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> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_word_for_%22crisis%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_word_for_%22crisis%22 As a (somewhat) native Chinese speake

by hnfong 3y ago

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_word_for_%22crisis%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_word_for_%22crisis%22 As a (somewhat) native Chinese speaker, the contents of this page is kind of confusing to me, because as far as I can tell, the original saying sounds correct, or at least not wrong. If you search online for the phrase "有危就有機" (literally meaning: where there is danger there is opportunity) you'll see many results. It's a common saying (that said this could be due to influence by the English world, who knows). It's true that "機" by itself can have different meanings, and "in isolation" probably should mean 'change point' rather than 'opportunity'... but that's kind of splitting hairs since the meanings kind of blend together. Also, in Mandarin I don't recall seeing any use of "機" "in isolation", making the claim rather contrived. In my native Cantonese, "機" in isolation usually means "機會" i.e. chance or opportunity. I also observe that the wikipedia page points to non-Chinese sources that "debunk" the myth. I have no idea why they felt the need to be so pedantic about this case... Meanwhile, on social media we routinely see quotes attributed to Confucius, and sometimes it's a fun game trying to figure out whether the quote was legit, poorly translated, or completely made up :P

tialaramex 3y ago
"somewhat" is a strange word to use in this context and probably warrants more explanation. Are you perhaps a child immigrant, and so you have a few early years of exposure in an environment with Cantonese everywhere and then moved somewhere else? Yes an English Wikipedia article will tend to cite English text on the subject, because the assumption would be that it's mostly being read by people in English so text written in another language is less accessible. Also the quote it's debunking is English (it's by US President John F Kennedy), not Chinese.
- hnfong 3y ago
  Ah yes. It's strange but I can explain. Cantonese is a bit different from the "standard" Mandarin Chinese, so that's one factor. I also grew up in a very bilingual environment in Hong Kong, and had a short stint living abroad during my younger years (I started primary school in Australia, so I basically learned to write in English before I learned to write in Chinese.) My schooling is like 80% in English, and even today with bilingual documents I read things much faster in English than Chinese.
  - tialaramex 3y ago
    Thanks for explaining what you meant by "somewhat". One of the people whose opinion about JFK's quote gets a lot of play is Victor Mair, Victor thinks it'd be better to focus on teaching Pinyin rather than get Chinese kids to invest so heavily in the Han writing system which makes alphabetic systems look trivial - and if you're willing I'd be interested in what you think of that as somebody who learned the Latin alphabetic writing system (for English) first, but was heavily exposed to spoken Cantonese much before that.
    - hnfong 3y ago
      Learning the Han characters is difficult, and for a foreigner learning the language, if you mostly want to communicate verbally it's quite obvious which the easy path is. But for native Chinese children, learning Han characters is a matter of cultural identity :) Also, once you've spent the time learning it, the ability to comprehend ancient Chinese texts up to ~2500 years old is pretty nice. Most people don't need to do this (but I do), but it's kind of a culturally accepted overhead of keeping the cultural continuity. I think most learned Chinese teachers recognize this "problem", but it's just accepted as a fact of life, and I don't think it's gonna change any time soon. I personally paid this "cost" too, Chinese was my most dreaded subject in school, and I while I never had any issue recognizing/reading characters, I couldn't hold them all in my head and I'd often forget how to write random characters (up to this day it happens - and I've written a lot of stuff). It's not a problem now because on a computer/phone I can type the pronunciation and I'd find what I wanted, but still. FWIW, note that in the countries that used to be influenced by Chinese Han culture (Vietnam, Korea, Japan), they all used to have some form of Han character writing system, which then they subsequently switched (fully or partly) to a pronunciation based system. Outsiders rightly think we're nuts to keep the existing system, but it's just not gonna change.

by hnfong 3y ago

tialaramex 3y ago

"somewhat" is a strange word to use in this context and probably warrants more explanation. Are you perhaps a child immigrant, and so you have a few early years of exposure in an environment with Cantonese everywhere and then moved somewhere else? Yes an English Wikipedia article will tend to cite English text on the subject, because the assumption would be that it's mostly being read by people in English so text written in another language is less accessible. Also the quote it's debunking is English (it's by US President John F Kennedy), not Chinese.

hnfong 3y ago
Ah yes. It's strange but I can explain. Cantonese is a bit different from the "standard" Mandarin Chinese, so that's one factor. I also grew up in a very bilingual environment in Hong Kong, and had a short stint living abroad during my younger years (I started primary school in Australia, so I basically learned to write in English before I learned to write in Chinese.) My schooling is like 80% in English, and even today with bilingual documents I read things much faster in English than Chinese.
- tialaramex 3y ago
  Thanks for explaining what you meant by "somewhat". One of the people whose opinion about JFK's quote gets a lot of play is Victor Mair, Victor thinks it'd be better to focus on teaching Pinyin rather than get Chinese kids to invest so heavily in the Han writing system which makes alphabetic systems look trivial - and if you're willing I'd be interested in what you think of that as somebody who learned the Latin alphabetic writing system (for English) first, but was heavily exposed to spoken Cantonese much before that.
  - hnfong 3y ago
    Learning the Han characters is difficult, and for a foreigner learning the language, if you mostly want to communicate verbally it's quite obvious which the easy path is. But for native Chinese children, learning Han characters is a matter of cultural identity :) Also, once you've spent the time learning it, the ability to comprehend ancient Chinese texts up to ~2500 years old is pretty nice. Most people don't need to do this (but I do), but it's kind of a culturally accepted overhead of keeping the cultural continuity. I think most learned Chinese teachers recognize this "problem", but it's just accepted as a fact of life, and I don't think it's gonna change any time soon. I personally paid this "cost" too, Chinese was my most dreaded subject in school, and I while I never had any issue recognizing/reading characters, I couldn't hold them all in my head and I'd often forget how to write random characters (up to this day it happens - and I've written a lot of stuff). It's not a problem now because on a computer/phone I can type the pronunciation and I'd find what I wanted, but still. FWIW, note that in the countries that used to be influenced by Chinese Han culture (Vietnam, Korea, Japan), they all used to have some form of Han character writing system, which then they subsequently switched (fully or partly) to a pronunciation based system. Outsiders rightly think we're nuts to keep the existing system, but it's just not gonna change.