I officially started studying Hanzi on Feb. 9 of this year, armed only with Anki, pen and paper, and a book. I learned approximately 300 Hanzi by simple rote memorization (I also learned to sing a few Chinese songs and entertained my friends at the KTV) before discovering Heisig.

I started using Heisig on July 14 and have thus far finished the first 25 chapters. This brings my total number of Hanzi to 1007. It’s very slow, I know. Many people finish Heisig in a matter of a few months. Since I don’t have as much time as I’d like to dedicate to it, I’m much slower. I get 15 new Hanzi on a good day, sometimes as few as 8 or none at all depending on my schedule. What is apparent is that Heisig has incredibly sped up my learning process. I can read and write all 1007 of those Hanzi; I know the pronunciations for most of them; it’s exhilarating and extremely satisfying to sit down to watch TV and be able to understand the subtitles.

I also read the 國語日報 everyday to practice pronunciation and get some input and it’s nice that I’m always recognizing new characters. Street names, menu items, directions – slowly, everything is becoming more clearer. I cannot recommend Heisig enough if you want to learn to read and write Hanzi. It has worked for me and countless others. It is simply one of the greatest, if not the greatest, method for acquiring languages.

This is a post from: An Expatriate in Taiwan. If you are reading this somewhere other than An Expatriate in Taiwan, please report it to the webmaster and please visit the blog at http://www.expatintaiwan.net.

Hanzi Milestone: 1000

Related posts:

1. Learning Chinese
2. Mandarin and Taiwanese family names
3. Small victories

As a perfect example, I was driving today and had the radio going to a local station. It was commercial time and I wasn’t really paying attention to the music – it was mostly just background noise to keep my brain immersed in Chinese as much as possible. Anyway, as I was driving, I just caught a small part of the commercial:

85折!!

I’m not sure what the commercial was for, but they were talking about having a sale: 折 means discount or rebate. Now, most of you are thinking, as I did when I came to Taiwan, that it would be an 85 dollar discount or perhaps 85% discount. However, in Taiwan, the discount price is given as the percentage of the original price. So 85折 is actually a 15% discount (it’s 85% of the original price, so 15% off).

Now this was, for me, a small and rewarding victory. Not only did I understand that small part, but I also understood that it meant 15% discount and not 85%.

Some readers of this blog might scoff or laugh at such a piddly, unimportant thing, but small victories like these need to be emphasized, not only for Expats learning Chinese and Taiwanese like myself, but for all of us teaching English: I love telling my students how much they improving when they have small victories like this – all too often their parents and other teachers are just badgering them to pass the GEPT or TOEIC or some other test and have a huge victory. I think it’s pretty normal for Taiwanese students to get burned out under such pressure, so emphasizing their small victories is totally worthwhile and helps them realize they are making progress.

This is a post from: An Expatriate in Taiwan. If you are reading this somewhere other than An Expatriate in Taiwan, please report it to the webmaster and please visit the blog at http://www.expatintaiwan.net.

Small victories

Related posts:

1. I think I’m speaking Chinese

To honor this occasion, I thought I would give my Big Sister a uniquely Taiwanese Birthday Present. In my meager Taiwan existence, it has become extremely clear that there is one birthday custom which MUST be honored: a trip to the KTV for a round of 快樂鳥日子 (kuàilèniǎorìzì) by 康康 (Kankan). Literally translated, it means “Happy Bird’s Day” and is supposed to be a humorous way of mocking the way Chinese speakers pronounce “Happy Birthday.” The is entirely in Taiwanese, except for the middle where Kankan addresses the Birthday Boy or Girl and assures him/her that there is nothing to worry about because, at the very least, he/she has him to sing for them.

This really gets the Taiwanese going and, I must admit, is very catchy. My Taiwanese isn’t nearly good enough to understand most of it, but it’s still a pretty good song. So, without further here, Happy Birthday/Bird’sday, Karyn!

