Strategies for learning: Clustering / Breaking (Chinese)

It is true, as pointed out by reader Valerio, that the Chinese script offers no help visually, with no indications of where words are broken up or clustered.

    A consolation for the modern-day learner / reader of Chinese is that he's not having to read Chinese presented the traditional way -- with no punctuation marks, leaving one to rely on, e.g., markers like sentence-final particles (working like full stops).

     Punctuation marks are a borrowing from the Western practice, formally introduced and standardised during the New Culture Movement (which was closely tied to the 1919 May Fourth Movement).

    One finds, down the ages, footnotes by commentators offering their various and varying interpretations of a chunk of classical Chinese text, e.g., 

* Commentator A in Year X would say the text should be broken up at a certain point and parsed as Version.1, 

* Commentator B in Year Y (could be a few hundred years on) would say the same text should be broken up at a different point and parsed as Version 2, 

and so on.  Sometimes the footnotes are longer than the source text.  Luckily, this doesn't happen all the time...

    There is a famous cluster that's often used to illustrate how many variant interpretations there can be to a piece of text with no punctuation.  I shall share it in a separate blog as it's longish.  

    I used to work with someone (John B. at Sino-British Trade Council / SBTC) who'd done his degree in Chinese at Cambridge in the early 70s.  Back then, the Oxbridge degree courses in Chinese only taught classical Chinese.  Like at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London), there was an exam at the end of Year One.  If you passed that exam, you were deemed good enough to survive the rigours of the next three years, with no exam until the Final Year.

    The passage for John's Year One exam was the proper style for a classical Chinese text, with no punctuation at all.  The problem, he said, was that it was presented in a square, i.e., with as many characters down as there were across.

    He didn't know if it was to be read:

(i) the traditional way (vertically down, starting with the extreme right hand line, then across the page, vertical line by vertical line);

or 

(ii) the modern way (horizontally, moving from left to right, then down the page, horizontal line by horizontal line, just like a text in the English script).

    He said, "After the exam, I found out that I'd read it the wrong direction -- but I passed anyway!"

    Even with gaps provided between English words, one still needs a certain level of basic knowledge of where to break or cluster within a word for the sense to emerge or to help the learner remember.  An English-equivalent example (cited in blog https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2026/05/strategies-for-learning-clustering.html) is the word "disappear", where one does need to know how the language behaves so that one doesn't end up breaking it up into "disap" and "pear", on the basis that one knows "pear" does exist as a word.

    So, if you look at it like that, Chinese is not unique (or impossible) after all.  It's just a matter of having a basic set of tools to start with, then building up further strategies based on that knowledge -- and gaining confidence in the process (if not fun as well by treating it as a game).

    I have three Advanced Level private students who've been with me now for 26 years (not continuously) for one of them, and 18 years (not continuously) for the other two.  Over their years with me, they've been drilled so much by my teaching of strategies that they're able to cope with unseen text (no time for prepping beforehand) by applying the Guessology (my coinage) skills I teach them, and arriving at the right analysis a lot of the time.

Strategies for learning: Clustering / Breaking (English)

 

This series is prompted by reader Valerio's comment on https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2026/04/chinese-is-learner-friendly-language-in.html about what a challenge the Chinese script presents to the learner, with no gaps between the characters -- what I call breaking up and clustering.

    I've raised some English-equivalent examples of this in the blog covering German (https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2026/05/strategies-for-learning-clustering.html), so what's here are further instances of how one does need some basic knowledge of how the language works.

    I wish I'd been directed more at school to look at English and Mandarin in this way, which would've made it much more illuminating, not to mention fun.  Knowledge of how a language works, to a certain extent, is very useful, something not every learner is taught, from what I've seen (mainly in students who'd done their Beginner level elsewhere before coming to me, either privately or my evening programme classes when I was teaching them).

    Further to the Jonathan Smith vs Jon Athansmith example in the blog on German, here's something to illustrate how it could be done.

    There was a phone company advert on TV in the 80s featuring a grandma talking to her grandson on the phone, asking about his exam results.  He was not particularly pleased, saying he'd only passed one subject: Sociology.  The grandma said proudly, something like, "He's got a pass in an ology and he's not happy."

    That was clever, I thought as a language teacher, guiding the learner of English to look at the language from the angle of patterns in the language, something I use a lot in my teaching of both Mandarin and English.  Some examples:

* It would help the learner enormously in delineating the reference if s/he knew that words that end in ology denote "the study of", e.g., zoology, biology, psychology, sociology.

