#Cantonese vocab

[peachycanton]

Writing “Chinese” in Chinese

Here is a little bit of information that I thought would be great to share!

So whenever I’m writing my tags or trying to introduce myself, I think about how I would actually write the name of my target language. So for example, to say “I am learning Spanish” I would write “ Estoy aprendiendo español”. The translation is simple. But for Chinese, that’s not the case.

There are differences in Chinese as it’s written versus when it’s spoken. There’s also differences between Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese Chinese. It was interesting trying to make sense of which ones to use and when, so I looked it up! I used several resources, which will be linked at the end.

Below, I have the noted words, with both Mandarin and Cantonese pinyin and jyutping to showcase how it’s pronounced. There are also detailed explanations as well. Anyway, here it goes!

 Chinese (person): 中国人。 Zhōng guó rén / zung1 gwok3 jan4

The main reason why I placed this here is due to how English as a language works. When you look up how to say Chinese in Chinese, this will pop up. It’s only due to the fact that English uses words such Chinese, Spanish, etc to describe the language, people, and objects pertaining to that country. So we use “Chinese” for both “I am Chinese” and “I speak Chinese”. This not the case for other languages though. They have separate words for the language and the people. So in Chinese, to that say a Chinese person you use “中国人”.

This breaks down in multiple ways. 中 means middle and it’s commonly used to as an indication for China. 国 means country so when used with 中， it means middle country, or China. When having 人 , which means person, it becomes the meaning given above. All of this is important to know as 中 and the other characters will be used with this context in mind.

Chinese (written): 中文  zhōng wén / zung1 man4

This is mainly for Chinese as the written language. It can apply to all the languages under it (so mandarin, cantonese, etc). It can also be used for the spoken Chinese as well. This would be the simplest form to use when wanting to say “I’m learning Chinese.” This would not help with specifics though.

This is written like this due to 文  meaning writing, character, script, and language. With 中 meaning China, the two form together to create the meaning of “the written language of China”,  “the Chinese written language,” or even a simple “Chinese writing”. It also can be seen as “Chinese Language” as well. This is why even though you can use this as a simple “Chinese”, it carries the idea of writing in Chinese.

In general, if you don’t mind the vagueness of 中文, then you can use it. But if you want to be specific in whether your learning Mandarin, Cantonese, etc, then use the ones below.

Mandarin Chinese (Han People): 汉语  hàn yǔ / hon3 jyu5

This is used to say the language of the Han people, which make up most of the Chinese population. This is understood to mean Mandarin and is commonly used for it. It is also used by teachers as well so while 中文 is used by everyday people to say Chinese, 汉语 might be used in schools to specify Mandarin.

This is broken down by 汉 meaning the Han people, an ethnic group that makes up most of the population in China, and 语 meaning language, tongue, or expression. This means that with the two combined, it brings the idea of “Han language” or “language of the Han people”. It is used more often to refer to the spoken language of Chinese, such as Mandarin.

Small note: I went back through to double check this post and it seems that for some speakers, this actually does refer to other dialects/languages. Some have noted that people can use this to also mean Cantonese as well, although several articles go against this.

Mandarin Chinese (Common Language): 普通话  pútōng huà / pou2 tung1 waa2

This is used to also say Mandarin Chinese, but through the idea of a “common language” or “common dialect”. It’s from the idea of speaking in the common dialect, which in China and learning settings, would be Mandarin. This is how the Chinese government puts their official language.

This can be broken down by 普 meaning universal, general, widespread, 通 meaning pass through, common, communicate, and 话 meaning speak, talk, communicate, dialect. This all comes together to form the idea of a common dialect.

I am curious if this meaning for Mandarin Chinese changes depending on environment. If one is in an environment where most speakers speak Cantonese, would 普通话 mean Cantonese instead? Would love to know!

Mandarin Chinese (Taiwan): 国语  guóyǔ / gwok3 jyu5

This version is used primarily in Taiwan. It means “language of the country” or “country language”. This doesn’t explain much about the exact language is it, but since Mandarin is spoken in Taiwan, using this word to describe Mandarin makes sense. It’s the idea of speaking the country or national language, aka Mandarin.

