Short words and lack of context

[songlei]

i wanted to share something here that has been bugging me for a while. i was wondering what those at a more advanced level think of this. i have the feeling that chinese is a much more homogeneous and dense language than english. it appears there are much less syllables available than in european languages, and due to the fact that it is based on characters, each syllable seems to have more meaning and function than any one in the english language. this has quite far-reaching practical implications in speech.

for example, when i have a conversation with someone, or when i'm listening to a podcast or watching a tv show or something, there are many occasions that i don't understand something that i should have understood on the basis of my knowledge of vocabulary and grammar. for instance, at one point someone asked me for a piece of paper for disposing of a piece of gum. she said something along the lines of 可以帮我拿纸. of course, i didn't understand, and i was beating myself up over this for the next couple of hours or so. i mean, you spend your days reading literature and newspapers, learning all sorts of obscure vocabulary, and you can't understand a simple thing like "can you give me a piece of paper". the thing is, somehow, after 3.5 years of intense study, those chinese syllables still seem to flow together into a homogeneous blend of chineseness, particularly when there is a lack of context. i have the feeling that somehow chinese requires more convention due to the lack of syllables in the language, in combination with the relatively high density of meaning attached to a single syllable/character. in english, you could easily say outlandish stuff like, "this guy has this thing that he can't bear walking in diagonal lines; he's only capable of walking straight and turning in 90-degree corners". such a sentence, which admittedly isn't very useful in daily conversation, would be easily understood by anyone straight away. the same goes for chinese, when it's written. however, my guess is that it is very hard to express such unexpected phrases orally, and make the message come across easily. perhaps i'm wrong here, but at least it feels like it's much harder to do in chinese.

another related and tricky aspect is the fact that chinese characters are silent, which means that while strange an obscure characters may look strange and obscure, but they do not sound obscure. for example, uranium is simply you2. in other words, in english, strange terms look strange and sound strange, whereas in chinese, they may only look strange.

all in all, it seems to me that chinese is simply objectively harder to understand when spoken than english is. it may also explain why chinese have a hard time understanding foreigners, whereas english speakers can usually figure out what foreigners with bad accents are trying to say. what do you all think? am i crazy, biased, or making sense? does this problem get easier over the years? is it really the case that in order to communicate effectively in chinese, you have to stick to conventions more than you would have to in english?

[renzhe]

I have found that reading and listening skills are far less correlated in Chinese than with all European languages I've come across.

In most other languages, you read, and you can understand aurally almost for free. With Chinese, there is no such thing, and listening has to be tackled through lots of listening. You will essentially learn most words twice: once written, and once spoken. I think that this is the reason why so many people find it hard to become fluent outside of China.

You'll find that a similar process takes place as with reading -- after a while, it starts to fall into place gradually, but you will need lots of exposure and listening before that happens.

[ma3zi1]

I concur, listening comprehension is by far my weakest skill in Chinese.

This especially true when it comes not non-colloquial language, like story-telling or news reports. Listening to podcasts with transcripts helps tremendously in this regard.

Also, if available, listen to a Chinese radio station on a daily basis. That way, you will have to rely solely on listening skills to bootstrap your way into understanding.

[creamyhorror]

Yeah, I agree that Chinese expresses things in a paucity of syllables, and this can make formal speech difficult to understand without a large aural vocabulary. That's the problem I'm facing now in a class I'm taking, because my classmates and sometimes the teacher use compact expressions that rely on single characters being used as words. You basically have to know the expression already, or know a lot of characters and their possible usages. The problem is similar when I speak to mainland friends and they start discussing culture or history.

Listen to the radio often, as ma3zi1 said; I think it works well for me (I listen to a local Mandarin radio station online, just leave it playing in the background).

Knowing lots of expressions, even only through reading or Anki, also helps a fair bit, even if it's sometimes hard to connect what's being said to the words you've learned.

In everyday conversation, you won't face that much compact/formal speech - words will typically be expanded to two syllables, or simpler expressions will be used. So you can focus on these situations first (through podcasts, radio, or real conversation) instead of more advanced vocab.

[imron]

And don't forget the first episode project either :-) It's great for picking up spoken, colloquial language.

See here for the complete index.

[knickherboots]

