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.

British understatement: The letter to the school authorities (London)

(from googling)

Quote

British understatement is a cultural communication style that deliberately downplays significant events, emotions, or achievements, often using dry humor, irony, or self-deprecation. It emphasizes emotional restraint, stoicism, and polite understatement over hyperbole, often making extreme situations sound trivial, such as calling a massive disaster "a bit of a nuisance". 

Unquote

Talking on the phone with old friend Simon Hearnden (BA Geography, 1980, SOAS [School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London]) about visiting him in his new house brought on all sorts of spontaneous reminiscences, started by him recalling how he'd first met me.

    He was a member of the SOAS Students' Union at the time.  I'd walked into the Students' Union office for something (can't remember what now), and found the Secretary (or President) of the union at the typewriter, typing out a newsletter or something.  Not only was he typing with one finger, he was, to start with, having trouble finding the right keys, hunting down each one laboriously.  (This is something quite inconceivable for the younger generation these days.  How life has changed.)

    I said to him, "I'm a trained, qualified and experienced secretary, so I'll be happy to take over this task for you, if you like.  You can leave whatever needs to be typed up in an in-tray for me, and I'll come in regularly to dispatch them."  He was most relieved.  (Ha!  Unconscious anticipatory word play!)

    One of the letters that made me laugh and still remember it to this day was to the SOAS authorities about the quality of the loo paper provided.

    A bit of background here:

(from googling)

Quote

The notorious waxy, scratchy toilet paper issued by local councils and public institutions in post-war Britain was primarily Izal Medicated Toilet Tissue. Often described as thin, beige, and shiny-on-one-side, it was non-absorbent and felt like tracing paper, used extensively in schools, hospitals, and outside loos until the 1970s/80s.

Key Aspects of Izal and Post-War Toilet Paper:

• Manufacture: Made by Newton Chambers & Co. in Sheffield, it was "medicated" with disinfectant, offering a clinical, antiseptic smell.
• Texture: It was famously stiff, shiny, and non-absorbent, often making it "not fit for purpose". It was notoriously difficult to use, particularly in cold, outside toilets.
• Usage: Commonly stamped with "Government Property" or "British No 1 Thin" to prevent theft.
• Alternatives: Another brand, "Bronco," was also commonly used, which was similarly harsh.
• Cultural Legacy: The paper was famously repurposed by children for drawing or in comb-and-paper musical instruments. 

Izal was largely phased out as softer, absorbent toilet tissues became popular in the 1970s and 1980s.

Unquote

    The letter from the Students' Union to the SOAS authorities requested that the School replace the loo paper "as it is causing students a bit of discomfort to use".

(London, 1978)

Good practices: 04 (Locating the source when researching)

Trying to get away from being glued to the digital screen for everything (work and pleasure), I switch to reading one of the many books lying around untouched for ages.

    I come across words that I either recognise but don't remember their precise meanings, or new ones.  Instead of going to my phone or laptop to look up each one as and when they crop up, I make a list on a strip of paper I use as a bookmark, for me to search later in one go.  For the context in case I forget, I note down the page number for returning to.

    This is something I've learned from a retired SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) academic back in the 1990s, Russell Jones, when I was working with him on a University of Leiden loanwords project.  (It was the Loanwords in Indonesian / Malay in the series: [from googling] Indonesian / Malay Loanwords: Research on Chinese and Dutch loanwords in Indonesian/Malay, curated by Russell Jones.)

    Russell Jones kept beavering away at research after his official retirement from SOAS in 1984.  I'm honoured to have worked with him on the Indonesian / Malay Loanwords project, learning a lot in the process, amongst which is this good practice of noting down the source of something one has seen that one might want to go back to later, either for clarification or for fetching more of the surrounding text to use as a quote.

    Russell Jones's system is:  dividing a page into nine sections, assigning a to i to each one (consisting of a couple of lines or so).  For example, if there was a word or sentence in the middle of page 98 that was of interest, he'd write down "p.98.e".  Later, if he wanted to go back to read more context for that word or sentence, he'd be able to zoom straight into p.98, and the middle of that page, since e is the middle of a to i.