* Like -ology words, those ending in -ment, -tion, -ness, e.g., are abstract (development, contentment, entertainment; irritation, agitation, imagination; happiness, weariness, dizziness).

    Once you start applying these principles and learning the vocabulary in groups of related words, the burden will be lightened.  You can even begin playing the game of looking out for the next -ology / -ment / -tion / -ness words, to see if the general rule applies, thus making the learning more fun than sheer memorising without seeing some kind of pattern to help identify future unknowns that crop up.

    Remember:  rules are never 100%, just use them to your advantage, and forget about the irregulars for now.

Cultural sense of humour (Eastern Europe)

In the mainland Chinese drama series that I'm currently watching on YouTube, the woman reads bedtime stories to her six-year-old son.  There's one about a mole, which turns out to be a famous Czech cartoon made in 1957 (I discovered by googling it).

    This reminds me of an Eastern European whacky cartoon I saw on telly in the 1980s (when I had a TV) about a banquet.

    The whole cartoon leading up to the punch-line scene enacts the preparation for the banquet, with the staff setting out the long table in an opulent setting, then the guests (at least 20) arriving in chauffeured limousines, all dressed to the nines, one after another.  After the guests sit down, the waiting staff, who are all in formal gear, serve up the food in cloches. 

    The punch-line scene:  the cloches are removed to reveal what's underneath -- lobsters, suckling pig, whole roast chicken, etc., who then leap up and eat the guests.

    The cartoon then starts all over again with the beginning -- the prepping of the food, the laying of the table, the guests arriving in limousines, leaving us to know what is going to happen...

    Talk about a perverse sense of humour, hahaha.  

    The only one that I can find whose description seems to match it is Zofia Oraczewska's “The Banquet / Bankiet” (1976), but what I've found (as a rubbish researcher) does not tell me what happens at the end.

Diminishing returns (London)

(From googling)  Quote Diminishing returns is an economic principle stating that after a certain point, adding more of a single production input (like labor or capital) while keeping others constant leads to smaller incremental increases in output. Essentially, it is a point where extra effort or investment yields progressively smaller results. Unquote

    Valerio's comment on my "Marking homework" blog (https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2017/04/marking-homework-london.html):

Quote

... I must disagree with the main assumption: that if somebody turns in perfect homework, then they are not learning anything new. If someone did not know how to write, then they attend your class, and then turn in perfectly written sentences as homework, I would conclude that they learned something new perfectly well from your class.

Unquote

My response:  This comment of yours is good massage for my ego, as it implies (if not actually says so in so many words) that I'm able to mould students who come in at zero-Chinese level (your "did not know how to write") into students who can "turn in perfectly written sentences as homework".  Yes, looked at from that angle (haha, couldn't resist a maths word play for a maths professor), it does make me look like a miracle worker... 

    However, the only students who joined my evening programme classes at zero-Chinese level were Grade 1 (Beginner) students.  (As the years went by, there were fewer and fewer of such students because more and more of them would've dipped into a bit of Chinese before they came to do the lessons, but yes, those wouldn't have done any written Chinese, it's true, mostly just basic Chinese on the romanisation / pinyin-spelling system.)

    Grade 1 (Beginner) students on the evening programme would've done about 150 characters (I think) by the end of the academic year (approx. 70 tuition hours), if my memory is not wrong -- I was on that programme 1985–2011, so details are starting to fade a bit in colour...

    A total of 150 characters is not a huge burden really at the end of a school year.  For homework, they had time to think / draft (unlike in a timed exam), so perfectly delivered homework (even a test paper) is not that difficult to achieve.

    This in itself turned out to be a problem, though, for higher grades.  As the workload got heavier (more characters, more vocab, more complex grammar), their grades would slide downwards as they climbed higher on the learning ladder.  

    I'd get students saying to me, "I got a distinction for Grade 1 -- a mark of 72 or 75, but for Grade 2, I got a B grade [a mark in the 60–69 range]; and a low B or a C grade for Grade 3.  I'm getting worse and worse."

    I had to tell them that it's the nature of the beast, especially since: 

(i) they were learning the language in a country where it was not used a lot outside the classroom (no internet in those days), unless they specifically joined Chinese-speaking groups (who wouldn't have covered the written script anyway); 

(ii) being evening programme students, they had full-time jobs and probably even full-time family commitments, without too much spare time to devote to the constant revision that the Chinese language demands of them.

(London)

Strategies for learning: Clustering / Breaking (German)

Devising strategies for learning is not new to anyone, so this series is not trying to re-invent the wheel, just adding my own perspective and experience to it.  My perspective as in how I learn a language as a student, and how I teach my students of Mandarin and English.  My experience as in what works for me and them.