This is a post from: An Expatriate in Taiwan. If you are reading this somewhere other than An Expatriate in Taiwan, please report it to the webmaster and please visit the blog at http://www.expatintaiwan.net.

Happy Bird’s Day

Related posts:

1. 新年快樂! Happy New Year!

Chinese people place a great deal of importance on family and familial relations. To that end, they have a special name for just about everyone you are related to. Different names for uncles depending on which side of the family they’re on and how old they are. Different names for your sisters-in-law depending on if they are older or younger than your wife. It really is quite complicated.

In Taiwan, this is made doubly so, because you not only have to learn the Mandarin words and pronunciation for each of these members, but you also learn the Taiwanese pronunciation. This more or less doubles the already incredibly large database of family names you must learn. To that end, I’ve tried to make a list for you. Many thanks go to Miss Expatriate and her mom, who somehow manages to keep all of these straight and inform us ahead of time who we’ll be meeting and what we should call them.

Immediate Family

Father's Side

Mother's Side

I know what you’re thinking – what about step- family? Step-father? Step-sister? Well, there is no special way to say that in Chinese. A step-father is the same as father: 爸爸. At least that part is easy, right?

As you can see, some information is still missing. If you want to correct my spelling or have any other ideas for something to add, please contact me. This post won’t be updated, but you can view these tables and the updates on its own page found here or by clicking the “Family Names” page at the top of this website.

*Although Taiwanese is generally regarded as a spoken language, rather than a written one, we can use Mandarin characters (漢字) to represent the Taiwanese. When we do this, we either use a Mandarin character that represents the sound of the Taiwanese (e.g. 哇/wā is commonly used in Taiwanese to represent “I” rather than the Mandarin 我/wǒ) or, more commonly, we simply use the Mandarin and pronounce it in Taiwanese (e.g. 哇國寶了 would be wā guó bǎo le in Mandarin but it’s a famous Taiwanese saying pronounced like wā guò bòu lei).[

**There is no standard Pinyin for representing Taiwanese, although Tongyong Pinyin would come close. However, I don't know Tongyong Pinyin, so I've tried to come as close as I can here using Hanyu and common pronunciations. Some of these come from various corners of the web or books, but most are just me listening to Miss Expatriate and her mom pronouncing the words and attempting to type them out as correctly as I can. If you have any suggestions for better Pinyinization, please contact me.

***If you have only one older brother, you will simply call him 哥哥/ge1ge1. However, if you have two older brothers, the oldest will be 一哥哥/yīgēgē and the second oldest will be 二哥哥/èrgēgē for First Older Brother, Second Older Brother, and so on. Same goes for younger brothers and older and younger sisters.

****The cousins are grouped together here, but it should be noticed that they follow the same rules as brothers and sisters. That is, if the cousin is a male and is older than you, than he will be 表哥/biǎogē because 哥 is for your older brother. Follow the same rules for a younger male cousin and older and younger female cousins.

This is a post from: An Expatriate in Taiwan. If you are reading this somewhere other than An Expatriate in Taiwan, please report it to the webmaster and please visit the blog at http://www.expatintaiwan.net.

Mandarin and Taiwanese family names

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Most of these are used when instant messaging friends or sending text messages. A few of them, like 4, 6, and 8 are pretty well integrated to everyday life and you’ll encounter their universal meanings wherever you go.

All of them are based on homophones, where the sound for the number(s) sounds like something else. I’m indebted to my students and Miss Expatriate for helping and telling me the current popular “number sayings.” All of the following are in Mandarin, unless otherwise specified to be Taiwanese.