No, you're not crazy. One of the things that makes oral Chinese so difficult is the dominance of homophones. Just imagine what English would be like if you had to make distinctions between words such as "bear" and "bare" for every third word coming out of someone's mouth. Just yesterday, my wife told me that she and my son had gone to a shopping center called "tian hong," and acted like I should be familiar with it. The wheels of my brain started to turn: which "tian", which "hong"? Actually, the images in my mind started to turn, which is something that does not happen in other alphabet-based languages I know. It only took me a split-second to realize that she meant "天虹", but it is telling that I had to eliminate "天红" before settling on the correct meaning. Likewise, Chinese colleagues yesterday threw two relatively common expressions my way, but I was too lazy to really nail their meaning and only clarified one today: "wei2 kong3 tian1xia4 bu2(4) luan4". The problem was "wei kong," specifically "wei" because that sound is represented by several characters that are common at the beginnig of set phrases, especially 为,唯,惟, and 未, and my brain was somehow stuck on 未, even though the tone was different. So I had to ask for clarification today: 唯恐天下不乱, meaning approximately, "Hoping for a major disaster." (I think 惟 is technically more correct than 唯, but my colleague uses 唯.) This is one illustration of what makes learning oral Chinese somewhat laborious--relying on a literate interlocutor to explain the characters and meaning means you have to talk to someone--not just rely on reference works. Online resources make it easier to figure this out than in the pre-Internet era, but it can still be a chore. It means relying on your "language community," which incurs debts and the assumptions of certain reciprocal obligations. Another example of the strange difficulty of Chinese is when a Russian colleague yesterday said that he studied Chinese at "Qinhua". Because his pronouciation was slightly off, my brain went through a bunch of place names for "Qin" as I asked for clarification. Living in Beijing, it should not have been surprising that he was referring to Tsinghua (Qinghua), but my ear was not accustomed to hearing the -ing ending mispronounced as an -in ending, which must be something particular to Russian speakers. Also, a girl on the subway yesterday said she was from "Xing2zhou" in Hebei. When I asked her "哪一个"xing2"? she either couldn't or didn't want to provide an explanation. So it took a quick search to figure out it is 邢州. As it turns out, 邢 is pretty obscure because it just serves as a relatively uncommon surname. So how would you explain it Chinese? My colleague say, "左边一个开字，右边一个耳朵。" And adds, "对吗?" because she is not exactly sure if that's the "correct" way to explain it. Ah, the joys of Chinese!

[renzhe]

The wheels of my brain started to turn: which "tian", which "hong"?

This pretty much sums up most of the listening-related problems in Chinese. I must go through this question dozens of times a day.

On the other hand, think of words like weishenme, or zhidao or xiexie. You hear them so often that your brain simply understands them without having to process, or match the sounds to thousands of potential characters.

The problem is attaining a large enough aural vocabulary to make most everyday words behave like weishenme or zhidao. It takes practice.

[gato]

Likewise, Chinese colleagues yesterday threw two relatively common expressions my way, but I was too lazy to really nail their meaning and only clarified one today: "wei2 kong3 tian1xia4 bu2(4) luan4". The problem was "wei kong," specifically "wei" because that sound is represented by several characters that are common at the beginnig of set phrases, especially 为,唯,惟, and 未, and my brain was somehow stuck on 未, even though the tone was different. So I had to ask for clarification today: 唯恐天下不乱, meaning approximately

That's a typical problem with classical Chinese-derive phrases. They are difficult to understand if you haven't seen them in print. It's the same problem for chengyus. Classical Chinese language is primarily a written language. Almost all words are single-character rather than double, which is more common in the spoken language (唯 vs. 唯一). The emphasis of classical Chinese is on compactness and rhyme. Both are easier with single-character words. Single-character words, however, are harder to distinguish when spoken.

[skylee]

Single-character words, however, are harder to distinguish when spoken.

Is this only true in Mandarin?

I think the discussion above is very interesting (I am neither a native Mandarin speaker nor a native English speaker).

i mean, you spend your days reading literature and newspapers, learning all sorts of obscure vocabulary, and you can't understand a simple thing like "can you give me a piece of paper".

Sometimes this happens to me too, and I have been using English since I was a child.

[songlei]

i think that the gap between written and spoken chinese constitutes one of the biggest problems for learning the language as a foreigner. strictly speaking, when a language is spoken, there exists nothing outside of the sounds you hear. these sounds are supposed to be combined in a way that provides significant context and meaning for one to "get the message". however, with chinese, i think something strange is happening. one taiwanese friend once told me that when she listens to spoken chinese (eg a news broadcast), she often visualizes the corresponding characters. but on another occasion, i asked her if she knew the original meaning of the chengyu 扑朔迷离, and she didn't. this particular chengyu means something like vague, or difficult to oversee, but originally it refers to distinguishing between male and female rabbits. the point is that on the one hand, she occasionally visualizes characters when listening, whereas on the other, she doesn't always analyze the true meaning of a chengyu or classical phrase, but just comprehends its modern use. so in short, it appears that in spoken chinese, somehow an extra step is taken. instead of simply converting speech into meaning, speech is occasionally converted into characters, and subsequently into meaning, while paradoxically, the real meaning of the characters is not always retrieved in this process. thus, i think this extra step of visualizing the corresponding characters is not the consequence of some profound psychological habit to view the world in terms of characters, but more a mechanism for compensating for the lack of sounds available in chinese speech. in other words, to compensate for the lack of syllables, occasionally, an extra thought process is required to distill the meaning from a spoken message, i.e. the process of visualizing the corresponding unique character in order to distinguish uranium from oil (you2 from you2).