This word can be broken down by 国 and 语。Both of which have been explained above.

Mandarin Chinese (Overseas): 华语 huáyǔ  / waa4 jyu5

Now in in the articles I looked at, they note that even in overseas communities there are different words for Mandarin. This version is used mainly in South East Asian countries, such as Singapore and Malaysia. This time though, the ideas behind the characters are a bit more complex in nature.

The characters can be broken down by 华 and 语. While 语 has been explained before, 华 carries a much more complicated history. Just as 中 can mean “Middle” while also being used to mean China, 华  does the same. 华 means splendid, magnificent, and flowery, but it’s not this meaning that 华语 is using. That is due to 华 being used in the word 华夏， which is a concept of the Chinese civilization and nation. It’s an awareness of the Han people and their ancestors.

夏 is the name of the very fist Chinese Dynasty, the one that formed the country. Having 华夏 together brings this idea of a great dynasty and the importance it holds for Chinese communities and their shared history. So for Chinese people in places such as Singapore and Malaysia, it’s way for them to connect to their ancestry. They can also connect with their language through this, hence 华语。

This all comes together to bring the idea of Chinese people in Singapore speaking the language of their people or ancestors, which in most cases is understood to be Mandarin. The language of their Han ancestors, 华语，is Mandarin.

Mandarin (Officialese): 官话 guān huà / gun1 waa2

This one is very straight forward, but is also used in many different contexts. 官 means official, bureaucratic, or government. When this is combined with 话, it takes on the meaning of official language, which in China is Mandarin. This isn’t it’s only meaning though. It can also be used to say bureaucratic language or even used to mock or joke about “official language” or “officialese”. So be mindful that this isn’t used to only mean Mandarin.

Mandarin (Northern Dialect): 北方方言 běi fāng fāng yán / baak1 fong1 fong1 jin4

This one is actually quite simple! The first part of this is 北方, which means north or northern. The second part, 方言, means topolect, which is sorta like a dialect. This very easily translates into northern topolect/dialect. This encompasses all the dialects of northern, north eastern, and south westward China into one thing of “Mandarin”. This is only really used in linguistic circles. It wasn’t in the main articles and only brought up in terms of linguistics so using this is not very important. It’s only for technicalities.

So far this is all that I have found for Mandarin but, there are also several ways to say Cantonese as well.

Cantonese (Hong Kong): 粤语  yuèyǔ / jyut6 jyu5

This word is mainly used in Hong Kong. This variation is also complex in it’s meaning as it brings older ideas of the southern provinces in China. 语 has already been explained previously but 粤 carries much more history. When looking up 粤, it doesn’t show much detail other than just “Cantonese” or “Guangdong or Gaungxi province”. But if you look at the radical used in the character, this brings more information.

In the character 粤, there is the radical 米. This radical has the meaning of husked rice or grains of rice. This brings about the ideas of 粤 relating to rice, and in turn the language of things associated with rice. This is amazing because rice was traditionally cultivated in southern china. Rice was made in the south due to the warm and wet climate. Now, the south is associated with Rice. There is even an on going stereotype that southern Chinese people love rice and rice related things.

So Cantonese, which tends to be spoken in southern China, is referred to as 粤语, a word that is related to rice. It all comes together in this cool way that otherwise would not have been known without going into the radical.

Cantonese (Mainland China): 广东话   guǎng​dōng​huà / jim2 dung1 waa2 or 6

This version is used by those in mainland china. The word gains its meaning from the region of 广东, which is a province in southern China where most of the population speaks Cantonese. (Where my Chinese ancestors are from :D ) Because of this, Cantonese is referred to as 广东话, or “Guangdong Language” or “Guangdong Dialect”.

This is very simple to break down as 话 was explained previously. 广东  is simply the name of the region in southern China. The character 广 means wide, extensive, and broad. The character 东 means east, host, or owner. I’m not sure on the history of why the southern provinces are named this way, but it is interesting to know. I will probably make a post explaining this history when or if I find I out.

