tā (he, him) 她 tā (she, her) 它 tā (it)	他们 tā-men (they, them (masculine)) 她们 tā-men (they, them (feminine)) 它们 tā-men (they, them (neuter))

Some takeaways:

1. The subjective and objective forms are the same, i.e., we don't have different words for "I" versus "me", "he" versus "him", "she" versus "her", or "they" versus "them". It's the same form of the word.

我爱你 wǒ ài nǐ ("I love you")

你爱我 nǐ ài wǒ ("You love I", not "You love me")

我给你 wǒ gěi nǐ ("I give you")

给我 gěi wǒ ("Give me")

我去叫他 wǒ qù jiào tā ("I go call him", or "I'll call him")

叫我 以实玛利 jiào wǒ yǐ shí mǎ lì ("Call me Ishmael")

2. All plurals are formed in the same way, i.e., by adding the no-tone particle 们 men.

3. If we look closely, we can see that the character for the second-person (honorific) 您 nín is formed by combining the characters for the second-person (familiar) 你 nǐ with the character for "heart" 心 xīn. It's like placing your hand on your heart to show respect when addressing someone.

您 nín (You (honorific)) = 你 nǐ (you (familiar)) + 心 xīn (heart)

4. I couldn't help but be struck by the similarity between the Tamil and Mandarin words for "you" - both the familiar and the honorific forms.

5. It's interesting that the third person pronouns are written differently depending on gender, but are all pronounced in exactly the same way.

This is one area where English actually has an advantage in having a gender-neutral pronoun for the third-person plural ("they").

French, for example, trips up badly here. The third-person pronouns in French are il (he), elle (she), ils (they - masculine) and elles (they - feminine).

What if a group of people consists of both men and women? This is where the French language betrays a sexist bias. If a group consists exclusively of women, it can be referred to as "elles", but if a group of women happens to contain even one man, it has to be called "ils".

The Chinese approach partially sidesteps the problem. It's not clear how one would write the word for "they" if a group consists of both men and women, but since the pronunciation of all forms of "they" is the same (tā-men), one can pretend ignorance about this difference when speaking.

6. I couldn't help but be amused by the fact that the Mandarin word for "I" or "me" and the Hindi word for "he", "she" and "it" sound very similar.

The Hindi word वह woh can be used to mean "he", "she" or "it", in almost exactly the way that the Mandarin word tā (whether spelt 他, 她 or 它) is used. Of course, the Hindi वह woh (third person singular) means something very different from the Mandarin 我 wǒ (first person singular).

The Evocative Names Of China's Provinces

Growing up in India, I knew of only a couple of states that had mundanely descriptive names, e.g., Uttar Pradesh ("northern province") and Madhya Pradesh ("central province"). Some were a bit more poetic, e.g., Himachal Pradesh ("snowy-slopes province"), being at the foothills of the Himalayas, and Arunachal Pradesh ("dawn mountain province"), being the easternmost state in the country and hence the "state of the rising sun". Some states had grandiose names, e.g., Maharashtra ("great nation") and Rajasthan ("land of kings"). And then there were those with slightly cryptic, yet still intelligible, meanings, e.g., Punjab ("land of five rivers").

During the Cambodian crisis in the 70s, a Thai province bordering Cambodia was often in the news - Aranyaprathet, which is a corruption of the Sanskrit aranya-pradesh ("forest province").

Australia has its share of such names too - Western Australia, Northern Territory, South Australia, and the Australian Capital Territory.

Most other state and province names in the world are just names. They don't describe the place in any way.

When I started to look at the names of China's provinces, I was struck by the mundane descriptions of many of them. These referred to a geographical feature, and a relative position of the province to that feature.

E.g.,

河北 Hé-běi ("North of the river")

河南 Hé-nán ("South of the river")

湖北 Hú-běi ("North of the lake")

湖南 Hú-nán ("South of the lake")

山西 Shān-xī ("West of the mountain")

山东 Shān-dōng ("East of the mountain")

江西 Jiāng-xī ("West of the river")

Check these out. Once you understand the meanings of these names, you won't be able to forget them in a hurry, and you'll probably be able to point these provinces out on an unmarked map pretty easily.

The pairs of provinces that straddle a geographical feature are highlighted in the same colour

I found the following maps on the Internet. This one has the province names spelt out in Chinese characters (hànzì) as well as their romanised pronunciation (pīnyīn).

This one has loose English translations of every province's name. Some of them are quite amusing.

Some interesting takeaways:

1. There are many words in Mandarin for "river":

河 hé
江 jiāng
川 chuān

2. Chinese words that are associated with water usually have three strokes on the left - two short strokes going down left to right, and one longer stroke going down right to left. You can see these three strokes in the character for "lake":

湖 hú

And for sea:

海 hǎi

They look like drops of water.

3. The word 川 chuān (one of the words for "river") looks visually evocative of a flowing stream of water.

Now this is purely my conjecture, but I think that the word 州 zhōu that forms part of the names of several cities (e.g., Sūzhōu, Hángzhōu) is related to the word 川 chuān, because it visually represents settlements on the banks of a river. I could be wrong, but I'm willing to bet I'm right!

4. The province 四川 Sì-chuān has an interesting relationship to the Indian state of Punjab. As we recalled earlier, Punjab means "the land of five rivers".

Sì-chuān means "four rivers".

5. The word 山 shān ("mountain") looks like a mountain, doesn't it? The power of ideographs.

I read somewhere that the mountain symbol, when repeated thus 出 chū, means "out", and is associated with exile. If someone is exiled "beyond two mountains", they are "out".

When the "out" symbol 出 chū is used in combination with the symbol for "mouth" 口 kǒu, it means "exit" 出口 chūkǒu. You will see this on every highway in China. (Much better than the titter-inducing "Ausfahrt" signs on the German Autobahn.)