    This is too refined a system for me, so I've adapted it to just five sections: a to e, with c being the middle.  It's much easier for me, and good enough to get me close to the word or sentence.

(London, 1990s to the present)

Chinese sayings: 55 (苗而不秀)

苗而不秀

miáo ér bù xiù

"seedling but not showy"

    This is from the Analects.

(from googling) The Analects were compiled by Confucius's disciples and their followers over roughly 200–300 years, primarily during the Warring States period (c. 475–221 BC).  While initial collections began shortly after Confucius's death in 479 BC, the text likely achieved its final form during the early Han dynasty.  Recent, earlier manuscript discoveries date back to before 300 BC.

(traditional character version) 《論語·子罕》：「苗而不秀者有矣夫!」原意指莊稼只長苗而不抽穗。後用「苗而不秀」比喻天資雖好，但沒有成就；也比喻徒有其表，華而不實。

(simplified characer version)《论语·子罕》：「苗而不秀者有矣夫!」原意指庄稼只长苗而不抽穗。后用「苗而不秀」比喻天资虽好，但没有成就；也比喻徒有其表，华而不实。

(google translate) Quote The Analects of Confucius, Zihan: "There are indeed crops that sprout but do not bloom!" Originally, this meant that crops only sprout but do not produce ears of grain. Later, "sprout but not bloom" became a metaphor for having good talent but not achieving anything; it also means having only outward appearances and being flashy but not substantial. Unquote

    I see this saying being a good summary of my life in terms of having some talent but not achieving anything.

    My performance at school and at work had been good, but I had never wanted to go for anything high.

    At age 13, I was offered a class monitorship but turned it down, much to the surprise and incomprehension of my form teacher, who asked for an explanation.  After all, it was a prestigious post which would also earn me an extra point on my school record.  I said, "I don't like bossing people around."

    At age 29, my name was recommended by three academics when a merchant bank director came to SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) looking for a new or to-be graduate in Chinese or Japanese to work for them in Hong Kong or Tokyo.  The three academics were the then-Head of Chinese, the then-Head of Japanese, plus my classical Chinese tutor whose daughter had worked for the merchant bank in Hong Kong and come back after a few years with enough money to buy a flat in Notting Hill cash down.

    My first thought, instead, was, "I don't want to be wearing a pin-striped suit and high heels five days a week."  I chose instead to remain at the TV documentary film company which had just taken me on for their 12-part series on China (The Heart of the Dragon), after which I drifted into part-time teaching, again only because I was approached by the person who was then standing in for the co-ordinator of the evening programme Mandarin classes.

    How would life have been if I'd chosen to go and work for the merchant bank?  Born to be a drifter...

Disrupting the nasty-dream circuit

 

I've just heard about someone waking up in the morning with psychotic thoughts following some disturbing dream in the night.

    Now, I'm no doctor, so these are just my personal wild ideas, which must already have been considered and employed by the specialists.

    One path to explore might be to expose the person to pleasant things (aural or visual, e.g., soothing music or sounds of natural phenomena like wind, water and waves; paintings, Chinese calligraphy or art visuals) last thing before sleep, imbuing him with nice sounds and therefore nice dreams. Sort of re-wiring his dream feeds / paths, which might then result in pleasant dreams, and therefore pleasant thoughts upon waking, or at least no psychotic thoughts.

    I say the above having in mind what happened in my BA.4 [final] year at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies).

    The Japanese teacher (who was also the head of the Japanese Section) made us do a vocabulary test every Friday morning: 25 kanji (Chinese characters / 漢字 / Hànzì) each week, cumulative.

    Background to Japanese kanji:  each one has a minimum of two readings (a Chinese reading and a Japanese reading).  More if they’re also used as verbs, e.g., with different endings (past tense, transitive or intransitive, etc.).  So it’s 25 characters (minimum two readings) in Week.1, 50 characters (minimum two readings) in Week.2, etc.

