9/26/08: Chinglish lets you be your inner Batman

Since Chinglish is the language of the future, or at least the near future, here’s a primer for your convenience. Study up. Next week there will be a quiz.

In terms of grammar, Chinese lacks article words such as “the,” “a,” or “an,” and Chinglish speakers will often leave them out.

Mandarin also has no tense. If something happens in the future, an indicator is put into the sentence — “tomorrow” or “next year” — but not attached to the verb, a la “will” in “I will go to the store.”

For English speakers learning Chinese, the other side of Chinglish, grammatical articles like “le” or “de” add mystery and suspense to Chinese grammar. No American I know has ever totally mastered the use of “le,” and no Chinese I’ve asked has been able to explain it.

There are a few archaic phrases likely to be revived by a surge in Chinglish use. “Oh, what a pity!” often greeted a revelation that something lamentable had happened to me on the way to class, or that I wouldn’t be able to join my students for volleyball or badminton afterward.
“Best wishes” in Chinglish transcends the coworker’s-birthday-card cordiality it usually has here, and becomes an expression of genuine interest in a friend’s wellbeing.

If you ask a Chinese how they’re feeling, they will likely answer “so-so” in lieu of “fine.”

Tone is often the only difference between words in Chinese, leading to interesting associations between words we don’t recognize as similar, particularly with numbers.

Just as the word for eight, “ba,” is similar to “fortune,” “fa,” the word “si” can mean both “four” and “death or dies.” Four is considered an unlucky number.

There are also some numbers, my students told me, that correlate to Chinese phrases. If you’re ever texted the number 150, for instance, the messenger is trying to send you “best wishes.” 520 means “I love you.” (“Wu er ling” is similar to “wo ai ni.”)

My students also added a few given names to the canon. Chinese names aren’t abstracted from meanings the way European or American names often are; they’re also characteristics or other nouns, like our “Faith” or “Dawn.”

My students often tried to translate the literal meanings of their names, leading to English names like Agent, Purple or Tornado.

“My name means ‘a strong wind,’” explained my student Tornado. “It means I am forceful and strong.”

His cousin, Batman, didn’t attempt to explain his name, but another fictional character did.
“[Han] Solo is a very brave man,” he said.

Each of my classes at the university level also included a girl named “Apple,” in reference to having a rounded face.

These may sound strange at first, but after awhile, I suspect we’ll get used to people calling themselves whatever they want.

“Batman!” I found myself saying in class one day. “Sit down and pay attention! Tornado, please help him find his place in the reading.”

Chinese also use descriptive titles with their names. Instead of “Miss Watkins,” my Chinese name to my students would translate to “Teacher Watkins.” Bus or taxi drivers are “Driver Zhang,” principals are “Principal Li,” and so on. Calling a person by their title shows respect rather than objectification in Chinese culture.

If you appear to be older, or much-respected, don’t be surprised to hear yourself referred to as “Grandma” or “Grandpa” — also a sign of respect for Chinese.

Taking leave of someone may elicit a “happy every day,” a common Chinglish phrase on par with “best wishes.”

So a happy every day to you.

9/19/08: Chinglish has delicious prospects as a language

I was heading to the A Dong Asian supermarket in West Hartford the other day and paused on my way in, in the airlocklike vestibule that separates the American outside from the pan-Asian inside of the store, and noticed how many fliers were posted on the community bulletin board advertising Chinese classes.

Most of the classes are for kids and tend to cater to parents who fall into one of two categories: those who want their children to learn the language of their ancestors, and those who want their children to learn the language of the future.

I’m betting that whichever category applies, those classes are filled. More Americans are interested in Mandarin than ever before.

When I was in China, I learned two dialects of Chinese — Sichuanhua, which is considered a “hillbilly” dialect, similar to an American having a West Virginian accent, and putonghua, or common Mandarin.

But I think it’s more likely that the next language of commerce and culture is not Mandarin. I think it will be Chinglish.

Chinglish isn’t a recognized dialect or even a real pidgin language, like Creole, but it has potential. Combining the grammatical structures of Mandarin and English leads to some unique phrasing, and the widespread use of outdated textbooks in at least the places I taught in China meant that my students often resurrected words I’d thought were relegated to vocabulary exercises and Victorian novels.

“Lovely” stands in for “cute,” for instance; “dear” for “expensive,” as in England; and “trousers” for “pants” or “shorts.”

“Delicious” and “spicy” are used much more often by Chinese people than native English speakers. Every dish in China is declared “delicious” — none are just “good.”

These are fairly innocuous differences. But there were times the language didn’t translate quite so well.

Like during the end-of-term party my ninth-grade class was having. I’d told my students they could listen to music during the party if it was English music.

Steven, one of the most “lively” — another popular Chinglish word — of my students had brought a CD of Chinese music containing a few unintelligible lines of English.

“Steven,” I said, “This is not English music.”

“Yes, English!” Steven protested. “‘Superlovers,’ Miss Watkins. I’ll show you — one night of love!”

I looked up, startled, to confirm that Steven was not propositioning me. He was desperately pointing to the three lines of English in the liner notes to the CD, which included “superlovers” and “one night of love.” I tried to keep a straight face, and I let him keep the music on.

It may sound at this point like I was being a bad teacher, letting my 14-year-old students listen to a song with questionable content in class. But in China, “lover” is akin to an endearment like “sweetheart,” based on a direct translation from “ai ren,” or “love person.”

Many of the vocabulary faux pas of my students were due to the ubiquitous electronic Chinese-English dictionaries they carried everywhere. My first class rule was always “no electronic dictionaries,” but students rarely paid attention.

Using the dictionaries distorted language the way an online translation program does. Despite this, my students didn’t believe I could tell when they were using them.