    Reader Valerio posted a comment on https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2026/04/chinese-is-learner-friendly-language-in.html about what a challenge the Chinese script presents to the learner, with no gaps between the characters -- what I call breaking up and clustering.

    An English-equivalent example I use in my teaching for demonstrating to students how breaking up or clustering wrongly in Chinese might confuse the listener, when they read something aloud and pause in the wrong places, is rendering Jonathan Smith as Jon Athansmith.  Of course, one will need to know that there's no such English surname as Athansmith, otherwise Jon Athansmith will work as well, so it comes down to some form of pragmatics -- with other factors that are beyond the literal words playing a role too.

    The most striking impression of German text is how long a word can be:  what is one to make of it, e.g., is there a pause somewhere for breath and, if so, where; where to break / cluster, if at all.

    Take "kindergarten" for example, although it is not that long (by the standards of some German words).  

Is it: 

    (i) "kin der gar ten" (four different single-syllable words with four individual meanings), 

or is it: 

    (ii) "kin-der-gar ten" (a three-syllable word, then a single-syllable word), 

or is it: 

    (iii) "kin der-gar-ten" (a single-syllable word, then a three-syllable word), 

etc?  

    I only knew it as a six-year-old because I went to one but not what it meant.  At that time, in Singapore, we weren't told the provenance; we just learned words by rote -- Chinese or English or Malay (presumably Tamil, too).  Later, when I'd learned more English words, I'd even thought it might've been a mis-spelling and should've been kinter garden, whatever "kinter" was supposed to mean.

    Most Brits would know that it's a German word, and that kinder means "child" and garten means "garden".  That would be the same kind of background knowledge expected of a Chinese person / learner of Chinese when looking at a sentence or paragraph of Chinese characters:  where to break, where to cluster.

    Like the Jonathan Smith vs Jon Athansmith example for a certain level of basic background knowledge of how the language works, the person reading the English word "disappear" would not break it up as "disap" and "pear", because s/he would've been taught the basics (e.g., adding prefix dis- to words like "appear", even though "pear" does exist as a word).

    A lecturer in the Linguistics Department of SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) showed me a trick for decoding German words when I told her they were so dauntingly long.  Of course this doesn't apply right across the board, it's only to illustrate one solution.  She said a lot of long German words are a few concepts glued together (like the kindergarten example, which is actually two words put together), so one way to unravel them is to look for clues like suffixes, e.g., the strasse at the end of a long string of letters is just a generic / category word to mark the name of a street.

    My English-equivalent example would be Oxford Street being presented, German style, as one word "Oxfordstreet", or Tottenham Court Road as one word "Tottenhamcourtroad".

    One would have to know the basics:  

* if it was presented as Oxfordstreet for some reason, that "Oxford" is one word and "street" is the category word; 

* Oxford is one word, not two (Ox and Ford);

* if it was presented as Tottenhamcourtroad for some reason, that "court" and "road" are two standalone words;

* Tottenham is one word, not three (Tot and Ten and Ham);

* Cambridge is one word, not two (Cam and Bridge).

    Once you look at it like that, it isn't so unfathomable after all -- up to a point.

(From googling)

Quote

Pragmatics in linguistics is the study of how context influences the interpretation of meaning, focusing on what speakers imply rather than just the literal words spoken. It bridges the gap between sentence structure (semantics) and situational, social, and intentional context, allowing listeners to understand intended meaning behind indirect language, tone, and shared assumptions.

Unquote

"Huh?!?" conversations: 04 (UK)

 

I met a Vietnamese-born Chinese woman on a Longevitology energy adjustment course in 2023, and found that she had an allotment in Woodford in east London (near Stratford, the site of the 2012 London Summer Olympics), so I started to help out there, just doing the weeding and watering.  I say to people, "I'm only good enough to be the skivvy, not the chef."

    For those who might not know what an allotment or a skivvy is:

(From googling)

Quote

allotment: (British English) a small area of land in a town that a person can rent in order to grow fruit and vegetables on it.

skivvy: (British English, informal) a servant, in the past usually female, who does all the dirty or boring jobs in a house.

Unquote

    The Woodford allotment site is huge, with 176 plots. (Standard size of plots: 5 rods / 125 square metres, or 10 rods / 250 square metres).

    Since then, I've met two more lots of tenants (a Portuguese / Brazilian couple in 2023; and Donald, a Jamaican-born chap last summer) whose plots I help out on, on a regular basis.