now if we accept this rather crude hypothesis of mine, what would be its implications for training listening skills? i have recently been playing with the idea of separating the written and spoken worlds of chinese. the idea was that i would completely ignore characters when learning from colloquial sources (eg chinesepod upper intermediate lessons and radio talk shows). i would just memorize phrases and vocabulary based on sound, meaning and context alone through repeated listening. in addition, i would read books and memorize the vocabulary and characters though silent means such as the pleco srs and more reading. however, if it is indeed the case that effective listening in chinese requires establishing a connection not only with the meaning and context, but also with the particular characters that form less common words, it appears that such a separation between the aural and written worlds cannot be made. in other words, if you want to master chinese exclusively in the aural domain (eg ignoring the whole writing system) you can never succeed. that is, if we accept the idea that listening involves the extra step of visualizing not only meaning, but also the character that represents such meaning. therefore, listening depends on literacy. you can't understand advanced speech if you can't read books. i'm not sure if this is a correct position, after all, it's entire basis is founded on the account of one chinese friend of mine. but it does seem to point out something true and paradoxical about chinese. although the world of the spoken word and the world of the written word appear vastly different, much more so than in other languages, somehow, on another level, they seem to be intrinsically linked in a way that does not apply to languages with phonetic writing systems.

oh well, all this crazy stuff doesn't change the fact that there are still about 30,000 more unfamiliar expressions for me to chew through. better get started

[gato]

Songlei, capital letters are your friend.

[songlei]

Gato: Sorry if have offended your taste. It's indeed high time to drop this old bad habit.

[gato]

not taste but they do enhance readability just like punctuation marks which i find kind of ironic in a thead about comprehensibility of speech you know what i am saying

[creamyhorror]

I did enjoy your post, though, songlei.

Like your example of 扑朔迷离, I also don't pick apart the meaning of 莫名其妙 when I hear it - it's just a sequence of syllables that directly conveys a sense of bemusement and irritation. (Literally it means "[there's] no describing its strangeness", or more naturally, "there's just no explaining it".) That would be an example of direct aural->meaning conversion, versus the aural->characters->meaning route. I suspect the latter case occurs largely for phrases that are less familiar (to me) or constructed ad hoc: 无甚大碍 and 舍此别无捷径 might be examples. (无甚大碍 = 没什么大障碍； 舍此别无捷径 = 除了这样，没有别的(好)办法 afaict.)

I agree that you have to read books to understand advanced speech (which is what I wrote in my reply). Flood yourself with relevant vocabulary and structures and you'll start noticing it in speech.

[songlei]

Creamyhorror: You're absolutely right, and 莫名其妙 is a great example of something that most listeners would immediately comprehend without thinking of the way it is written. I suppose the task for any learner of Chinese is then to somehow find a way to establish this kind of direct sound-meaning connection with a much larger body of expressions. What I am wondering, however, is whether this is feasible considering the fact that Chinese speakers have such a vast pool of literary history to draw from. You can also put the problem this way: what would happen if characters were officially banned and replaced by pinyin? Would Chinese literature and news headlines as we know them today still be viable? My guess is that a lot of vocabulary and expressions would either be extended or dropped, and that writing in general would look a lot more like colloquial Chinese. Could this be an explanation for why audio books aren't popular in the Chinese-speaking world?

[renzhe]

Audio books are very popular in China.

[songlei]

Are they? I never saw them in book stores and there seem to be only a few available online. Do you happen to know some handy keywords for tracking them down on the web? I tried 有声小说 but I could only find a few titles of bad quality and distracting background music..

[creamyhorror]

You can also put the problem this way: what would happen if characters were officially banned and replaced by pinyin? Would Chinese literature and news headlines as we know them today still be viable? My guess is that a lot of vocabulary and expressions would either be extended or dropped, and that writing in general would look a lot more like colloquial Chinese.

That seems like a fair guess, since homophones would probably be significantly more trouble without characters, and constructed phrases relying on less common characters would be more risky to use. I guess that implies the centrality of characters in the language as we see it today.

As for unfamiliar expressions, I guess we just gotta keep on truckin', getting that vocabulary in, I guess!

[knickherboots]

songlei's analysis is very interesting, but I don't think that reaching a very high level of listening comprehension and spoken Chinese requires reading--any reading. What's the proof? Native Chinese I have spoken with who are basically illiterate, i.e., they can't read. Talking with them is the same as talking to someone who can read. In fact, if you're a native speaker of a language, there's probably not much correlation between the sophistication of someone's spoken language and their reading skills. Or, to put it in a less provocative way, the correlation probably varies quite a bit, with some non-readers mastering a larger vocabulary than some readers. The difference for non-natives learning Chinese is that they usually don't have an immersive, highly interactive aural environment, so they are in a sense forced to spend more time with written texts. On the other hand, it's clear that reading can improve aural skills. But, just like songlei's Taiwanese friend who "often visualizes the corresponding characters" when she listens to spoken Chinese, the visual aspect works as a cognitive prompt or hook when the meaning is unclear. That is also why the visualization of characters disappears as you become more familiar with vocabulary--their image is brain clutter that slows down the process of understanding spoken language. What's the relevance to improving aural skills? Not sure, but I think a good approach is to see characters as an aid, but not a basis, for mastering the spoken language.

[roddy]

Capital letters and paragraphs. It's only polite.

有声读物 is the usual phrase for audio books. Look also for 评书.