Cantonese 白话  bái​huà / baak6 waa2

This version of saying “Cantonese” is very very informal. It’s a term that’s very colloquial. It’s reportedly not used in Hong Kong, but can still be used in Mainland China. It’s a term that has many other uses and meanings so it’s not wise to use it only to say “Cantonese”. It can mean gossip, chit-chat, or even baseless claims. This is all derived from it’s characters.

白 means white, but just like many other languages, white isn’t only to say the color. 白 is also used to mean blank, clear, or plain. With this, when combined with 话, it gives off the idea of speaking very plainly and/or having nothing of value to your talk in either gossip or no evidence to back up claims.

It’s versatile in it’s use due to this, but those who use it to mean Cantonese are probably using it to make Cantonese seem like the “common” or “plain” language used. It’s the same idea of 普通话, where it’s the common tongue or dialect. Or at least that’s how I’m interpreting it.

This is all I have in terms of how to say “Chinese” in Chinese. I realize only after making this post that I did not use traditional characters at all. This would only change the appearance of the characters, not the pronunciation or use of the characters. Anyway, besides this I hope this post proved to be helpful and allowed many of you to learn something new! My sources are now listed below!

Sources:

https://goeastmandarin.com/how-say-chinese-language-mandarin-chinese/

https://www.duchinese.net/blog/91-how-to-say-chinese-in-chinese/

https://www.tutormandarin.net/en/5-ways-how-to-say-chinese-in-chinese/

https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-write-Cantonese-in-Cantonese

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-Mandarin-word-for-Mandarin

https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary

https://www.pleco.com/

[polyglot-thought]

🚨VOCAB ALERT: Family🚨

Mandarin: 家庭 jiā tíng

Cantonese: 家庭 gaa1 ting4

Japanese: 家族 かぞく ; 家庭 かてい

Korean: 가족

Indonesian: keluarga

Russian: семья sem'ya

Cherokee: ᏏᏓᏁᎸ sidanelv

Burmese: မိသားစု misarrhcu

Tibetan: ཁྱིམ་ཚང khyim tshang ; མི་ཚང mi tshang

Uyghur: ئائىلە a’ile

Sinhala: පවුල pavula

“A Family portrait during the Spanish Flu, 1918″

(via)

[sleepymccoy]

Universal translator headcanons:

Spock speaks English perfectly and is not using the translator, not even when he doesn't recognise a word. He insists on learning it old school style. When he uses a translator he tries to learn the words as best he can for future reference and now has a strange hodge podge of vocab across various languages

Uhura uses the translator to speak, but she does so to practice speaking a different language every day. It's translated into English but she could be speaking Estonian or Andorian. She's happy using the translator cos she basically built it

Chekhov didn't realise you could use the translator at work and is pissed off to discover he's been struggling through conversations that could've just been translated by tech for him. Scotty even says it can keep your accent as a sort of respected identity feature!

Scotty is speaking English but he uses the translator purely to give himself a thicker-than-actual Scottish accent. If you subscribe to the Scotty is Canadian and stuck doing the accent after a bad joke theory, this fits. If you think he's Scottish, this is just him keeping that front and centre

McCoy uses the translator less than you'd think, he's conversational in a handful of common languages like Cantonese, French, and Denobulan. He's learning Vulcan but it's not clicking for him, perhaps because he hasn't told Spock he's trying to learn so isn't practicing as much as he should

Kirk uses the translator when he needs to without worrying about it. His area of expertise isn't languages and he's happy to rely on his crew to supply that if the translator goes down. He does, however, know just about every greeting phrase there is across the galaxy just in casies

Sulu can really only speak english, but when he's talking to someone from home he uses a translator to another language to maintain some privacy. His family are used to having to translate his video messages back into English

Chapel uses the translator when needed, but will always try to have a conversation in English first. She's possibly the most normal about the translator tbh

Rand will invariably try to communicate via mime or grunts or anything else before pulling out the translator. She thinks it sanitises conversations and obfuscates tone. But she will resort to it when needed, reluctantly

[zhuzhudushu]

Lingopie — Chinese Review ★★

So I did 3 months of Lingopie (stylized as Liñgöpie) so you don't have to (unless you want to lol).

I mention a Chrome extension, the Zhongwen dictionary, quite a bit in this review. It is here, I highly recommend it (click)! It's also available for Firefox (click).