    Gardening is one of my Distraction Therapy tools (in addition to teaching and healing). It gets me out of the house and into the fresh air, so it's good exercise. When I'm watering the plants and weeding, I'm totally focused on the tasks to be done, which stops me from thinking about horrible things and horrible people. Perfect distraction for an ostrich.

    Next to Donald's plot is a Bangladeshi couple, with whom I've crossed paths on and off since summer last year.

    With the weather getting warmer and the growing season having started, I've been going more often, arranging with Donald to stagger our presence, so that he won't have to go that often. This means that I'm practically always there on my own.

    The Bangladeshi woman told me last week that she had pain in her hands, making it difficult for her to do much on the plot, so I offered to give her a massage on site. We then arranged for me to go to her house to work on her bad back, legs and knees.

    After the massage yesterday, the husband said to me, referring to Donald, "The man in the plot next to mine: do you know him?"

    I guess it's not that usual for an Oriental woman to team up with a dark-skinned man, especially on a platonic basis -- the Oriental/White combination is more common. Or at least in this particular Bangladeshi man's experience anyway, being from a culture where it doesn't happen (much, if at all), and being Muslim to boot.

    There's also always the possibility of his not expressing his meaning properly in English (even though he's been here for over 30 years, if not longer). He might've meant, "Are you friends?"

    Given my perverse sense of humour, I was very tempted to say, "No, I just have the habit of sneaking into people's plots when they're not there, pulling up their weeds and watering their plants."

(London, 2026)

Learner-friendly language in some ways: 03 (Measure words / Classifiers)

The Chinese terms for "collective nouns" are "measure words (mw) / classifiers".

    The most avid reader / supporter of my blogs, old friend Valerio, has inspired this blog by asking how the Chinese language compares with the English on this front.  He has posted up a clever selection of English examples to show how difficult the English language can be for the learner:

Quote 

...another bewildering aspect of English is the large number and variety of collective names for animals:
a murder of crows, a parliament of owls, a business of ferrets, a pandemonium of parrots, an unkindness of ravens...
How does Chinese compare in this respect?

Unquote

  The first major difference is that Chinese uses a measure word for everything, singular or plural, whilst English doesn't (e.g., can say "a dog" / "a table", but not "a vinegar" / "a milk").

(from googling) 

Quote 

There is no exact, official number of collective nouns in the English language, as they are constantly evolving. While there are roughly 200 commonly used collective nouns, there are hundreds, potentially thousands, of archaic, highly specialized, or whimsical terms, with many stemming from 15th-century "terms of venery" for animals and birds.

There are over 200 measure words (classifiers) in Mandarin Chinese, but only about 30–50 are commonly used in daily conversation. While comprehensive dictionaries may list up to 187 or more, roughly 24 core measure words handle most usage, with the general-purpose classifier 个 (gè) accounting for over 90% of daily interactions. 

Unquote

    With so many measure words, it can feel overwhelming when it comes to using them.    

    I teach a lot of strategies to my Mandarin students, to help them feel less at sea with the language.  One of the strategies is called Onion Rings (my coinage):  to deal with the language on different levels, starting with the outermost ring which is the most generalised-rule one.

    For measure words, the near-universal one is 

个 (simplified script) or 個 (traditional script) 

ge 

"unit/item of"  

    The word order is:  number mw noun

e.g., 一个人 / 一個人 / yī ge rén / "one mw person"

    个 (/ 個 / ge) is used with whatever the number is that is being counted:  one person (一个人 / 一個人 / yī ge rén), or ten persons (十个人 / 十個人 / shí ge rén).

    The detailed breakdown for when to use 个 (/ 個 / ge) is a bit less simplistic.  Generally (just the tip of the iceberg):

YES for humans (一个人 / yī ge rén / a person; 一个孩子 / yī ge háizi / a child); 

YES for geographical words (e.g., country / 一个国家 / yi ge guójiā; place / 一个地方 / yī ge dìfāng);

NO for roads, streets, etc; 

NO for creatures (animals, birds, sea creatures);

NO for most inanimate objects (e.g., vehicles; tables, chairs; clothes [trousers, dresses, skirts, shirts] and shoes); 

but YES for some inanimate objects (e.g., door / 一个门 / yī ge mén; computer / 一个电脑 / yī ge diànnǎo; cooking pot / 一个锅 / yī ge guō)

etc.

    As you can see, it's a bit complicated, because it isn't clear / logical why, given that "个 / 個 / ge" only means "an item of / a unit of", it should not apply to everything if one doesn't know their precise measure word.