    I asked to be excused from this test since Japanese was my Special Subject, not my major, but Prof. O’Neill said, “You can do it, you don't need to spend much time learning them, you won’t have any trouble!”

    It’d be disrespectful, after what he’d said, not to turn up, so on Thursday nights I’d learn them last thing before sleeping.

    I got full marks every Friday morning, so Prof. O’Neill said, “See?  I told you!”

    A couple of decades later, I read somewhere that when we’re asleep, the brain is then filing (/ sorting out) what we’ve experienced (/ seen, heard) during the day, starting with the latest (/ last seen or heard).  So maybe that’s why my learning the Japanese kanji last thing before sleep was so effective.

    So, I wonder if the same might help for the person waking up with psychotic thoughts after some horrible dream the night before. If my exposing my brain to kanji readings and meanings last thing before sleeping helped net me full marks for those tests the next day, then exposing the person to pleasant things last thing before his bedtime might let his brain file pleasant things during his sleep, which might then become pleasant-dream memories when he wakes up, instead of psychotic thoughts. Break the nasty-dream after-effect / circuit before it can carry on into the next day in the form of psychotic thoughts.

    Or, if it’s not easy to set it up as a pre-slumber routine, then do it as a during-slumber one: playing pleasant sounds (music, natural phenomena [wind, waves, water]) to him during his sleep. This might stop the nasty dreams from entering, leaving the brain waking up with only pleasant vibes, or at least nothing nasty.

    I say the above because I listen (in rotation) to a couple of YouTube story-telling channels to help me sleep. Most of the stories are set in ancient China, with a lot of them featuring humans saving some animal that then comes back later to repay its debt, which is nice content. I usually fall asleep within the first couple of lines.

    If I don’t fall asleep that quickly, I spend the time listening out for things that I can use in my teaching (the stories are narrated in Mandarin), which is another distraction factor — stops my mind from thinking about horrible people and horrible things. I call it Distraction Therapy, with gardening, healing and teaching being my usual Distraction Therapy tools.

Chinese small talk: 02 (The telephone call)

Wang Meiling's brother (as it turned out) had arrived not long prior to that point, and with his sister having gone off to China (got a job with a British company that sent her over there), he had only me for a contact.

    I'd invite him every now and then to the SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) bar for a drink and a chat, even once to my flat for a Chinese beef stew meal (a mistake -- you don't cook Chinese food for a Chinese person:  it's not going to pass the test).

    Wang Meiling's brother rang up one day and went through the ritual:  telling me what he'd been up to of late, which took up about 15 minutes of the call; then asking me what I'd been up to recently, which took up another 15 minutes or so.

    Once the news about both sides was delivered, it was time to end the call.

    He then said, "Oh oh, wait wait, I nearly forgot."

    I thought, "No, you didn't nearly forget.  You'd rung me precisely to ask me for a favour.  You'd spent the last half hour of my time, and yours, engaging in all this small talk, just as a cover up."

Language labs (London)

We used to have language lab sessions for Japanese at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London).

    The version they used was a Yale University recording, which was fast.

    The arrangement for our Yale University tapes was:  the tapes would play a sentence, leaving a gap for the student to repeat and to be recorded onto the tape — this bit was for the teacher/student to listen to if needed, for feedback.  It’d then play the next sentence, and so on.

    The tapes would then get wiped for the next batch of students.

    The tape I had during my session didn’t get wiped properly somehow, so I ended up hearing the previous student’s recording.

    As the Yale recording was fast, the poor chap was struggling to keep up:  before he could finish repeating Sentence 1, Sentence 2 would come on, and so on.  

    I could hear him stumbling and stumbling, and his verbal frustrations (some four-letter words) uttered at being overtaken before he could finish repeating the sentence.

    At one point, I heard him bawl at the tape, “Oh, slow down, you stupid woman!”