What is Lingopie?

Lingopie is an app and desktop extension/website that allows you to watch tv shows and cartoons with interactive subtitles for language learning. It currently has Spanish, German, Russian, Italian, Portuguese, French, Korean, Japanese, and Chinese. It claims to improve your language learning by 80% (compared to Duolingo which is around 20%).

Here is their website. (click)

Pricing: (March 2024)

3 months $36

1 year $71 "on sale" (normally $144)

Lifetime $199 "on sale" (normally $663)

Please note: I have never seen these full prices. It appears that the "sale" is permanent.

My Review / TL;DR Version

Extremely disappointed both in functionality and content for Chinese. Maybe this is a good program for other languages, but for Chinese there is extremely limited content with pinyin subtitles only available for the non-Netflix shows. All the best learning features are available for non-Netflix shows, yet those tended to have significantly worse translations than Netflix. I would not recommend this product for Chinese. While it had a few good features and I enjoyed it for 6-7 episodes of one show, it then had a glitch where an entire episode was subtitled wrong, so I gave up.

See below the cut for full breakdown.

Strengths:

Has access to Netflix shows and films including some popular ones (e.g. Meteor Garden, Dear Ex, Nezha Reborn)

This is nice and I enjoyed rewatching the ones I was familiar with and getting a better grasp of listening and vocab. I appreciate that they try to incorporate kid-friendly along with more serious/adult content with animated and live action tv shows and films. I also liked that it specified if the show was from Taiwan or China, and also included shows that had some Cantonese influence (e.g. Scissor Seven)

Allows you to have English and Chinese subtitles simultaneously or alone, and you can easily click them on an off while watching.

This is pretty standard for all video/subtitle based educational apps, but it was nice to easily click them on and off in case I wanted to double check my understanding, and to compare the direct translation of the words to the full translation of the sentence.

Allows you to pause automatically after each subtitle. Can also loop subtitles over and over. There are also AI-produced explanations of grammar.

This hands down was the best part about the entire experience for me, and why I ended up using Lingopie for 3 months. While it was sometimes clunky (see below), this made singling out specific lines/words for listening practice so easy. Once I got in the groove, I was able to get through episodes fairly quickly and was starting to be able to listen and hear new words in sentences later.

Click on the words in the subtitle to make flashcard sets

This was a nice feature, but I do wish the flashcards were a bit more functional, see below. It was easy enough to use and a quick way to remind yourself of the new words you learned before you jump into the next episode.

Weaknesses:

Pinyin subtitles available on desktop only, with no pinyin subtitles for Netflix shows (as of May 2024)

This is a HUGE flaw, and I was 100% dependent on using another chrome extension for hover-over dictionary while using Lingopie. I know they are working on pinyin subtitles for Netflix and mobile, but I used this for 3 months and it still was not implemented when I ended. To me, if I have to use another app in conjunction with this one in order to fully learn, then what's the point? Especially since I watched Taiwanese and Cantonese-influenced shows with very non-standard pronunciations, comparing standard pinyin to accented productions is necessary for me. Even with the pinyin subtitles for the non-Netflix shows, it left a lot to be desire because they're tiny above the Chinese characters, and sometimes difficult to read. More than once I thought a ǒ was ō because of how tiny it was.

Not enough content, especially cartoons/beginner level

The one above and this bullet are the main reasons why I don't recommend this app for Chinese specifically. Maybe other languages are fine, but there is simply not enough content for the price. I was hoping for more beginner/lower intermediate content like children's cartoons, however there are none for Chinese. All the animated options are more teenager/adult oriented. There also weren't many light-hearted or comedy options, meaning you would have to watch a lot of serious dramas, thrillers, and violent shows if you wanted to get your money's worth. For my personal taste, I don't want to have to pause every dialogue line for an adult thriller. That would ruin my experience of the show and the suspense. For the non-Netflix options, most shows were incomplete with only 1-5 episodes available out of 10+. They also tended to be lower quality productions, with significantly worse English translations. The majority of what is available outside of Netflix are short films (~5 mins) and cooking shows (10-20 mins) which aren't bad for beginners. I personally have no interest in cooking, though lol. Essentially, there is no TRUE beginner fictional content in Chinese available.