    I teach my students that should they be in doubt which measure word to use (either had never learned it, or can't remember although they had been taught), to always use 个 rather than leave that space unfilled, even if it's the wrong measure word for that noun.  The mw 个 (/ 個 / ge) doesn't account for any shape (which a lot of measure words do), so it works well enough, even though it doesn't apply to animals, for example.

    The English sort-of-equivalent I use is: for the time 8.05, the "0" has to be sounded, can't say "eight five" as the listener will have trouble processing "eight five", so even if you were to say "eight nought five" instead of "eight o / zero five", it might get understood more easily than simply "eight five".    

    The other umbrella measure word is 些 xiē / "some / several / a few / a number of", used for referring to the said noun as a cluster unspecified in number, e.g., 一些人 / yī xiē rén / "several mw people".  This works even better (but only for plural reference), as it's applicable to humans, animals, inanimate objects, abstract words (e.g., suggestion, idea, concept, policy).  Any word, any shape or form.

One form of self-therapy: 01 (Rinsing out the poison)

(from googling)

Quote

Self-therapy is the practice of applying psychological techniques—such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) methods—to oneself to manage mental health, emotions, and behaviors without a professional therapist. It is a proactive, self-guided approach to building emotional resilience, increasing self-awareness, and resolving personal challenges, often viewed as an advanced form of self-care.

Self-therapy involves utilizing tools and strategies to address mild to moderate issues independently. Common examples include:

Cognitive Restructuring: Identifying and challenging negative thought patterns or cognitive distortions to change emotional responses.

Journaling/Thought Records: Writing down feelings and behaviors to track triggers and patterns.

Mindfulness and Meditation: Practicing presence and accepting emotions without judgment to reduce stress.

Self-Help Resources: Using structured books, online courses, or apps to learn new coping skills.

Exposure Exercises: Gradually facing fears in a controlled, self-directed manner.

Unquote

Talking to a friend (not for the first time) about our respective fraught relationships with our mothers has made me recall a story told back in the 90s by someone about her and her siblings' relationship with their mother, and one of the ways they diluted the impact over the years.

    I'm writing this blog only as a layperson, of course, just re-telling something I've heard from someone about a technique that had worked for her and her siblings. Nowhere near recommending psychological techniques like CBT, as I'm totally unqualified.

    Let's call the person Lee Meilan.

Start of her story (in my words from what she'd told me):

    There are six of us children.  If the servant came to summon any of us to our mother's room, we'd first go and fetch the cane, without even knowing what she wanted to see us about.  Arriving at her door, we'd go down on our knees and shuffle over to her (seated in her armchair), with the cane raised above our head in both hands.  Such was our relationship with our mother.

    We never found out why she treated us like this.  Perhaps she was frustrated with her position:  being the second wife, she had no power in the household, so she took it out on us.

    My siblings have all had some form of therapy -- that is how deeply affected by our earlier days we had been.

    We'd have an annual get-together, taking turns to go to the country of whichever one of us was living in.  Our mother would come along.  We'd wait until she'd gone to bed, then gather in one room and talk about our treatment at the hands of our mother, crying as we recalled the trauma.

    Each year, we'd go through the same routine, but the feelings evoked would change with the repetitive recollection.  The same stories that had made us cry in the earlier tellings would start to make us laugh in later accounts, e.g., "Do you remember you got caned so hard on one occasion you couldn't sit down for days?" would make us cry for a few years, reducing in the emotional intensity with each year, then switch to making us laugh about it.

    After we'd got round to being able to laugh about those stories, we then invited our mother to those sessions, and were actually able to address her directly, "Do you remember you caned me so hard on one occasion I couldn't sit down for days?" -- and laugh.

End of her story (in my words)

    I can offer an explanation (as a layperson) for Lee Meilan's mother harbouring so much anger towards her children.

    Someone (let's call her Wang Donglian) told me that her mother got married off to her father during the Japanese Occupation because the grandparents were worried about her being raped by the Japanese soldiers.  They thought that the Japanese soldiers might think twice if she had a husband to protect her.  That husband turned out to be an irresponsible husband, as well as an irresponsible father to their children.

    Wang Donglian's mother never forgave her own parents for ruining her life, and took it out on her children because they bore the husband's surname.  The mother, surnamed Zhuang, once said (when they tried to protect her financial interests against one of her predatory brothers), "This is a Zhuang family matter, nothing to do with you Wang family."

    Wang Donglian said, "So, my own mother was drawing a clear line between us and her side of the family, even though half of our genes are from her.  Rejection can't get any stronger."

