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.

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