The dictionary is... rough

Again, I was fully dependent on the Zhongwen extension. While the English subtitles themselves are good, the individual definitions of words that you hover over are definitely rough. They weren't actually that helpful for breaking down meanings of things like slang and characters' names. For example, in Scissor Seven there were quite a few animal puns, e.g. 汪星人 which is internet slang for "dog" Lingopie translated as "Woofer" which was... awkward and strange. Without the Zhongwen extension I would have had no idea what this was actually referring to. It would been nice if it functioned more like the Zhongwen extension, where it would highlight individual characters or phrases/combos depending on your mouse placement. Particularly on the non-Netflix shows, the translations even in the English subtitles were incredibly rough and at times I couldn't understand the context in either language. There was also one instance of an entire episode (Netflix) that had incorrect subtitles, I suspect subtitles from a different episode? That was the final straw for me.

It chooses whether or not to highlight single words or phrases so you have no control over your flashcards

This made the flashcards not as functional to me. Sometimes, I wanted just the specific noun/verb in the sentence, but it would make me highlight the entire sentence. Other times, I wanted a really functional phase, but it would only let me highlight the individual words. I barely used the flashcard feature because of this.

Clunky interface (Chrome & Firefox)

I can't speak for mobile or Safari because I didn't use them. Since I was relying on the Zhongwen hover-dictionary, I only used Chrome. You can only use Chrome or Safari if you want Netflix shows. Sometimes the auto-pause after each subtitle would be too early or too late, meaning I would have to actually click things pretty persistently throughout each episode. Using the spacebar to pause/unpause hardly ever worked, and using the arrow keys to flip between subtitles also never worked for me. Sometimes the hover-definitions of words would linger even after I clicked away, and would not disappear until the next subtitle appeared. This was super annoying and would block a good portion of the screen. Sometimes I would have to click things 2-3 times before it registered in both Chrome and Firefox.

Overall, I think it's a great idea, but needs some pretty major improvements in order to be worth the price.

In my opinion, if they were to add significantly more shows, including kid's cartoons, and improved their subtitles, dictionary, & interface function, it would be worth the price.

Maybe in a few years as Lingopie grows, it will be worth it. But for now, it's not. For now, it's clunky and limited. If you were to watch it for an hour a day, you would probably get through all the shows that interested in you in about 3-6 months. It wouldn't take longer than a year to go through all of the Chinese content, as of right now. So why would you pay for a year or lifetime price for that?

(divider credit here)

[xuexishijian]

So the other day I posted some linguistics terms vocab, basic terms that I was curious about. And I looked up “dialect” and my dictionary gave me 方言 fāngyán, which I didn’t really question. Like fine, sure, “local speech,” that makes sense as what we call “dialect” in English.

But I just watched this lecture on YouTube called “How Fangyan became Dialects” by historian Dr. Gina Anne Tam and turns out that’s a very loaded assumption! Because basically there’s a long history of the sort of mismatch(?) between western terms for describing linguistic varieties (languages, dialects, vernaculars, etc etc) and those used in China. I’d definitely heard other Chinese languages such as Cantonese or Hokkien described as dialects, and this mistranslation or misrepresentation of 方言 is a major part of this problem.

The idea of language vs. dialect is a complex one, and these terms in Chinese languages don’t map 1-to-1 onto existing European-language ones. Linguists in the 19th and 20th century struggled with this and often made comparisons to what they knew from Europe, imposing distinctions and hierarchies that didn’t necessarily exist prior. Language and nationalism in Europe during these years is also super interesting and something I’ve read some about, and it makes sense then that westerners would be confused by a country with many forms of speaking when Europe was (and still is?) drawing up borders along linguistic+national+ethnic lines.

The development of nationalism in China through the 20th century led to further changes in the idea of a national language, especially with the promotion of first 國語 in the Republican era and 普通话 under the Communist government.