    Maybe Lee Meilan's mother felt the same way towards her children:  they reminded her of their father / her husband, who had perhaps not treated her well as a second wife, so she took out her frustrations on the children.

PS:  I've just realised that not all readers would know about the traditional Chinese practice of a man taking on more than one wife.  The main reason was usually that the first wife was unable to bear him any male children (for carrying on the family name/line), but it didn't always have to be this reason -- the man could just fancy a change of diet.  The first wife would retain all the power of running the household, and any children produced by the second (or even third) wife would also defer to her as if they were her children.  This would often make the second wife feel helpless, authority-wise.

Learner-friendly language in some ways: 02 (Suffixes)

The Chinese language also uses suffixes a lot, much more than the English language.

    This is very helpful to the learner for grasping a wider range of vocabulary with a much smaller set of tools, and it's consistent* as well, unlike in English.  (*Remember, no rule is ever 100%, so there's bound to be the irregulars popping up somewhere.)

    

boar (/ stag), sow, piglet; pork

公猪，母猪，小猪；猪肉

(category: 猪 zhū / pig; 

prefixes: 公 gōng / male; 母 mǔ / female; 小 xiǎo / little; 

suffix: 肉 ròu / meat)

bull, cow, calf; beef

公牛，母牛，小牛；牛肉

(category: 牛 niú / cattle)

sheep, ewe, lamb; mutton

公羊，母羊，小羊；羊肉

(category: 羊 yáng / caprid, sheep or goat)

(*I was told, by an Englishman some five decades ago, that sheep meat in Britain is called / sold as "lamb" (rather than "mutton" which is how it is called in S.E.Asia), because "mutton" gives the impression of the meat being from the older animal, therefore a bit tough.) 

    The English list doesn't give the reader any inkling at all what the four items are, not even that they're in the same category.  They could be four different-category animals thrown together into a list.

    The Chinese list tells the reader immediately that the first one is the male version of the animal, the second the female, the third the young, and the fourth the meat of that animal.  (Of course, the reader will need a certain level of basic knowledge about the language, e.g., what 猪, 公, 母, 小 and 肉 mean individually.)

    Another example of a suffix in Chinese helpfully enlightening the reader:  a common British pub snack is called pork scratchings.  It does at least tell the reader it's related to pig, but in what way?  The Chinese name for pork scratchings (猪皮 zhū pí / "pig skin") would make it immediately clear that it's the skin.  (It is true that 猪皮 doesn't tell you how it's cooked / presented, e.g., deep-fried or baked, in strips or slices, flavoured with just salt or a sauce, etc, but then neither does "pork scratchings" in English.)

    Ditto "pig's trotters" in English.  A group of Hong Kong incomers I now teach English conversation to as a volunteer for a community centre didn't understand "pig's trotters" when I brought it up in class.  The Chinese for pig's trotters is 

猪蹄 zhū tí / "pig hoof" 

or 

猪手 zhū shǒu / "pig hand" for the front 

and 

猪脚 zhū jiǎo / "pig foot" for the back, 

which again is very clear.  

    The English word "trotter" is not used much in everyday life, so it is a bit rare and very narrow in usage, whereas 手 shǒu / hand and 脚 jiǎo / foot are used all the time for human hand and foot.  Therefore, the learning burden is not so great.

(* 猪手 is the front one and has more meat; 猪脚 is the back one and has more bone.  This will decide the use / cooking style: the rear one is used more for flavouring soups.)

Learner-friendly language in some ways: 01 (Prefixes)

I'm simplifying the issue here, of course, being selective with the examples I pluck out of such a dense maze, just to make Chinese less daunting to learn.

    There are strategies and tricks which can help make it not only less of a struggle but actually fun.  Yes, fun -- as those students who have been with me long enough and are, therefore, well drilled on how the language behaves (from the way I teach them to look at it) have proven by using them to good effect.

       Animals in English have different names for the male and female versions, and for their young, so that it's not obvious most of the time that they are related.

1. boar (/ stag), sow, piglet
2. bull, cow, calf
3. tom (/ gib), queen (/ molly), kitten
4. cob, pen, cygnet
5. dog, bitch, puppy
6. drake, duck (/ hen), duckling
7. stallion (/ gelding), mare (/ filly), colt
8. rooster, hen, chick

(NB:  8 is a lucky number for the Chinese, hence a list of 8.)

    As you can see from the above list (admittedly specially selected for my argument), only "duckling" is obviously related to the female parent "duck" (but not obvious if you're only given the male parent "drake").  Another grouse (haha, word play!) is that a female duck is also called a "hen", which is terribly confusing as it overlaps with "female chicken"; and a male pig is also called a "stag", which is more commonly understood as a male deer.