“I just wish you a lucky and perspective new year,” wrote one of my students last year.

“I think you are using your electronic dictionary,” I wrote back. “But thank you. And same-same to you.”

9/12/08: No one fits in infinite space of cyber chapel

I have this friend — let’s call her Balicia — who has tried Internet dating. After several possible matches, some of whom she knew only via e-mail and some of whom she met in person, she gave up.

It’s one thing to put your best foot forward on an in-person date. It’s another to have hours and hours to pore over every pixel in your profile photo or every word of your self-description. What are the chances that those moments that tell us we’re compatible with a potential partner — the slips of decorum that show the real person underneath, impossible to completely eliminate in face-to-face encounters — will show through in such a well-vetted venue?

What are the chances the deal-breakers will?

My friend found the whole process exhausting and not worth her time and, when her subscription to her dating Web site expired, she let it lapse.

I’m no Luddite, but I believe what most traditionalists do about courtship and marriage, and about the Internet and social fragmentation. I’m a fan of face-to-face interactions.

I’m in a dwindling group, there, though.

Henry Jenkins, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of several books, including “Fans, Bloggers and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture,” defends online interactions as just as valid as in-person ones.

In one essay, he recounts his son’s experience with a girlfriend he met and maintained a relationship with online — a relationship that ended after a trip to meet the girl and her family, thanks, Jenkins implies, to her parents’ restrictions and ambivalent attitude toward her online boyfriend.

Jenkins claims that his son’s and the girlfriend’s emotions were no less real because they were usually expressed electronically, and I’m inclined to agree. Especially with teens who grew up with the Internet, typing could be just as significant as talking in forming relationships.

But Jenkins took his son to meet the girl, anyway. There are some things online exchanges just can’t provide.

The next step for serious daters, for instance — Internet weddings.

Internet weddings do exist, I was shocked to learn. The Chatalot Wedding Chapels, for instance, come in several varieties, including “gothic,” “enchanted,” “international” and “Las Vegas.”
Potential brides and grooms can select a chapel chatroom, password-protected, and e-mail invitations to their guest list.

The cyber wedding is bring-your-own-clergy, and assuming a pastor, priest or justice of the peace agrees to officiate, this seems to indicate a scheduled start time just as with a traditional wedding. How the revelry expresses itself — party guests popping champagne corks in the privacy of their bedrooms, perhaps? — is as much a mystery as whether the newlyweds need to be in the same room, or even the same state, when the vows take place.

Having a wedding online is bad enough, I thought, but my jaw actually dropped open when I saw the second feature of the basic package: a “reserved honeymoon suite with private password for one week.”

I know it’s rude to ask — I didn’t get a response when I wrote to Chatalot.com to ask last week — but what exactly would one do in a private honeymoon chatroom?

Probably not anything that couldn’t be done better in person.

Is this the way we recognize love and commitment in the digital age — as atomized individuals, separated from the sights and smells of the friends and cakes we intend to celebrate with?

The point may be moot, though: Cyber weddings are not legally binding.

Yet.

9/5/08: Pequots provide more than same old history

Interactive museums are great, and we in central Connecticut have access to some great ones. I’ve written about Old Sturbridge Village and Mystic Seaport, each of which tell stories familiar to most Americans who sat through two or three years of mandatory American history.

If you want to hear the story of the less-heard voices of the historically disenfranchised in Connecticut, there’s another place to go: the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center.

If you’re expecting something with the power of the Holocaust museum, you’ll likely be disappointed. The Mashantucket Pequot Museum does include accounts of diseases, economic and environmental changes and war brought on by contact with English settlers, but it incorporates these into its displays on the daily lives of Pequots rather than making the difficulties the focus of the museum.

The resulting experience is less traumatic, and maybe less memorable, but this is to its credit. What could have been a nightmare account of atrocities committed against the Pequot becomes an effective retelling of familiar stories from another perspective, one in which the Pequot are people with full lives, an economy and system of governance, a spiritual path and a place in colonial history, rather than victims.

"It’s all covered," said David Holahan, museum spokesman. "The exhibits give information on diseases and the impact of Europeans, but they also show eastern tribes’ cultures, spiritual and sociopolitical lives."

The museum is no less able to succeed in its aims — to educate visitors on the lives of eastern native peoples — for its balance and quotidian focus.

The museum doesn’t have the staffing of Old Sturbridge Village, where people walk around in character as colonial villagers, but it does a good job of making up for it. Throughout the museum are Pequot figures performing daily tasks and rituals, being healed or hefting spears, defending their village against attack or fishing. You’re not allowed to touch them, of course, but the figures are so lifelike that I found myself staring at one of the men serving as lookout in a canoe in the main atrium for about two minutes, waiting for him to breathe.

The largest display is of a Pequot village, where visitors can walk around with an audio tour guide and learn more about whichever scenes most interest them. The tour often goes beyond describing the scenes portrayed, too, offering to tell you more about agriculture in the village, or more about the spiritual practices of the Pequot or more about learning to hunt, "then and now."

Often the "more information" is a surprisingly impromptu interview of a modern Mashantucket Pequot tribal member. One mother tells of her son’s first hunting expedition with an older Native American — they didn’t catch anything — and another tribal member talks about the efforts of one man to get federal recognition for the tribe in the 1970s and 1980s. All the "ums" and "ahs" are included, making listening to the tribal members on the audio tour seem as good as a conversation.

The museum contains more traditional displays of textiles and artworks, as well, and several films that flesh out the information provided by wall displays or readings. But it’s the interactive details that help the museum to reach beyond the dry accounts of a history book — one that may or may not have included detailed accounts of Pequot life, anyway — and create actual experiences for visitors.