It’s interesting that what used to be a term for a region’s language can now be used in a hierarchical way to subordinate certain linguistic varieties to others. Dr. Tam mentioned that there was an article that generated controversy years ago that said that since Cantonese was a 方言 that is wasn’t fit to be taught and couldn’t be considered anyone’s 母语 mǔyǔ (mother language), that instead all Chinese people must learn and use 普通话, the national standard. This idea of course coming from the implications that 方言 now has, that it’s “merely” a dialect, that dialects aren’t “full” languages, that they’re inferior or incomplete or whatever.

Dr. Tam had a nicer way of phrasing this, but terminology is so important because these definitions—which may seem inconsequential, like we’re squabbling over minor issues that mean little—influence how we perceive and think, which in turn influences how we interact with the world. If a 方言 is just a dialect, and dialects are lower than languages, and Cantonese is a 方言, that means Cantonese is lesser. That’s a “logical” conclusion one can make, just a syllogism of X is Y, Y is Z, therefore X is Z (Cantonese is a 方言, 方言 is lesser, Cantonese is lesser). But that “logical” conclusion starts from a very very flawed premise, this definition which presupposes a hierarchy that doesn’t really exist linguistically (but then does exist socially and is justified by these “scientific” or “logical” reasons).

All that to say, this was a super interesting lecture (about her book that I might have to read!) and if you have time I would totally recommend giving it a watch. These terms are interesting and complex and nuanced, and knowing more about the history is really enlightening. I’ve been getting into language and identity lately, reading a lot about nationalism and race and the idea of “native speakers.” It feels like, while in other areas we might have made social progress, that language is one area that many people are super unaware of and take for granted their own biases without understanding these power structures and their histories.

Anyways I’d be curious to hear what anyone else has to say on the topic! And definitely if you watch her lecture let me know what you think!

[etudieryvivere]

Cantonese Resources

This will be a list in progress, just whatever I find. Feel free (please help) to recommend any resources that you know of.

Websites:

cantonese.sheik.co.uk

This has characters, vocabulary, pronunciation help, essays, a bunch of different stuff, Beginner to Intermediate. CantoDict is apart of this (add /dictionary/ to the url)

cantoneseclass101.com/cantonese-resources/

Some stuff for grammar, reading and writing, pronunciation, etc. The actual course is Beginner to Advanced, but the free stuff is just beginner. They also have a free Word of the Day email newsletter thingy.

cantonese.ca

Vocab lists!

livelingua.com/courses/cantonese

Audio lessons along with a textbook. It seems free (and claims so). It's only a basic course, and comes with a dictionary as well, although it's hard to see the characters well. They also have tons of other languages (including ones like Igbo and Finnish, so check it out).

cantonese-alliance.github.io/courses.html

Okay this one is super cool. In the proficiency levels tab, they have some curriculums for different levels (with tons of resources). There's also 'Cantonese through films' which has a long list of movies organized by decades. Even more materials, historical, linguistic, and the like. Overall, super interesting.

savecantonese.org/education

Textbooks and resources (most of which are mentioned).

These are just the first few things I've found, but there's alot, so I', making a spreadsheet with everything else on it too. Hope this helps!

[polyglot-thought]

🚨VOCAB ALERT: Bird🚨

Mandarin: 鸟 (鳥) niǎo

Cantonese: 雀 zoek3 \ 鳥 niu5

Japanese: 鳥 とり

Korean: 새

Indonesian: Burung

Russian: Птицы ptitsy

Cherokee: ᏥᏍᏆ tsisqua

Burmese: ငှက် nghaat

Tibetan: བྱ bya

Uyghur: قۇش qush

Sinhala: කුරුල්ලෝ kurullō

Long-tailed tit/stjärtmes. Värmland, Sweden (March 1, 2016).

[dark-side-blog3]

mm sometimes i think my yanderes would take advantage of the fact that I cant do some of the things most people can do with ease like tying their shoes or telling the difference between left and right, or the way i absorb info just to force me into being a baby. Mommy kakyoin would coax me into his lap after heavily drugging me, so I just happily melt into his embrace as he asks me what sound a puppy makes only to be met with a soft whimper of me trying to speak.. or diavolo making me do kindergarten level math in the playpen he keeps in his office for me. -📱

I've been having some trouble with doing tasks most people can do, so it is fun to think about different yanderes making you do baby-level math worksheets, or French vocab sheets and crosswords meant for little kids. Or having those grid papers to write Cantonese and Mandarin, or in your case with mommy Kakyoin, katakana. Why bother teaching you kanji or hiragana? You'll only be confused. And hiragana is more commonly used-- he doesn't need you knowing what common signs and objects actually say. Then you won't feel as lost, should you manage to slip away from his hands for a moment.