    In the Chinese language, one word is used for that particular category as a whole, e.g., dog, which is 狗 gǒu.  To distinguish male dog from female dog and from their young, prefixes are added: 

• 公 gōng (also = "grandfather" and "public")
• 母 mǔ (also = "mother")
• 小 xiǎo / small

    You can see from the list below how easy the Chinese versions are for the learner.

    Instead of three different, seemingly totally unrelated names in English (e.g., boar (/stag), sow, piglet), the Chinese equivalents instantly show up their connection with each other: all in the same category/family (pig here); whether male or female or child.

• 猪 zhū / pig (the category)
• 公猪 gōng zhū / male pig
• 母猪 mǔ zhū / female pig
• 小猪 xiǎo zhū / little pig

And for "bull, cow, calf", the Chinese equivalents are:

• 牛 niú / cattle (the category)
• 公牛 gōng niú
• 母牛 mǔ niú
• 小牛 xiǎo niú

    For passive recognition, the learner can see, at one quick glance, that all three are in the same family / group (which is not obvious at all in the English version).

    For active production, it's also easier for the learner as s/he only has to remember the one overall name for the group (e.g., 牛 niú for cattle, which can be used elsewhere in other combinations -- more in another blog), plus the three prefixes.  This applies for all the animals across the board -- without doing an in-depth sampling, I'd say 99.9% of the time (rules, as I keep telling my students, are never 100% rules).

    It's very simply "1 + 3".  (This summary sentence is specially for Valerio the maths professor who likes to, and does, think in numbers and formulas/formulae, which is also the way I teach my students for language, seeing patterns wherever possible.)

    So, the score is 1 : 0 (Chinese : English) for being learner-friendly.  Not so hard after all, right?

PS:  It is true that English has prefixes that helpfully guide the reader in the right direction as well, but that will have to be addressed in another blog for various reasons (not the focus here -- don't want to distract the reader from the point I'm trying to make; will make this blog too long).

Learner-friendly language in some ways: 00 (An introduction)

(This is my simplistic summary, not a serious pedagogic thesis.)

The Chinese language has a fearsome reputation in general, with so many seemingly insurmountable hurdles in the way of the learner who is brave enough to venture into its realm.

    The script is unique (the overlaps with Korean [pre-1970s] and Japanese [post 4th/5th centuries AD] are borrowings by those languages).  A lot of European languages share the same alphabet, which generally makes it easier for people from one European country to learn the language of another European country.

    The sounds:  Chinese is a tonal language, which most non-Chinese people have trouble managing.  (I'm only thinking of Mandarin which has four main basic tones [vs, say, Cantonese which has six], and standard readings [not tone changes when uttered in combination].)

    The grammar is not unique (in some ways, it's similar to German and Japanese, e.g., with the main verb coming at the end of the sentence -- my simplistic summary from my own limited knowledge), but it does vary quite a bit from English, the language that has been the global language.

    Now for the good news before you decide to give up on the language altogether:  there are elements to the language that make life much easier for the learner of Chinese (than for the learner of English).

Food wastage

An English woman said she found it strange that a hotel in Singapore had put up a sign saying buffet diners would have to pay for uneaten food on their plates.

    My reply was:

    "Why should it be odd when Singapore has a reputation for being strict?  

    "Buffet-style dining means being able to go back for further helpings, so why take more food than necessary?  It’s just bad social sense.

    "Wasting food is a terrible practice, especially since there are so many people going hungry throughout the world.  Shockingly, too many people don’t bat an eyelid when it comes to wasting food (or anything for that matter), even when they have to pay for it themselves, but especially when it's all one price anyway.  

    "I’ve often thought such people should be sent off to places where there’s a shortage (food, daily needs), for them to experience at first hand what it’s like to live in such conditions.  A bit like making motorists go and be cyclists for a while, to experience at first hand for themselves how hairy some motorists make it for cyclists on the road.

    "For buffet, customers pay a fixed sum of money however little or much they eat (or leave uneaten), but the caterers pay for the whole lot (eaten or binned).  I totally applaud the hotel for taking that stand."

Eco practices: 02 (Energy usage)

"Eco" here could be "ecological" and/or "economical".

"Energy" here could be gas or electricity or effort.

The Chinese style of cooking does not entail using an oven in general, especially in warmer, southern regions.

    In a nutshell, the historical reason for stir-frying being adopted is the shortage of fuel (firewood) in the earliest days.

