Beijing Sounds — 北京的声儿

Zhōu Yǒuguāng on a Beijing talk show; 4=2 in Beijing; Pinyin and topolects; schadenfreude

Everyone knows that literacy in Mandarin means hour after brutal hour of memorizing and practicing a script whose design clearly shows the influence of sadistic genius. Here are a couple of favorites from the torture rack: two pairs of characters that have absolutely no connection except that they just might possibly, to the benighted, appear to be vaguely similar in form to one another.

衣农， 日曰

Well, at least we think we know what Mandarin literacy means. But do we really? Could you possibly get away with achieving literacy through something less than masochism? Read the rest of this entry »

Briefly, since there are no Beijing Sounds in this at all. The boilerplate WARNING in the blog sidebar has sufficed to keep most of the lawyers out of the messy back yard here at BJS, where we do indulge in full-monty writing behavior that would get us banned from any reputable venue.

But since the warning occasionally gets some attention in its own right, I thought others might be interested in Mark Liberman’s recent post on Language Log, which analyzes more scientific approaches to the question of whether “singular them” actually slows people down when they’re reading.

Good stuff. Much more satisfying than prohibition by intuition and prejudice. A scientific approach is unlikely to solve any debate, as the core questions — is it important that a particular kind of usage slows readers down? … and what kind of readers? — will probably never get agreed upon. Still, I’ve always got hope in my heart for logic, even when experience has proved time and again that it has no bearing on the course of any argument.

Another snippet on how Manchu isn’t quite ancient history. Preview to a post covering a TV appearance by Zhōu Yǒuguāng (周有光).

How do you start out an interview with a spry 102-year-old? In the US, you might ask if he remembers seeing his first car. In Beijing you might ask him about whether he ever had a queue, the long braid hairstyle for men from the Qing Dynasty, which was still kicking in 1911-12. Read the rest of this entry »

Meta — sometimes you gotta

For those who prefer old-fashioned email notification about posts, Beijing Sounds finally has an option for that again. This is not to imply that the technical team has returned from the 3-month-old strike over management insults, as this is the subject of continued and tense negotiations, with rumors of sabotage and impending shutdown.

Seriously, if any of you eight readers does try this out and find it inadequate, please let me know.