Diavolo knows worksheets aren't any fun-- he'd give everything to not have to do them, and still know the people he cares about would be okay. So instead of a little duotang with worksheets for your math, linguistics, or animal noises, Diavolo tries to set up little activities for you to do every day. Little trays with a number of the day, clay in one dish so you can draw the number yourself, roll it on a die, and count it out of marbles. Calling an animal handler to show you the different birds and bugs of the devildom in the throne room (and saving trips to the royal zoo for weeks you've been extra good!).

[shubaka]

today is an "oh shit i've been neglecting my thai studies so let's spend the entire evening on it" kinda day, and this is me every time i come across vocab that sounds similar in cantonese: 🤩

[polyglot-thought]

🚨 VOCAB ALERT: Unicorn 🚨

Mandarin: 独角兽 (獨角獸) dú jiǎo shòu

Cantonese: 獨角獸 duk6 gok3 sau3

Japanese: ユニコーン／一角獣 いっかくじゅう

Korean: 유니콘／일각수

Indonesian: unikorn／kuda ekacula／kuda bertanduk satu

Russian: единорог／инрог

Cherokee: ᏐᏈᎵ ᎤᏟᎩ soquili utligi

Burmese: ယူနီကွန်း yuu ne kwann

[kragehund-est]

sleep deprived. nearly cried because i couldn't understand a simple news article in mandarin. even with the relevant vocab and prior topic knowledge, couldn't make sense of the sentences' unusual word usage and grammar.

it was cantonese.

[communist-ojou-sama]

Incidentally I starting using anki lmao (the vt one is too difficult for starting out I can't find a simple vocab course smfh) I wanted a more straightforward way for practicing vocab and expressions, especially for Cantonese and for mandarin chengyu, and memrise is fucking useless now, so I imported some of my old courses; If I'm ever less busy I might add my old Russian and Persian vocab lists too

[polyglot-thought]

🚨VOCAB ALERT: COW🚨

Mandarin: 牛 niú ／ 家牛 jiā niú

Cantonese: 牛 ngau4 ／ 家牛 gaa1 ngau4

Japanese: 牛 うし

Korean: 소

Indonesian: sapi ／lembu

Russian: корова ／домашний бык

Cherokee: ᏩᎦ waga ／ᏩᎧ waka

Sinhala: ගවයා gavayā

Spanish: vaca／toro

French: vache / bœuf

German: kuh／rind／hausrind

Welsh: buwch／gwartheg

[wanghedi]

Also i did overestimate how good my cantonese is these days bc i closed my eyes and could barely keep up with them rip.. the english captions were not always super accurate but it gave enough clues when i dont know a word for me to fill in the blanks i feel like i was learning vocab in real time.

[studylustre]

Are you bbc and can you speak Chinese

yup, i'm bbc and i speak cantonese and a little bit of mandarin!! tbh, my vocab in both cantonese and mandarin is pretty limited (especially now that i've moved out of home bc i rarely speak cantonese anymore) but i can understand both languages more than i can speak it.

[bentosandbox]

Well. I never expected to be defending(?) oyster TL ever but as someone who also dabbles in fan translations, I pretty much agree with what the above user said. It kind of tickles but also baffles me to see people who don't read the CN text praise it like it's modern Shakespeare or something... it is not. CN fans dunk on HG's writing too ALL THE TIME they even coined some term for it that I can't remember right now, but I can assure you that Kal'tsit is NOT magically wise and poetic in CN