    For those who are not that familiar with stir-frying, these are the main features:

    1. Cut up the food (meat and/or veg) into small pieces, so that the cooking doesn't require a lot of time (therefore fuel).

    2. The cooking utensil is ergonomically shaped for spreading the heat most effectively without using a lot of fuel (/ firewood) -- enter the wok.

    3. Heat up the wok really hot, throw in a bit of oil which will heat up in no time, throw the ingredients in and stir around for the heat to reach all bits, sprinkle some water onto this to soften the ingredients, add the sauces (soya sauce; bean paste; whatever).

    Of course, there's more to it than the three points above, but this blog is not about stir-frying, so I won't devote any more space to it.  (I'm also not good enough at cooking to do stir-frying justice in a blog -- only if it's in a tongue-in-cheek spirit...)

    When I became interested in Western baking at the age of 11, I had to organise my baking sessions so that the gas used for heating up this big box called an oven would be ergonomically utilised.  (My mother was already supporting a big family single-handedly.)  I had to make sure all the racks of the oven were loaded -- either bake at least two cakes or a batch of cookies as well.

    Long before even the energy price hikes triggered by the Ukraine War and now the recent developments in the Middle East, I was already adopting eco practices in my cooking routine and other aspects of living.  Here are some of them, in case you might be able to benefit from them (or the principles behind them).

    1. For heating:

I lived for 18 years in Belfiore Lodge (in Highbury, near the old Arsenal football stadium).  It looked like it'd come out of a Dracula film set but was an actual old Victorian house converted in the 1960s to four one-bed flats in the main house, with a wing of the same added at the same time.  No central heating.

My flat was laid out in a straight line:  living room at one end, bedroom at the other, with the kitchen in the middle.  Throughout the winter, unless it was a mild winter, I'd leave my oven on at the lowest level, which would take the chill out of the whole flat.  I'd also place a metal teapot inside for free hot water for my tea / coffee, as well as a pot of stew simmering away, with variations as the week wore on.

    2. For cooking: 

(i)  Go for stir-frying as much as possible to minimise cooking time (and therefore also fuel).  Cut up the food small, use a wok as well as a lid for keeping most of the heat in.  Switch off the gas x minutes earlier to let the residual heat do the rest of the cooking.  The x would have to be worked out by experience:  what kind of (and what size) meat or veg.  If you're fussy about getting the texture of your food exactly right (e.g., crunchy for stir-frying), this might not be the best practice.  I'm not a good cook, nor am I fussy about my food, so it suits me well enough.  As a low income earner, I'm happy to change my diet to suit my pocket.

(ii) I love Western-style thick soups.  They're an entire meal on their own.  The electric soup maker I have is set to 19 minutes for the whole process:  you just need to specify what you want it to do (smooth or chunky, e.g. -- the blending comes part way through, not at the end).  I've since discovered that I don't need 19 minutes because I cut up my veg very small, so now I switch it off after just 9 or 10 minutes.  It's very smooth even with only half the cooking time specified by the makers.  I shall try switching it off even earlier next time, and let the residual heat do the rest of the cooking.  Admittedly, if you eat this soup (about 4 portions for me) over different sittings, you'll still need energy to heat it up, but only enough to heat it up, not to cook it.  Soups (as well as stews and curries) improve when left overnight, so if you don't finish off the whole batch on the first day, you will have the bonus of subsequent helpings tasting better as well.

    If you want to interpret the "eco" in the title as "economical, you can make a big batch of a base recipe, especially if you get the ingredients cheap for some reason (the veg seller trying to get rid of them because of the summer heat, or closing for a long weekend), pot them up, freeze them, and eat them in instalments with varying additions.  "Economical" also in terms of time and effort energy (not just fuel energy) saved with a few instalments done in one cooking session.

Base recipe:  potatoes and onions; potatoes and tomatoes (I bought 48 egg-size tomatoes for a quid in 2003).

Additions for varying the taste:  chopped-up spring onion or coriander or parsley or basil or fresh chilli; cheese (different types); chopped bacon or ham or luncheon meat or spam; ground pepper (white is heavenly but more expensive); croutons (made out of bread that's not absolutely fresh -- more economy exercised here); anything you have around that needs using up or that you'd bought cheap (some kind of supermarket deal).

(From googling)  Quote central heating was not common in London flats (or British homes) during the 1960s; it was considered a luxury and only became the norm by the late 1970s or 1980s. Most 1960s Londoners relied on single-room heating, such as coal fires, paraffin heaters, or electric fires, leaving bedrooms and hallways unheated and often freezing. Unquote