Help Beginning Chinese or Japanese or Korean

 
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Chinese is handy in China and Singapore.
Where else would Chinese be useful?


From Wikipedia Japanese flag.
Toshihiro Oimatsu from Tokyo, Japan - The sun and the moon Uploaded by Smooth_O

Asian Grammar Summary
Chinese and Japanese picture symbols are the same, like the symbol for no smoking in Europe is a cigarette with a line through it; although the British would read it aloud as NO SMOKING whilst the French and German speaking people would say it in their language.

Duolingo Forums

I am deleting items from my email inbox when I hesitate over a question about something symbolic, Korean or Japanese. I am tempted to just delete it. After all, I cannot read it. However, just in case it is something useful, I must check, so I click on it. I am rewarded with an interesting discussion on question words in Chinese.

Chinese Question Words
Ma (the Chinese word) appears to be the equivalent of which, used in Chinese (Mandarin) when asking a yes / question.

Na appears to be the equivalent of what.

English Questions
What's more, this provokes a discussion about the English translation of which and what which arises further down the forum. What is the difference between which and what is a frequent question, a frequent confusion.

 I am a teacher of English, a home tutor, a trainer, and I do Language Evaluation, sometimes called Grammarian, on the agenda of Toastmasters International speakers' meetings which I attend about six or seven times a week.

Which and What - When Do You Use Them?
The English word which is asking the listener to select from two or more choices, a finite list. For example, 'which country are you from' is correct, because you are often presented with a finite list. There are about 150 countries in the world, offered in click boxes when you fill in your address online.

The word what means the possibilities are endless, and the person asking the question often has no idea of the answer. For example, a restaurant server or event organizer might offer you a set meal and tell you that the main dish choices are meat or fish. She or he asks, which do you want?

If, however, the server asks 'what do you want?', that is an open ended question. You might reply, 'The dish with the fewest calories'.

A questioner might ask, 'what are you doing?' The options are endless. The questioner has no idea of the answer.

So, you now know what to do, which to choose.

But the delights continue.


Symbols For America
The most delightful and surprising discovering is the Asian words for America.
The Korean word for America is 미국 (Mi-guk) which means land of beautiful people.
So, by simply saying that the listener is American, the Korean is paying a compliment!

Translations
Google Translate shows the Chinese pinyin in small text underneath the Chinese characters when translating.

PERSON
人 means person

QUESTION
ma (no tone), is used only for yes/no questions.

TRANSLATIONS INTO PINYIN
Google Translate shows the Chinese pinyin in small text underneath the Chinese characters when translating.

The moral of the story is this, read the forums. They offer fascinating insights into other languages, other cultures, and your own language, and the English language.

Useful Websites
duolingo.com
https://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/dictionary.php

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Quirks of the Chinese language - questions, what and which

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Chinese is useful in China and Singapore.

I am inundated with incoming emails, countries of the world, cities, airlines, chocolate makers, travel clothes. When I was looking for important information, today, it was lost in the ocean or 'urgent' messages from people who wanted to sell me something. So I started deleting.

However, one message was from Duolingo from a discussion. I was about to delete it, but could not resist a quick look. My curiosity was rewarded with interesting information on Chinese language.

One person said that ma is not just a question word, as I had thought, but ends a question requiring a yes no answer. binary. One of two. So, you would end a question, do you want coffee or tea, with ma?
Coffee or tea - ma? Drink - na?

However, asking a 'what' question, what would you like to eat, which has infinite possibilities, would be shown by ending the sentence 'Na'.

Ma is similar to, 'Choose which one', or, 'Which of these alternatives do you prefer?'. Na is similar to, 'What kind would you like?' or an open-ended question.


English Questions

I started thinking about that distinction. It could help me explain to people learning English why you don't ask what when the question should be which.

In English, we use what for uncountable items, multiple choices, open ended questions. 'What are you doing?'

But which is for choices. Which bus? Five buses could be on the sign.

To correct your grammar as well as your spelling, use Grammarly.

You could go on for hours discussing ma and na and which and what.

Chinese Questions
The important thing for me as a beginner learningChinese is that I have learned to use ma and na to end questions. At very least, if I hear a Chinese speaker asking me about coffee, or tea, (in Asian languages cha or chai) using a sentence ending ma or na, it is a question.

if I and you learn one new word a day of Chinese, and by the end of the year we would know 365.

Another way to look at learning, is that if I read about ten words, although I might not remember them today, after reading all ten for ten days I would know ten words.

Useful Websites
Duolingo for free internet learning (with advertisements) on Chinese, Korean and several languages
duolingo.com
https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/25238350$

chineasy.com

A great look inside kindle version is on Amazon

https://www.amazon.co.uk/ChineasyTM-Everyday-World-Chinese-Characters/dp/0500292264/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1549652685&sr=8-1&keywords=chineasy

Sometimes you really need to know what a sign means. The Malaysian word - here is bahaya for danger - are easier than the Chinese, even though the Malay is three syllables.

Author

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. i have many more posts on languages.

Please share links to your favourite posts.

Next post:

https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2019/02/harrow-on-hill-station-is-being.html

Romanian words you will recognize

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Problem
On a video about a bear attack in northern Romania and the relocation of the bear, I saw a sentence which I half understood. I translated it and could recognize half or more of the words. To instantly forget them was a wasted opportunity. So I have collect them here to look at again and again later.

I saw a video on learning languages which said you learn quicker if you read about subjects which interest you. I've been hiking in Romania and was alarmed by all the signs warning about bears and not feeding them, nor leaving litter such as food or food wrappers lying around because that could attract bears.

Two sentences read in translation:

Aggressive bear will be carried to the reserve.
Bear from Tusnad which attacked two men will be relocated to Zarnesti.

The adjectives come after the nouns. In English we would say aggressive bear. In Romanian they say ursoaica  agresivă
(The bowl shape diacritic (accent) should be over the a. I don't have it on my keyboard so I have copied it.)

Answer
I find Romanian very easy, similar to Italian.

Romanian - English
agresivă - aggressive (matching female word)
barbati - men
care - which
de - of
din - from
doi  /două - two
dusa - carried
fi - be
în - in
la - to
mutat - moved
relocata - relocated
reservati - reserve / reservation
ursoaica - bear
va / voi - will

English - Romanian
aggressive - agresiv (masculine) / agresivă (feminine)
attacked - atacat
be - fi
bear - urs
carried - dusa, transportate
from - in
in - in
in the
men - bărbați (I could not get the cedilla under the t and had to copy the whole word)
moved - mutat
of - de
relocated - relocata
reserve / reservation - reservă / reservare
to (the) la
two - doi
which - care
will - va

Please share links to your favourite posts.