4 – 死 (sǐ) – death. Chinese/Taiwanese people absolutely hate this number. If you get a cell phone number, the numbers with 4s in them will have discounts because no one wants them. In many buildings, such as hospitals, there will be no 4th floor (who wants to go to a hospital and stay on the “death floor”?)
6 – 六 (liù) – Luck. Apparently, this comes from Hong Kong. The pronunciation of the number 6 sounds like the word 祿 (lù). When in Taiwan or China, you’ll notice that any phone numbers or license plates with the numbers 6 and 8 are extremely popular.
8 – 八 (bā) – Good luck. This sounds like 發 (fā), the word for luck.
38 – 三八 (sānbā) – Silly woman (as noted by Laowai Chinese, this is because March 8 (3/8) is International Women’s Day. Where the negative connotation came from is unclear.
56 – 五六 (wǔliù) – Bored. This is a homophone to 無聊 (wúliáo) which means bored.
78 – 七八 (qībā) – qībā sounds like the Taiwanese pronunciation of a slang word for penis. It’s also very close to a Taiwanese slang word for vagina (qībǎi), so 78 can mean either one, depending on the context.
87 – 白痴 (báichī) – Idiot/Stupid.
88 – 八八 (bābā) – Bye bye.
98 – 九八 (jiǔbā) – Let’s go. This sounds similar to 走吧 (zǒuba).
168 – 一六八 (yīliùbā) – Very lucky. This sounds like 一祿發 (yīlùfā), which means to have good fortune.
250 二百五 (èrbǎiwǔ) – Stupid (As Laowai Chinese points out, 250 grams is half of a 斤 (jìn) (500 grams), so 250 has come to mean half a brain.
520 – 我愛你 (wǒàinǐ) – I love you.
530 – 我想你 (wǒxiǎngnǐ) – I miss you. / I’m thinking of you.
534 – 五三四 (wǔsānsì) – This sounds like 我想這 (wǒxiāngzhè). When this is pronounced in Taiwanese, it sounds like 哇想死 (wāxiǎngsǐ), which means I want to die. (you are embarrassed or you embarrassed someone and you feel bad.)
880 – 抱抱你 (bàobàonǐ) – I hug you.
886 – 八八六 (bābāliù) – Bye bye. This sounds like 拜拜囉 (báibáiluó) / 拜拜了 (báibáile). (Luó and le are common sentence ending sounds.)
0987 – 零九八七 (língjiǔbāqī) – In Taiwanese, this sounds like línzhùbéiqī), which sounds like the Taiwanese pronunciation of 你很白痴 (nǐhěnbáichī), which means “You’re an idiot.”
1314 – 一三一四 (yīsānyīsì). Forever; all my life; a whole lifetime. This sounds like 一生一世 (yīshēngyīshì).
2266 – 二二六六 (èrèrliùliù) – (Taiwanese – sounds like 零零落落 (línglínglàlà) or lìlìlàlà) – The way you do things is very sloppy (meant as a kind of insult as to how someone performs a particular act).
3180 – When written out, the 3 and 1 overlap (三 and 一 becomes 王) and when the 8 and 0 are added, you get 王八0, where the egg represents the Chinese word for egg, dàn. Put it together and you’ve got 王八蛋(wángbādàn) which means bastard. Obviously, a very impolite name to call someone.
5987 – 五九八七 (wǔjiǔbāqī) – In Taiwanese, this sounds like wāzhùbéiqī), which sounds like the Taiwanese pronunciation of 我很白痴 (wǒhěnbáichī), which means “I’m an idiot.”
搭11號公車 (dāshíyīhàogōngchē) – As Laowai Chinese points out, 搭11號公車 literally means “Take bus #11″ but the 1s are supposed to represent legs, so it means to walk somewhere.
三好加一好 (sānhàojiā一hào) – 三好加一好 means “3 + 1,” the answer to which is 4 / 四號 (sìhào). This sounds very similar to 死好, which when pronounced in Taiwanese (xīhēi) means “You deserve what you get.” or “You deserve it.” or “You deserve death.” If someone does something stupid, for example, you would tell them 三好加一好 to tell them that they got what they deserve.
Are there any others out there that you know of? Leave a comment if you know more!

This is a post from: An Expatriate in Taiwan. If you are reading this somewhere other than An Expatriate in Taiwan, please report it to the webmaster and please visit the blog at http://www.expatintaiwan.net.

