Posts by Chris Waugh
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Hard News: The sphere of influence, in reply to BenWilson,
Ben
Shift the vowel to something closer to Southern California and pronounce in fourth (falling - start high and slide the pitch down as you say the word, as if you're angry) and it becomes bèn, which in Mandarin could mean stupid, clumsy, awkward. Or go straight towards, in which case it's the first character in the transliteration of Benz, which is the name Mercedes cars go by in China. Third tone, běn, and it could be source, origin, or book (both measure word for book and the noun book), the second character in Japan (in both Chinese and Japanese, just pronounced differently in each language) 日本, or benzene. And the Chinese language being what it is, there are a multitude of other possibilities.
you guessed that I’m a Benjamin, you’d be wrong
That would seem to be the most common long form of Ben. My second guess, and it's the only other I can think of, is a name shared with a pope and a film star, and has a very good meaning, but an unfortunate final syllable for a young lad surrounded by other young lads looking for an excuse to run somebody else down.
One common Chinese mispronunciation of Chris comes out like curse (and my name is often misspelled with the r and i reversed), but what's most annoying is nobody seems to notice the obvious joke there - that the mispronunciation may well be more accurate from my students' point of view. Oh well.
-
Hard News: The sphere of influence, in reply to "chris",
has 8 official, and a total of 292 languages,
Is it that many? I didn't realise. But how does one get such a precise number of total languages when there's still so much discussion of how the Sinitic languages and dialects fit together...... I'd imagine there's a similar amount of grey area with the other languages, too, and Victor Mair did have a recent post at Language Log on the subject of linguistic diversity in Greater Tibet (though there is a lot of politics mixed up in it (beyond the obvious), as there always is with such things).
As for names, China has always been a bit more flexible than the West in such things, hasn't it? Still today Chinese kids are given a 小名 (xiǎomíng, a pet name for a baby or toddler, usually something cutesy involving a reduplicated character like Dingding or Dandan) often before they are given their "proper" name, and then there was a time when gents of certain classes would also have a 字 and a (or some) 号. Fast forward to modern times, and perhaps we could say that the internet has revived the 号, at least, in digital form? Pseudonyms are common enough outside the Chinese internet, and plenty hereabouts go by a pseudonym for a variety of reasons. The Chinese situation gives even stronger reasons for using pseudonyms and more drastic consequences, both official and non-governmental, for those who go by their real name or who are outed (by the infamous 人肉搜索, for example). But a very large part of it also seems to be about creating or expressing an identity in the online space.
Getting back to English names, yes, there is still a lot of the "stupid foreigner can't get my real name right, must give the barbarians an English name" attitude, and there are gazillions of problems with that, not least of which is the assumption that foreign=anglopone American and general ignorance of English naming conventions that results in phenomena from "Well, your English name is actually Spanish/German/Japanese/a language I can't identify except to say it's not English" to "Are you sure you really want to go around telling people, "Hi, I'm Simple", to worse.
There's also the imperialist side of things, with Westerners (still!) coming to China demanding that Chinese people have English names because they are too lazy to learn Chinese names. And yes, we've all heard all the arguments about creating the language environment, but.... none of my French, German, Russian or Chinese (yes!) teachers demanded I adopt a French, German, Russian or Chinese name (and granted that would've been as simple as dropping the final r and mimicing the appropriate accent for French and German, but still, the principle holds, and those teachers just called me Chris in their normal Anglophone accent even as they were speaking French or German), so on a personal level I don't buy that, and in any case the overwhelming majority of foreigners in China demanding Chinese people have English names are just plain too lazy and arrogant to learn their Chinese names.
But there are an awful lot of Chinese people who take an "English" name for a variety of other reasons. At the more negative end of the spectrum there's still that post-colonial insecurity and the desire to be Modern and therefore Western. But there are also more positive reasons about creating a certain persona for use in certain international contexts, and not with a view to obscuring or obfuscatiing anything, just a "here's who I am/the face I present to the world in this situation". We all do that, behaving differently when we're among family, friends, or colleagues, in a formal or informal situation, etc, it just seems to me that a lot of especially younger Chinese do that in part through the adoption of different names for different situations in both their online and offline lives, with English names being part of the mix.
And I resisted taking a Chinese name for a very long time, but for reasons that are irrelevant to this discussion, but just by way of full disclosure: I go by 王博 on my near-abandoned Kaixin001 account, on WeChat, and in real world situations where it may be more convenient than Chris, and I'm 红头发老爷们 on Weibo and its connected Sina blog.
As for Deyi Stone Shi, it certainly does look a bit suspicious if he's registering some companies as Deyi and others as Stone. But knowing nothing more about him than what's been appearing online over this whole sorry saga, I won't go speculating on the reasons for his choice of names.