Funnily enough (I'm sure some people know already from my posts complaining about the loc) but I'm of the (very personal) opinion that it's (sometimes) too localized and not the other way round... Translating is not just a 'Turn A to B' but also a balancing act; in most cases, rewriting a line to make it read smoother will often strip it of any nuance it has, but if we try to keep the nuance it'll obviously sound less natural. Eg. there's a lot of 'senpais' in game that aren't there in EN because duh lol... This is not even including the factors of time/money/other things that affect localisation quality (And I doubt gacha games get plenty of time)

I think the 'the official localization looks just like MTL' is kind of a pretty ignorant take. For anyone who doesn't know: despite their huge differences, both Chinese and English both use Subject-Verb-Object sentence structure, unlike let's say, Japanese with their S-O-V that turns MTL results upside down before spitting them out. It should not be surprising to see similar content because the content IS supposed to be similar, no?

I'm not an expert in linguistics so I can't exactly explain in detail but here: Profile text? They really are just written like that, they're documentations or whatever written by some RI staff not academy winning scripts written by Dusk

Look at how short the CN text looks like compared to our seemingly 2x bigger wall of text. As this other user said, a lot of nuances/quirks are also lost, but also a lot of words also have to be added in when translating to English to make it sound less literal (see below examples)

Let's throw a paragraph into 2 MTLs (google and DeepL) for the hell of it

well no one's going to read all that surely so I'll just post the last line

Original CN

面对人事干员关��她在公证所职权范围的进一步追问，菲亚梅塔以机密为由拒绝回答。

Google

Faced with further questioning by the personnel officer about the scope of her duties at the notary office, Fiametta refused to answer, citing the confidentiality of the Holy See.

DeepL

Faced with further questioning from the personnel officer about her terms of reference at the notary, Fiammetta refused to answer, citing ecclesiastical secrecy.

Here's a 'how my brain parses the CN to EN on the first pass with no intent to translate' take (the random extra 's is not a typo btw) just to show the similarities/differences

Facing HR about her Notarial Hall duties' scope 's further questioning, Fiammetta uses church confidentiality as refusal to answer.

Official

When questioned further by HR about her responsibilities at the Notarial Hall, Fiammetta refused to answer on the grounds of papal confidentiality.

'1000% word for word machine TL' ? come on the first word doesn't even match

like yeah its a slog to read sometimes, in both CN and EN and sometimes even JP when I'm curious on their take, because the verbosity is universal/in the source and translation/localisation is not a book to movie adaptation where you get to cut or dress-up all the parts you think are boring to your liking

it 1000% feels like, for the lack of time/aid/skill, the translators end up using machine TL for events, and that image you posted as an example feels like a prime candidate for that

fiammetta's file lines to this day are awkward and stunted because they're almost word for word machine TLs

Okay I was gonna wait a little while for this post but you hit the nail on the head.

My (apparently not-so) tinfoil hat theory about this game: nearly all of it is machine translated.

While reading Dorothy's Vision in preparation for Lone Trail, I came across a (probably infamous) stretch of critically story-relevant text that was not translated at all. A friend of mine directed me to the arknights story reader, where I looked into the EN translation and, yep, that's still Chinese. So I ran it through a Machine TL to get the jist of it. It was serviceable, a lot of the terms translated surprisingly well, but the moment to moment writing was obscured to me by the TL quality.

And in a moment of dread I realized it read EXACTLY like any old bit of Arknights story, and everything clicked. The problems I have always had with the sentence structure and word choice feeling strangely disjointed, lacking in logical flow--all of it showed up the same from this raw machine translation.

Y'all. We've been getting a poorly touched-up machine translation of the Chinese text this whole time. All the effort you have to put in to just figure out what's being said--it's not your fault, the story is not too smart for you, it's because you're being asked to read a machine translation, without the context that it will be rough and full of holes.. Everything that writing is--beyond merely conveying information or a sequence of events--we get none of that.

Think about all the nuance we missed of your favorite characters. Your favorite moments. How much of their nuance and depth did we miss?

How many other characters and moments did you dismiss or skim because the writing couldn't convey their emotional core? How many of those could have been as important to you as your current fave?

The fact that Kal'tsit comes across as unintelligible--does she instead sound wise and poetic, in the original?

How much of the full text of Arknights do you think is available to us? 80%? 40%? Who can say.

But I can say one thing. What we have now is not acceptable.