Category Archives: Language questions

Random thought: push Zhuge Liang for Summerslam

As I stated earlier, one of my favorite pieces of Chinese-language media is the Three Kingdoms TV show.  The more I rewatch it, the more I remember one of it’s stand-out features: they REALLY want you to think Zhuge Liang is cool

Anyone anywhere who is at all a cool guy is consistently shown up by Zhuge Liang, who is not only the wisest and most capable general but is able to predict entire battles before they even happen.  Several characters outright state that Zhuge Liang is the Coolest Guy and Best Strategist, and those who think they’re better are always shown to be wrong before the episode is finished.  

Now in stories, this isn’t a bad thing, it makes the audience know that Zhuge Liang is a Cool Guy, and when well-executed it makes the audience like him BECAUSE he’s a Cool Guy.  But by necessity it can lead storylines down weird paths

Is wrestling there’s something calling “pushing” which is basically where you take a character and give them a lot of victories so the audience starts to like them.  Although audiences can root for underdogs, most underdog stories end in the heroes’ victory (just see every sports movie), so giving a character a bunch of wins lets the audience know that they are Cool and Competent and will definitely be important in the future, even if they’re still an underdog.  Conversely, characters who always lose are clearly not as special and good, unless the story focuses on their defeats and how they grow from those defeats (and start getting victories). When this is done well, the audience roots for exactly who you told them to root for and everyone is happy. When this is done poorly, sometimes a character can feel “overpushed,” when the audience gets sick of seeing them win all the time and wants to see someone else in the limelight instead.

When I watch Three Kingdoms, it feels like Zhuge Liang is being pushed for Summerslam.  He’s the smartest, he’s the best, and he needs to get a bunch of wins in a hurry to make up for lost time since he’s only just been introduced.  Not only does Liu Bei go through great lengths to recruit Zhuge Liang (indicating he’s super special and important), several characters all outright state that as a strategist, Zhuge Liang is far superior to any of the cool and competent characters we’ve met up until now.  He is routinely shown outsmarting Lu Su and Zhou Yu (his “rivals” from the Southlands) and masterminds the defeat of Cao Cao (his “rival” to the North). Zhou Yu in particular is shown to be a petty, insecure jerk constantly trying to one-up Zhuge Liang and then getting outsmarted like a mean principal in a kid’s show. To be blunt, I’m a bit tired of Zhuge Liang already, which makes me worried since I know he’s going to stay super duper important for a long time yet, I mean I visited his shrine in Cheng Du (the WuHouCi if you’re ever in the area).  I’m not sure why exactly I’m already tired of him, maybe it’s because he’s just too smart and it gets boring, or maybe I just perennially root for underdogs.  But while it’s still fun to watch the show and see what Zhuge Liang will get up to next, I’m a tiny bit more interested in the stuff I’m not seeing, but which I know happened in history.  I’d love to see more of Cao Pi (Cao Cao’s son who everyone agrees isn’t half as smart as his dad but eventually inherits everything anyway).  But everyone agrees Cao Pi is a moron so he’s not cool enough to get much focus yet.

Who is the “protagonist” of a narrative spanning over a century?

A few days ago I posted about my favorite Chinese-language media, and included in that list the Three Kingdoms TV show that can be watched on Youtube. The TV show is heavily based on the “Romance of the 3 Kingdoms” novel written hundreds of years ago, and I remember reading a(n abridged) version of the novel when I was in University.

One of the most interesting conversations I had was with a Chinese friend of mine who had read the book in middle school. I basically told him “I really like this book, and it’s got some cool characters like Cao Cao, he seems to be the main character.” My friend said “really? I remember Zhuge Liang being the main character.” At that point I hadn’t even met Zhuge Liang in the book so was confused. In the sections I read, Cao Cao was in many ways the driving force behind the narrative: he tried to assassinate Dong Zhou, he helped raise a rebel army, many of the plot threads were from his perspective as he warred across the Central Plain.

And yet my friend’s memory was correct, as soon as Zhuge Liang enters the narrative, HE is the clear protagonist of the story. He is very clearly shown as the smartest, wisest, most dedicated general, and anyone who is in any way cool will at some point get shown up by Zhuge Liang to prove that Zhuge Liang is even cooler. Perhaps his only drawback is that he is too smart, I remember a conversation sometime before the Battle of Red Cliffs where someone admonishes him to remember that not everyone understands what he’s saying or doing because they aren’t as smart as him.

But of course the narrative lasts a very long time, many of these characters grow old and die before it is finished. So in a long-running character-spanning narrative, how do you even define who the main protagonist is? I guess in a way you don’t, Three Kingdoms is more an ensemble cast of characters who rise and fall throughout the narrative, and that’s part of what makes it so great.

Language Post: my favorite Chinese media

Whenever I’ve studied a language, the most common advice I’ve been given is to consume as much media as possible in that language so that I can learn to use it naturally and with more fluency than how it is taught in a classroom. There are only so many hours in a day for in-class teaching, and most classes don’t have enough time to dedicate to actual language use, rather you spend most of your time studying the structure and fundamentals of the language so you can better pick up the language when you do use it, which the teacher hopes will be done outside the classroom. Also language, like most skills, operates on “use it or lose it,” and the more you use it (by consuming foreign-language media) the less likely you are to lose those lessons you picked up in the classroom.

But I live in a predominantly English speaking society, and don’t have much exposure to foreign-language media, so for a long time I didn’t know where or how I could find foreign language media. I’ve eventually found some media that I enjoy, and I’d like to share it so anyone else learning languages can also practice and enjoy. Pretty much all the media I’ve found is Chinese-language mainly, so if anyone has their own media from other languages, feel free to share.

