6 ms·

As a native Chinese speaker and a Chinese citizen, I found nothing interesting in this article except the author's dislike towards CCP. It looks like the autho

As a native Chinese speaker and a Chinese citizen, I found nothing interesting in this article except the author's dislike towards CCP. It looks like the author wanted to understand the meaning of 美丽 in this context but failed so instead he/she just dumped all his raw research and personal opinions without justifications and deeper analysis. > Note that, as a rhetorical progression, the five modifiers from "rich and powerful" to "beautiful" become increasingly abstract, with "beautiful" amounting to an unassailable purified truth. This sentence is not really making sense to me. The 5 adjectives are all abstract, and 美丽 is the less abstract one among them because you normally use it to refer to physically objects. Also, the discussion on single character vs two characters are pretty much irrelevant to the contextual meaning of the word 美丽 here, because the two character word is used just to make all 5 adjectives have two characters uniformly (more beautiful). If the other 4 adjectives were single character, this word would also be single character. In Chinese, the usage of single vs multiple characters is mostly purely for aesthetics of the written sentence. For example: 真，善，美 (all single characters, looks and sounds nice) vs 美丽的上海 (adjective and subject are both two characters, looks and sounds nice)

caio1982 9y ago
Please post a deeper analysis so we can compare them :-) Language Log is pretty open to debate so I guess they would even republish there if it is a good one!
cristiantincu 9y ago
> In conclusion, the newly added měilì 美丽 ("beautiful") in the Party constitution is completely unrelated to the abstract ideal of "beauty" of the Platonic or Aristotelian sort. This is a pretty interesting remark, in the eyes of a westerner. Care to comment on it?
- paradite 9y ago
  Like I said in the edited comment in parent, 美丽 is mostly used to describe physical objects. So it is going to be interpreted as beautiful towns, cities and houses by the general public. And the officials will maybe prioritize some gentrification, renovation projects in alignment to this. I don't know why the author thought so deeply about it. It should be pretty straightforward.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - cristiantincu 9y ago
    > I don't know why the author thought so deep about it. Because “beautiful” is a pretty abstract word. It kinda invites to a debate. Don’t you think?
    - paradite 9y ago
      In both Chinese and English, I feel "beautiful" is as abstract as "rich", and less abstract than "powerful" and "democratic". Maybe you feel differently but that's how I feel.
  - tfcata 9y ago
    While I don't agree with that '美丽' does not have anything to do with abstract ideal, I don't agree with you, neither. While 美丽 can be used to describe physical objects, 美丽 in the Constitution does convey a sense of abstract ideal. Because when someone says 'something is 美丽', the statement is already abstract. The statement says nothing about the physical property of the subject, it simply conveys an ideal that may be interpreted differently by each individual. But certainly this ideal won't be of the Platonic or Aristotelian sort. In this context, it simply means a country that 'everyone finds enjoyable living in', which is indeed an ideal. edit: grammar
    - paradite 9y ago
      Since you mentioned "ideal", let me give you an example of "ideal". ＂中国梦＂, literally translated as "the Chinese dream" and a phrase coined by CCP, describes an "ideal" that fits your description. But no, "beautiful" in this context just means prettier physical outlook of buildings. You can't over-interpret it (at least in Chinese).
      - tfcata 9y ago
        I think you only understood part of what it tries to convey. Good aesthetics, yes, part of '美丽'. But I won't say '美丽' stops short at simply say 'we will build our cities to look pleasing', at least I won't expect the Constitution to be so pragmatic, because it serves as an guide on the ideology (sort of).
arghwhat 9y ago
I feel that if you are presented with a text to analyze, and you chose to research the history and origin of each individual word, you're probably not going to end up at a meaningful conclusion any time soon... I cannot claim to speak a Chinese language yet (It's on my to-do list, but I'm allergic to effort, and my wife of course has to speak three Chinese languages natively), but I very much agree. It's just a bunch of pointless research, linguistic show-off and opinions on the Communist party (which regardless of their content is entirely out of scope for the analysis). The author should have just scrapped it when they failed to find a conclusion...
psyc 9y ago
I was also disappointed by the interjection of simplistic judgments in the middle. It didn't fit with the language analysis at all.

caio1982 9y ago

Please post a deeper analysis so we can compare them :-) Language Log is pretty open to debate so I guess they would even republish there if it is a good one!

cristiantincu 9y ago

> In conclusion, the newly added měilì 美丽 ("beautiful") in the Party constitution is completely unrelated to the abstract ideal of "beauty" of the Platonic or Aristotelian sort. This is a pretty interesting remark, in the eyes of a westerner. Care to comment on it?

paradite 9y ago
Like I said in the edited comment in parent, 美丽 is mostly used to describe physical objects. So it is going to be interpreted as beautiful towns, cities and houses by the general public. And the officials will maybe prioritize some gentrification, renovation projects in alignment to this. I don't know why the author thought so deeply about it. It should be pretty straightforward.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- cristiantincu 9y ago
  > I don't know why the author thought so deep about it. Because “beautiful” is a pretty abstract word. It kinda invites to a debate. Don’t you think?
  - paradite 9y ago
    In both Chinese and English, I feel "beautiful" is as abstract as "rich", and less abstract than "powerful" and "democratic". Maybe you feel differently but that's how I feel.
- tfcata 9y ago
  While I don't agree with that '美丽' does not have anything to do with abstract ideal, I don't agree with you, neither. While 美丽 can be used to describe physical objects, 美丽 in the Constitution does convey a sense of abstract ideal. Because when someone says 'something is 美丽', the statement is already abstract. The statement says nothing about the physical property of the subject, it simply conveys an ideal that may be interpreted differently by each individual. But certainly this ideal won't be of the Platonic or Aristotelian sort. In this context, it simply means a country that 'everyone finds enjoyable living in', which is indeed an ideal. edit: grammar
  - paradite 9y ago
    Since you mentioned "ideal", let me give you an example of "ideal". ＂中国梦＂, literally translated as "the Chinese dream" and a phrase coined by CCP, describes an "ideal" that fits your description. But no, "beautiful" in this context just means prettier physical outlook of buildings. You can't over-interpret it (at least in Chinese).
    - tfcata 9y ago
      I think you only understood part of what it tries to convey. Good aesthetics, yes, part of '美丽'. But I won't say '美丽' stops short at simply say 'we will build our cities to look pleasing', at least I won't expect the Constitution to be so pragmatic, because it serves as an guide on the ideology (sort of).

arghwhat 9y ago

I feel that if you are presented with a text to analyze, and you chose to research the history and origin of each individual word, you're probably not going to end up at a meaningful conclusion any time soon... I cannot claim to speak a Chinese language yet (It's on my to-do list, but I'm allergic to effort, and my wife of course has to speak three Chinese languages natively), but I very much agree. It's just a bunch of pointless research, linguistic show-off and opinions on the Communist party (which regardless of their content is entirely out of scope for the analysis). The author should have just scrapped it when they failed to find a conclusion...

psyc 9y ago

I was also disappointed by the interjection of simplistic judgments in the middle. It didn't fit with the language analysis at all.