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.")