(London, 1978)

The guardian angels in one’s life: 12 (The evening course classmate and the telex agency)

 

I had no idea what I could do for part-time work, which had to be regular for the flow of income, yet not disrupt my studies, but I’d cross that bridge when I got to it, I decided.

    Enter the evening course classmate for that:  Steve Hunt.  He was one of the two classmates (the other being Hugh Lansdowne) on the evening course who’d nagged me into applying for SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) through the clearing system, resulting in three very happy and productive (knowledge-acquisition-wise) years.

    Steve worked part-time at British Monomarks, a telex agency not far from his flat near Russell Square.

    He mentioned me to the manager.  I not only got in, I got to choose my hours, which were: 5pm–9pm on Mondays and Fridays.  The reasons were: 

• my lectures at SOAS finished at 4.30pm, so I could walk across Russell Square over to Queen Square and clock in comfortably by 5pm.

• I’d have done my lesson prepping over the weekend for the whole week ahead, leaving me free to work on Monday 5–9pm without worrying about the rest of the week.  I could work 5–9pm on Friday as I had the weekend ahead to prep my lessons for the following week.

    British Monomarks was not just a flexible employer, allowing me to work the hours that were convenient for me, it was also very compassionate.  When a very dear Taiwanese friend died at age 23 in a road accident after we’d spent a lot of time together during my month in Taiwan the summer of 1979, they gave me all the extra hours I asked for to distract me from sitting around at home grieving.  They saved my sanity that autumn.  

    Thank you, Steve Hunt (deceased).  Thank you, British Monomarks.  The two of you saw me through my first degree without financial worries.  I’m very grateful.

(London, 1978–1980)

See also: 

https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2025/05/the-guardian-angels-in-ones-life-05.html 

https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2025/05/the-guardian-angels-in-ones-life-06.html 

Being a carer: 02 (The ex-teacher) (Greece)

 

The same ex-teacher (from my Year 2 at SOAS [School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London] in 1978-9) whom I’d taken to Paris for two Buddhist art exhibitions said a few months later that she’d like to go to Greece.

    She’d last been in Greece in the 1940s en route to England when she sailed over from Hong Kong, and wanted to see classical Greece again, she said.

    So, once again, I started to organise a trip (no internet in those days, remember?):  air tickets, hotel, etc., this time booking two single rooms to avoid the heart-stopping apnoea episodes that I’d undergone in Paris.

    I went out to her house the night before, to stay over, as we were catching a morning flight, and I wanted to travel out to Heathrow with her, rather than meet her there.

    The next morning, on the taxi ride out to Heathrow, she asked if I’d slept well.  I said yes, but if she wanted me to stay over on a regular basis (she had approached me on this before), could I have a bedside lamp, as I always read at bedtime.

    We arrived in Athens around noon.  Once our rooms were sorted out, I got us booked on a city tour for the afternoon.

    A city tour means leaving the bus whenever we arrived at a particular scenic spot, to follow the guide around, then getting back onto the bus, to be driven to the next spot.

    After a few of these spots, back on the bus to move on to the next one, she suddenly said to me, “When we get back tonight, I’ll get you the bedside lamp.”

Me:  Get back tonight??  What do you mean “get back tonight”?

She:  When we get back to the house tonight.

Me:  But we’re not going back to the house tonight.

She:  Oh.  Are we not?

Me:  No.  We’ve only just arrived in Athens this morning.

She:  Oh, have we?

Me:  Yes, and we’re staying in a hotel for a week.

She:  Oh, are we?

    Oh my goodness, what had I taken on, I thought.

    I’d only been her student for one subject for one academic year (which is only nine months), so it wasn’t like she’d been my teacher all the way through the university course.

    I wasn’t even a distant relative, so what was I to do if something were to happen to her during our time in Greece.  (She had a daughter but she lived in America.)

    The enormity of my taking on the role of volunteer carer started to dawn on me.

(Greece, 1996)