Speaking in numbers

Related posts:

1. I think I’m speaking Chinese
2. Learning Chinese

One of the threads I’ve been reading lately is the “Ways to force people to use Chinese on you” thread. This thread bears particular relevance to me, since I am learning Mandarin and and often like to practice it when Miss Expatriate and I go out.

Now, there are a few problems with this:
1) Many, many people in Taiwan speak English
2) Even more people think they speak English and want to practice
3) Spoken Chinese coming from a white person often goes completely unnoticed

Combine these three factors, and it’s often difficult, I find, to do anything completely in Chinese. Just this last weekend, Miss Expatriate and I went for dinner in Taichung. As soon as we walked in, the hostess was there with a “Hello! Welcome!”

I immediately responded with “你好. 兩位.” (Hi. A seat for 2 people please.)
Her rebuttal: “Yes, come this way please.

I turned to Miss Expatriate and said “I hate her already.”
To be honest, I’ll often completely ignore anyone that speaks English to me. If I’m at the nightmarket and a vendor shouts “Come. Try! Very good!” at me, I’ll keep walking. It annoys me to no end, for a few reasons:

1) They see a white person and they assume I’m American. OK, I am, but I might also be German. What about all the white people in Taiwan that don’t speak English as a first language. How many vendors bother learning “Hello, come try this” in Norwegian? Probably none.

2) They are treating me differently. I’ve lived in Taiwan for 2 years. This is, for all intents and purposes, my home. I have a job, I have my papers in order. I’m at your nightmarket. Why are you treating me as if I’m any different from the hundreds/thousands of other people wandering around looking for a late night snack?

Anyway, it irks me because it makes it that much more difficult to practice Chinese. Getting back to our hostess in Taichung, we ate our meal and then Miss Expatriate left to go get the car while I paid. I knew it was coming. I could see it in our hostesses eyes. I knew she would speak English to me again. I was determined to steer the conversation into Chinese.

I got to the counter and she said “655.” (how much we owed).
I pretended I didn’t understand her and said “多少錢?” (duōshǎoqián) (how much is it?) Actually, I didn’t even say that. Saying that is what would be considered “Textbook Mandarin.” Most locals in Taiwan will shorten it to “多少” and it comes out pronounced like “dōusǎo?” I’m fairly certain I say it much like a local, too: Miss Expatriate seems to approve of it and it has worked in many situations before.
She repeated herself, in Chinese this time: “六百五十五.” “Victory!” I thought. I handed her some money. Then, she immediately started writing down the bill and explaining it to me in English!
“2 teas. 20 each.
2 dinners. blah blah blah blah blah” for the entire bill, in English. Immediately after her and I just had our small exchange in Chinese.

Anyway, I suffered through it since I’m much to nice to start yelling at her, even though I really wanted to.

So where does that leave me? Even after I speak Chinese to a local and they answer me in Chinese, they revert back to English for God knows what reason. What else can I do?

I’ve thought of lying and saying “我聽不懂” (I don’t understand) but that wouldn’t be very nice.
I’ve thought of adopting a very heavy Irish or Scottish accent and letting them struggle with my English then.
I’ve thought of only speaking German when presented with English.

In the end, I guess I’ll just keep trying to speak Chinese, hard as the locals make it. Perhaps I should a try a tactic that seems to have worked for the guys in this video:

This is a post from: An Expatriate in Taiwan. If you are reading this somewhere other than An Expatriate in Taiwan, please report it to the webmaster and please visit the blog at http://www.expatintaiwan.net.

I think I’m speaking Chinese

Related posts:

1. Learning Chinese
2. Speaking in numbers
3. An interesting encounter

You see, ever since W. was caught wearing crocs, the Taiwanese decided to venerate him by naming the shoes after him. 布希 or “bùxī” just happens to be the closest Chinese pronunciation to Bush that they could come up with.