In terms of TV, there was a long-running Chinese TV drama called Three Kingdoms, a retelling of the famous Romance of the Three Kingdoms novel. The whole TV show can still be watched on youtube for free, and is an excellent way to at least listen to some Chinese, even if the speaking style is old-fashioned.

For music, the band Transition is a really fun band made up of some English gentlemen living in Taiwan. They sing in Chinese but what’s also great is that as English speakers themselves, they have a bit of an “English accent” to their Chinese which is recognizable to me since that’s how all my friends spoke in Chinese class. I sometimes recognize a word sung by them where I wouldn’t recognize it otherwise because the accent is familiar.

For video games, Pokemon is actually a really good one, the 3DS games (and possible the newer ones too) usually have an option to pick your language settings before the game starts. The games are simple enough that you shouldn’t have a problem beating them even in a foreign language, and it gives you a lot of opportunities to read the language. I played Pokemon Ultra Sun in Chinese, which is also great as the story of that game is that your character is an immigrant from Kanto to Alola, and playing in a foreign language lets you roleplay some of the immigrant experience. The game also is noticeable for pretending your character has agency while never actually letting you talk, so I pretended I was someone who was unconfident in the language so didn’t speak as much.

For books, I actually haven’t found as many good ones. I’ve read a few Chinese/Taiwanese kids books as well as the first Harry Potter book in Chinese, but they don’t keep my interest as much as something like Pokemon. If anyone has any suggestions for good Chinese lit that’s accessible for a non-fluent foreign speaker, let me know.

I’ve decided to write a post in Chinese, just to see if I can

Go to the bottom to see my English translation of what I was trying to write

这些天我觉得我的学中文的时间无用。在高中学，我四年学了中文。大学的时候我在学了四年的中文。可是在美国我不可能用这个语文。我的同工不说，我的新闻不用，每一个我的美国的生活的东西是英文的，不是中文的。

可是我特别长的时候学了中文。我特别努力。我想用我的技能。我可以写一下，我可以说一下，可是听，看，都难死了。

我不知道要是这个是真的中文还是写错了的gibberish。我不知道很多有用的词，可是我怎么可以学新词？我已经说：我没有说中文的朋友，新闻，东西。

我试了一下看中文书。太难了，我的中文不太好。我不觉得太高兴了，也是写这个东西不太好的意思。下次我一定必须写关于别的话题。

These days I think my time studying Chinese was useless.  In High School, I studied Chinese for four years.  When I was in University I studied four more years of Chinese.  But in America I can’t use this language.  My coworkers don’t speak it, my news doesn’t use it, everything in my American life is English, not Chinese.

But I studied Chinese for so long.  I worked so hard.  I want to use my skills.  I can write a little, I can speak a little, but listening and reading are both too hard.

I don’t know if this is true Chinese language or incorrectly written gibberish.  I don’t know a lot of useful vocabulation, but how can I study new vocabulary?  I already said it: I don’t have friends, news, or things that use Chinese.

I tried a little to read Chinese books.  Too hard, my Chinese is not too good.  I don’t feel too happy, also writing this stuff isn’t too interesting.  Next time I definitely must write about a different topic.

Post 6

So all the previous posts were written during a single long plane ride. What am I going to write about now?

I’m always somewhat interested in how many elements of ancient languages can be seen retained by modern ones. The ancient Near East god Mot was the god of Death, and his name is strikingly similar to the modern Arabic word موت (mowt) meaning death. The words Jesus said on the cross (eli eli lama sabachthani) are conjugated much in the way that modern Arabic is as well. If “el” means god then “eli” means my god, and any modern Arabic speaker would understand if even if they would use a different noun for god. I learned to say lematha for “why” but lama seems recognizable as لما which would also mean why, and sabachthani is conjugated just as a modern word would be, except with a “tha” instead of a “ta”.

It’s somewhat striking to be able to find little bits and pieces of old languages that are still legible in this way, and it shows us just how much languages stay the same even if they change. Perhaps it’s also interesting to me because as a native English speaker I feel like we’re used to thinking about our language as being very very “new.” The “English” of Beowulf seems almost unrecognizable to a modern and bored schoolchildren still struggle with Shakespeare. Yet occasionally some ancient bits of Latin, German or French can be seen to contain a word or two which is recognizable due to its English descendant.

It’s an idea I’ve toyed with but don’t have any data for: is it measurable how fast languages changed in the past and are changing today? Has English changed particularly quickly in the last millennium, or are we English speakers just filled with exceptionalism? And if it did change faster than other languages, has that change slowed due to global English? Or has it sped up? I would hazard a guess that all languages have slowed their rate of change since the invention of movable type and later the radio. Moveable type fossilized many spellings and letter shapes that had before been more fluid. And radio itself probably smoothed out the differences between accents as everyone heard many of the same songs, the same broadcasts, the same speeches no matter where they lived. Likewise the ability to record our speech gives us a link to the past that other generations don’t have, and those influences probably slow the changing of our language even more.

I’d like to know how the rate of change of languages is calculated, and how that rate has changed, and what changes it. When the Greeks conquered the Near East they brought with them a lingua franca that would later be known as “Koine.” Did an influx of Near Eastern speakers cause this language to change faster than if it had stayed in Greece? Or did its status as a language for everyone cause it to change more slowly, since everyone had to understand each other?

If anyone knows where I can learn more about this, hit me up.