I do have to say I like the Hong Kong approach of writing out names as 'Andy Lau Tak Wah', nice little combo of English and Chinese names and naming conventions - and always providing 汉字 for Chinese names, that's immensely useful too, not least because it helps those of us who read Chinese but speak Mandarin and not Cantonese talk about famous Hong Kongers with other Mandarin speakers.
-
Speaker: Sponsored post: Speed and Safety, in reply to WH,
My view is that we should use technology and good design to increase the speeds at which traffic can safely travel on New Zealand’s motorways, arterial routes and other non-residential roads. I would like to see New Zealand’s speed limits increased to reverse the effect of the reduction of the Police’s enforcement tolerances.
No. Firstly there's the obvious issues around fuel consumption and GHG emissions and where all the extra petrol is going to come from. Secondly - to what real benefit? I like having 120km/h speed limits on the faster expressways around here, but as has already been pointed out, it doesn't matter what you're maximum speed limit is it gets pretty boring pretty quickly when you're just cruising along. And realistically speaking, what does that extra speed really get? Even if by some miracle weather, smog and traffic conditions actually allowed me to travel at the maximum speed limit, would that really get me to my destination so much faster the time saved would outweigh the extra petrol burned? I very much doubt it. Also, it doesn't matter what fancy technology you've got, the same laws of physics still apply when you crash. There's no substitution for driver skill, but a lot of this fancy technology is allowing people to let their skills slide or just not develop. If money's going to be spent changing things, it should be spent toughening up driver training and law enforcement, not allowing people to race along in the ultimately false sense of security provided by the "knowledge" that all that fancy technology is going to keep them safe.
Which should not be taken as some mad Luddite rant. I do like cars to be as simple and low-tech as possible, but I also like fancy technology, and if technology can make driving safer it definitely should be used. But that fancy technology shouldn't be used as an excuse to go faster, not at all.
-
Speaker: Sponsored post: Speed and Safety, in reply to BenWilson,
It's surprising how boring going 240km/h can get on a really good road.
It's also surprising how such roads can lull you into a false sense of security. Two summers back driving out to Beidaihe and back I had to really careful because we were travelling along the Beijing-Harbin Expressway. The section through Tianjin was a bit bumpy, but otherwise, with three adults, a child, and gear for four days at the beach, and especially when the petrol tank was full, the road was so smooth and so safely designed that my super-light car (800+kg) that would normally feel a little light was cruising along happily at speeds that kept creeping up through 130 (speed limit 120, with a minimum of 110 in the fast lane in the Hebei sections). Which would've been fine given the quality of the road, except the quality of a few too many of the other drivers wasn't quite up to it. I reckon a lot of these fancy modern roads (and cars) are becoming so safe they're dangerous - drivers just don't need to develop anywhere near the level of skill needed to drive safely, just put it in D, plant foot and steer. Of course, an awful lot of drivers never developed that level of skill anyways, even back in the good old days when roads kept you on your toes and the adrenalin pumping.
-
Speaker: Sponsored post: Speed and Safety, in reply to Greg Wood,
8.2 metres is actually quite a long way into another person's car.
Roughly two car lengths into another person's car?
-
I hope this never becomes relevant in a NZ context, but it is amusing how they left it untranslated.
-
So poor Judith is the victim in all this:
"It is actually a forum where people can be very abusive towards me and I'm just not doing it."
Of course, none of the stress she is under has anything to do with her corrupt behaviour or dishonesty....
-
Hard News: The sphere of influence, in reply to Sacha,
I’d say the Chinese govt knew a very long time ago.
Trouble being the Chinese govt is very large and complex and made more large and complex by having twin govt and Party systems working side by side, so figuring out precisely who in which offices where knew what is a job I'll gladly leave to somebody else, hoping they have the time (and luck) to write it up and put it in the newspaper.
-
Hard News: The sphere of influence, in reply to Matthew Poole,
You reckon the “food safety” angle might be enough to get over the “A corrupt border official? *yawn*” factor?
Dunno.
1: Yes, food safety, and foreigners are easy targets, and Oravida could easily be portrayed as a 假洋牌 (fake foreign brand) because it's owned by Chinese people and only sells in China and so isn't really an NZ brand (and yes, that is all highly problematic, but others have been tarred with that brush for those reasons).
2: Just another corrupt official, but this administration is going after them with a vengeance, and it's extra juicy with foreigners and food safety involved. There's been lots more "so-and-so under double regulations/assisting the procurator/CDIC with their inquiries/arrested for corruption" stories in the media this year.
So I kinda hope it does break here, it'll be fascinating to see how it's played.
-
Hard News: The sphere of influence, in reply to BenWilson,
Social commentary right there.
Ah, yes, but all applicable to a different time and place, of course, just like 1984, a perfectly legal Chinese translation of which I could pick up for you at the campus newsagent.