I don’t know whether they like Bush so much that they decided to name these shoes after him or whether they hate him so much they decided to use his name for what is probably the ugliest piece of footwear ever made.

This is a post from: An Expatriate in Taiwan. If you are reading this somewhere other than An Expatriate in Taiwan, please report it to the webmaster and please visit the blog at http://www.expatintaiwan.net.

President shoes

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1. Gas prices on the rise

Today, however, I want to talk about forms of writing Chinese, as there are several different forms.

The first, and most obvious, is writing characters. This is called 國字 (Guózì), which means “Country words.” The characters themselves are called Hànzì. This is what every schoolchild in China and Taiwan learn to read and write (with the help of of alphabet, which I’ll discuss in a bit). Characters are made up of several strokes in a particular order – mastering these strokes and knowing which order to write them in is essential to identifying and writing characters.

The second way to write Chinese is by using Zhùyīn fúhào, also known as the bopomofo (named for the first 4 sounds of the Chinese alphabet). This is an “alphabet” of 45 very simple characters, each one representing a distinct sound in Chinese. These are placed next to Chinese characters to assist children and people learning Chinese how to pronounce each character. This is what zhùyīn fúhào looks like:

ㄅㄆㄇㄈㄉㄊㄋㄌㄍㄎㄏㄐㄑㄒㄓㄔㄕㄖㄗㄘㄙ一ㄨㄩㄚㄛㄜㄝㄞㄟㄠㄡㄢㄣㄤㄥㄦ

If you can’t read the script, you may need to install a Unicode Chinese font. Otherwise, I have a picture of Zhuyin Fuhao here:

Here you can see the Chinese character on the left with the bopomofo characters on their right. Most children’s books, as well as dictionaries, will give the bopomofo pronunciation for a character to assist those learning it. Learning the bopomofo characters is not essential to learning Chinese – one could, for instance, simply develop pronunciation and listening skills by listening and speaking and trial and error. Learning the bopomofo, however, helps you learn new characters when looking them up in a dictionary or reading them in a book that uses them.

The final way to write Chinese is through the use of Hànyŭ Pīnyīn or “Spelling the sound of Chinese.” The words I’ve used to write “Hànyŭ Pīnyīn” and “Zhùyīn fúhào” are pinyin – they are the English transliteration of Chinese sounds, complete with tone markers. There are several forms of pinyin (Hanyu, Wade-Giles, Yale, etc) but the most accurate and one I prefer is Hànyŭ simply because it’s the most standardized and it’s the one used in (some) dictionaries in Taiwan, so it’s the most appropriate for me.

Children in Taiwan are not taught Hànyŭ Pīnyīn and asking them to “write something out” for you in pīnyīn will only net you confused looks. You can, however, ask them to write things out in bopomofo and they’ll be happy to do that. Pīnyīn is used only in some dictionaries and to help foreigners (typically, those that speak English) pronounce or write out Chinese words. It isn’t very useful in Taiwan or, I Imagine, China and Hong Kong. (Update: Since I’ve written this, it’s been pointed out to me that I was wrong. Pinyin is used everywhere in China, whereas Zhuyin is used only in Taiwan. See the comments for more information.)

So, there you have it: the three ways to write Chinese. I’m still working on my bopomofo and, once I have that thoroughly memorized, I may try writing characters. Some of the characters, however, are incredibly complex and I don’t foresee myself ever being proficient in writing them.

This is a post from: An Expatriate in Taiwan. If you are reading this somewhere other than An Expatriate in Taiwan, please report it to the webmaster and please visit the blog at http://www.expatintaiwan.net.

Learning Chinese

Related posts:

1. English speakers have it easy…
2. I think I’m speaking Chinese
3. Hanzi Milestone: 1000

In order to use a Chinese dictionary, you have to be able to recognize the Chinese character, the radical used in the character, and the number of strokes needed to write the character. I’m learning now how to use my Chinese-English dictionary to look up characters I see, so I’m making a small tutorial here, complete with pictures, to help all of you as well.

