Historical linguistics and Chinese writing

[skylee]

holyman, the second poem you cited is THE greatest one for farewell according to some. Lovely.

I have absolutely no knowledge and very little interest in linguistics. But would someone please comment on the poems of 白居易 (Bai Juyi). He is one of my favourites and it is said that he also liked to break the rules.

By the way, the famous Tang poet 張九齡 (Zhang Jiuling) was Cantonese. And he was the 宰相 of the court. (This is quite irrelevant, sorry.)

[Guest Garzevro]

I think in Chinese, pretty girls please me (me gustan las muchachas bonitas) would be like saying 美女让我觉得....(whatever your adjective of choice is). The subject is the pretty girls(美女), they are acting on you, making you feel pleased. In Chinese you could also say 我喜欢美女, where the subject is (我)I, like Kulong said. There's a distinction, as Chinese has "to like," and a way of expressing the idea "pretty girls please me," (but in a grammatically different way than Spanish does, right? Or does 让 in the above sentence serve the same purpose as the Spanish reflexive? My spanish is also rusty).

Hi again. Well, what I wanted to say is that "gustar" has the same structure of "to please" in a syntactical way; but in a semantical way, it's closer to "to like". The meaning of "gustar" is "to like", but when you use it in Spanish, you have to use the syntactical rules of "to please". I mean, in Spanish, we use "to like" but in a form that is similar to Passive voice. "Las muchachas bonitas me gustan" (or "Me gustan las muchachas bonitas", in Spanish the order doesn't matter), can be translated as "Pretty girls are liked by me". We are using the exact meaning of "gustar" and the right Spanish structure. But, in English that doesn't sound well (does it?), and native English speakers would prefer to translate it as "I like pretty girls" (exact meaning, inexact structure) or "Pretty girls please me" (inexact meaning, exact structure).

Hope it helps. I promise not to take the theme of Spanish again (I know this is a Chinese Forum, not a Spanish Forum )

Roberto Garcia

[holyman]

holyman, the second poem you cited is THE greatest one for farewell according to some. Lovely.

actually i saw it written as a piece of calligraphy in a teochew restaurant when i was in singapore some years back. i was figuring how the 'xin' and 'ren' can rhyme in mandarin thruout the dinner session. then i thought of teochew(since i can speak teochew pretty well) and tried reciting it in teochew, then it goes perfectly well.

[nnt]

>> So assuming Wang Wei (王維) didn't make any mistake...

> It would have been a *mistake* then. The framework is that rigid?

Smith' date=' the framework isn't that rigid, as you can see,

A.

(仄)仄平平仄, 平平仄仄平

(平)平平仄仄, (仄)仄仄平平

Brackets imply that you can either use "平" or "仄", so there're some variations in different poems, but not for the second sentence. And in some sense, you can say, yes, the framework can be rigid like this that you can't change the second sentence. But it doesn't mean that Tang Poems can have this framework for 五言絕詩 (Wu Yan Jue Shi) only, some other frameworks include:

(just flipped the basic one vertically...)

B.

(平)平平仄仄, (仄)仄仄平平

(仄)仄平平仄, 平平仄仄平

And there're still some other variations, e.g.

(just change the first sentence of the basic framework)

C.

(仄)仄仄平平, 平平仄仄平

(平)平平仄仄, (仄)仄仄平平

I think there're still some other variations but it's too clumsy to list them all here. However, definitely the basic one (Type A) can only be like that, i.e. no other changes are allowed for the second sentence (平平仄仄平). I don't know who made this rule, but this was at least what the Tang people thought about the best structure of poems. Not many poets dared to change this framework, one prominent figure was, however, Li Bai (李白), the Shi Xian (詩仙, wizard of poems). He was famous for not following the rules of poems, just use the word as he liked, but first, he was 詩仙, and second, he was Li Bai, a drunk, a great philosopher, a great poet, a sucker, a what,,, as you can think of. It would be strange if he would follow all the rules laid down by other people.

But that wouldn't be Wang Wei.

>> a Dongbei guy told me with a sarcastic tone

> That's funny! Whether the poems were more like Cantonese or not, they were certainly nothing like today's Mandarin.

It's not that rare to see a guy like this, I've seen (and so many) mainland Chinese who thought Chinese means Mandarin CHinese and Mandarin Chinese is the only form of Chinese with "dignity".

> Do you think learning Tang Shi is good for language practice?

I can speak Mandarin very well, though with some Cantonese accent, but my topic is usually strictly related to daily life, political, or of entertainment etc. Whenever I wanted to recite some poems in Mandarin, I have to first translate them from Cantonese to Chinese characters, and think about the words in Mandarin... it's quite a hard job. And I have no ideas of how some old characters pronounce. e.g. 奔流到海不復回, the word "復" is pronounced as "fou" in Cantonese (instead of the modern "fuk" in Cantonese). Some other characters which I have no ideas of how to pronounce in Mandarin, usually some very old characters like 蒹葭蒼蒼, I would deduce that the pronunciation of "蒹葭" should be similar to "兼家" (as in Cantonese) instead of "兼假", but you may never know it unless you check them up from the dictionary. It's always good to have a book with all the pinyin written, it's always a hassle to check up the dictionary.

So what's the point of reciting some poems in Mandarin? Haha, just to SHOW OFF~`. You know I was always very much annoyed by people who thought I couldn't speak perfect Mandarin so it also meant that my Chinese was bad. They forgot most of the comtemporary great writers couldn't speak good Mandarin too, including (what they thought were great) Mao Zedong.

The only way to ensure them you can speak good "Chinese" (only Mandarin Chinese) is to recite some old poems in front of them. When I was in Lhasa I met a Beijing lady who tried to "challenge" me in front of a Korean student of Chinese language (oh why did she want to challenge me of my Chinese level?), she asked me some poems and asked if I knew the next sentence or not, of course I knew, then I asked her some other poems (from the Dreams of Red Chamber), she knew nothing and just said, "oh, wo cai bu kan zhe zhong shu!" (我才不看這種書!)

So she lost face.

While this may seem very childish (me and her), this is a way to prove that Hong Kong guy can know Chinese well... TOO! Haha. [/quote']

My little contribution to this topic.

A. Concerning the framework for 五言絕詩, it is in fact derived from one of the 4 frameworks for the 5 characters/8 lines (仄 rule , 平 rhyme ):

仄仄仄平平

平平仄仄平

平平平仄仄

仄仄仄平平

仄仄平平仄

平平仄仄平

平平平仄仄

仄仄仄平平

As you see, Case A from pazu is obtained by taking the last four lines, case B by taking lines 3 to 6, case C by taking lines 1-2 and 7-8. Another case is to take the first four lines.

Another rule is: the 1st and 3rd characters do not have to follow the rules (not just the first character)

( There are 2 another frameworks for the

5 characters/8 lines Tang poems )

B. For those who are interested, here is the transcription using Hán Việt pronunciation (Vietnamese pronunciation of Chinese characters

紅(hồng)豆(đậu)生(sinh)南(nam)國(quốc),

春(xuân)來(lai)發(phát)幾(kỷ)枝(chi)。

願(nguyện)君(quân)多(đa)採(thái)擷(hiệt),

此(thử)物(vật)最(tối)相(tương)思(tư)。

As in cantonese, 發(phát) in Hán Việt is also 仄. But as it is the 3rd character , if you change for a 平 character, it would sound as well.

The Hán Việt pronunciation is not Vietnamese language, it is the pronuciation of Chinese characters by Vietnamese people. It has been the official written language in Vietnam until the early 20th century.

<