First, we need a character to look up. This one will do nicely:

媽

We can see now that there are two parts to the character: a left half and a right half. Somehow, those two parts come together to form 1 character with 1 sound and meaning. Next, we need to identify which part of the character is the radical.

Chinese radicals are the semantic root of all characters. They are the part of the character that gives it its meaning. Most modern dictionaries agree that there are approximately 214 Chinese Radicals in the language, so you have to be able to recognize those 214 characters in order to further identify the remaining characters in the language. In this case, I’ll give you a hint: the radical for the character above is:

女

This character, when on it’s own, is pronounced nǚ and means “woman.” So, we know that the character above uses the woman radical and and has something to do with females. If you aren’t able to recognize radicals, you can still use a dictionary; it’ll just take a little longer. All dictionaries have lists of radicals where you look up the radical, get the page number, and then proceed to find your character. They look like this:

A Radical Index page from a Chinese dictionary

You can see that I’ve highlighted in green the section that contains radicals with 3 strokes. Additionally, I highlighted in yellow the radical we’re looking for. The dictionary says that radical, and all characters found under that radical, can be found on page 319, so let’s go there.

The entry for the radical

Again you can see in yellow this is where the section for the radical starts. In green, they begin listing all the meanings associated with just that radical and no extra strokes/characters attached to it. In order to look up our original character, 媽, we need to know how many strokes are needed to complete it. That is, we need to know how many strokes are needed to create the right half of the character. This time, I’ll help you out and tell you that the right half of the character requires 10 strokes to write. We shall proceed, therefore, to the page where they list all the characters using that radical plus 10 strokes.

The entry for our character.

There we are. In yellow I’ve highlighted that we are now at the “10 stroke” section. This will contain all the characters with 女 for a radical that require 10 additional strokes to finish. In green I’ve found our particular character. It’s complete with phonetic pronunciation (according to the Hanyu Pinyin as well as Zhuyin Fuhao (Mandarin phonetics/alphabet) and all the definitions and some handy phrases. In this case, our definition is the the first one, and the character we’re looking for is pronunced mā and means “mother.”

Interestingly, the right half of the character is also pronunced ma and can mean either “mother,” “horse,” “to scold” or it signals a question. This is all dependent on tone, of course, and whichever extra strokes accompany it.. So, the left half (the radical) gives the character its meaning and the right half gives the character its pronunciation. Both halves are working to form 1 character.

So next time you need to identify a character and have a dictionary handy, I trust you’ll be able to fend for yourself.

This is a post from: An Expatriate in Taiwan. If you are reading this somewhere other than An Expatriate in Taiwan, please report it to the webmaster and please visit the blog at http://www.expatintaiwan.net.

English speakers have it easy…

Related posts:

1. Learning Chinese
2. Hanzi Milestone: 1000

A mother had come in with her son, approximately 7 years old. He immediately came up to our table, picking his nose the entire time, and inquired of me:

吃飽了沒？ Chī bǎu lè méi? (Are you full?)

Miss Expatriate gave a quizzical look (probably because of the extended nose picking), but I answered:

吃飽了，謝謝。Chī bǎu lè, xiè xiè. (Yes, I’m full. Thanks.)

Satisfied, he ran off to his mom.

Moments later he came back. He pointed to my glasses on the table (I had taken them off because it had been raining and they were wet) and said something I didn’t understand. Miss Expatriate pointed at me and said something. She then told me, “He wanted to know whose glasses they were, and I said they belonged to you.” So, I picked up my glasses, put them on, and stared at him. He said something that sounded like:

你很帥！ Nǐ hěn shuài! (You are handsome!)

and ran off. They left shortly after that.

Just an interesting encounter I had.

This is a post from: An Expatriate in Taiwan. If you are reading this somewhere other than An Expatriate in Taiwan, please report it to the webmaster and please visit the blog at http://www.expatintaiwan.net.

An interesting encounter

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