Reduplication in Chinese

Hi everyone, welcome to Office Hours with the Brofessor: the show where I say things. Today I'd like to discuss something cool that I've been noticing in the Chinese language: reduplication.

Before we get started, I'd like to send a big shout out to my friend and coworker Manny Gomez, who's heading back to the States today after a whopping seven years in China! That's a long time to be here. Pretty incredible. Awesome working with you dude, and I'll do my best to get out and see you in Virginia when I'm in the States later this year. Thank you also for a year's worth of listening and advice! It's really meant a lot to me how you were always willing to listen and offer advice when I had something to gripe about.

So to start today's discussion, what is reduplication? Reduplication is a linguistic process whereby a word, or part of a word, is repeated. This could be for a variety of reasons, for example adding emphasis. In English, for instance, we can say "this coffee is really, really good," to indicate that this coffee has surpassed mere really-goodness and achieved something even greater!

Chinese likes reduplication. You hear it all the time. To continue the coffee example, for "really, really good" we could say in Chinese 好好喝 hao3hao3he1—literally "good good drink". It's also used to make nouns diminutive, and as such is used in Chinese nicknames. Take for example a close Chinese friend of mine, whose name is 静 Jing4 but is called Jingjing ("quietquiet") by friends. My name in Chinese is 白西 Bai2Xi1 "White West". The nice old lunch lady at the school where I work calls me Xixi as a cute nickname.

We can also reduplicate verbs in Chinese for roughly the same effect as English "take a (action). For example if I want to say "let me take a look" I could say 给我看看 gei2 wo3 kan4kan4, literally "give me looklook".

There's also a lot of what I like to call "semantic reduplication". That is, even if a word itself is not reduplicated, its meaning is. Let's look at a few cases:

• 朋友 –peng2you3. Peng2 and you3 both mean "friend". A fair translation of this compund word could be something like "friendpal".
• 睡覺 –shui4jiao4 could be translated along the same lines as "slumbersleep". It should be noted that the second part of this word, jiao4 has several meanings, only one of them being sleep.
• 思想 –si4xiang3—both parts individually meaning to think about something. I like to translate the compound as "ponderthink".

Cool stuff. Now, why in the world does Chinese do this?

My personal hypothesis is that English would too, if it had the same number of homophones as Chinese.

Take, for example, names. When we introduce ourselves in Chinese, we say not only our names, but also how to write them. Mine is not a particularly orthodox Chinese name, but it does sound like my name in English and describes me pretty well. So when I introduce myself, I do it like this: "My name is Bai2 Xi1. That's Bai2, as in the color white, and Xi1 as in east-to-west." The reason I have to explain is because in Chinese, the same sound could be a lot of different words, even down to the tone. That is, Bai2Xi1, even as opposed to, say, Bai1Xi4, has a lot of meanings, and "White West" isn't necessarily the first combination one would think of. My given name ("first name") in Chinese is 西 Xi1 "west"...but the same Xi1 sound could mean, variously:

• 俙 Xi1 "pretend"
• 傒 Xi1 "servant"
• 僖 Xi1 "joy"

...along with 156 other things(1).

So, when I say my given name is Xi1, it's anyone's guess as to which of the 159 different Xi1's it could be.

The same principle is true in conversation. Of course, context can help us. If I'm at Starbucks, and I say cha2 it's more likely that I'm referring to 茶 cha2 "tea" rather than 垞 cha2 "small mound or hillock" (2). This is why lots of language learners, not just of Chinese, find it difficult to use a foreign language on the phone—there's no visual context, and visual/situational context is important!

Even in a face-to-face conversation, sometimes context and meaning are difficult to work out. That's where semantic reduplication comes in! Let's look back at the above example 睡覺 shui4jiao4 "slumbersleep". By itself and without looking at the written symbol, shui4 could mean up to seventeen different things(3), one of which is 睡shui4 "sleep". Similarly, jiao4 could mean forty-eight things(4), one of which is 覺 jiao4 "to sense, perceive, wake up, or go to sleep". Therefore, by saying "shui4jiao4" it becomes clear which of the many variants I mean to use. Shui4 and jiao4 both mean a lot of different things by themselves, but if we put them together we can logically jump to the meaning held in common by both.

So that's why, I think, this cool phenomenon of reduplication is such a big deal in Chinese, and why, even if we don't reduplicate a word itself, we very often reduplicate the meaning. We beat homophones with synonyms.

This richness of reduplication is one of the coolest, most beautiful treasures of the Chinese language that I've found so far. The more I learn, the deeper my appreciation of this richness becomes. Cool stuff. So anyway, that's all for today, see you next time!

Sources:

1. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/xi1

2. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%9E%9E#Chinese

3. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/shui4

4. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/jiao4

Bi Yourself: Also, Bro Rocks out to Journey

Today I’d like to show you something really cool that I recently got: a traditional Chinese jade disk. Of course, that by itself doesn’t sound very impressive. What’s so cool about a jade disk, you might ask?

This unassuming ornament, called a bi 璧 in Standard Chinese, is just a trinket at first glance. However, it carries enormous historical weight, and through it we hear the whispered voices of the sages and shamans of a time long forgotten. This symbol was ancient when the blocks of the pyramids were quarried. Between the fifth and second millennia BC this was a ritual object used in burials, placed on the chest or stomach of the deceased. It appears that they represented in some way the sky or heaven. Consider the circular shape centered on a hollow point—it is not difficult to see the parallel to the night sky spinning around the North Star:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxGEVIvSFeY

This is my (second) favorite Journey song. This song rules so much. In this song they tap into something extremely ancient and primordial in the human conception of heaven and earth. The neolithic shamans and Journey had the same idea—one expressed it with jade, the other with Dad music.

In placing the bi on the abdomen of the deceased, my personal hypothesis is that it must have served as a kind of conduit for the soul. The soul would ascend to heaven by passing through the aperture of the bi—and by extension, through the cosmos by means of the North Star.

The oldest jade disks found date from around 7000 years ago, a fairly close temporal and spatial match to the Proto-Sino-Tibetans. The design and concept may well have been familiar to them. It is worth mentioning that in both Chinese and Tibetan mythology, people were said to have been able to ascend to and descend from heaven as they wished, connected by a kind of cosmic string. In light of these legends, along with the use of bi, I can’t help but think of traditional Ket cosmology, wherein people are linked, by a spiritual umbilical cord, to the sky...or, more specifically, to the North Star.

Spooky. Might be a coincidence, but if not we may be seeing in the bi one expression of a cultural traditon going deep into the palaeolithic. We too can become stewards of this tradition: and, as a proud bi owner, it’s now my job to keep on passing these ancient whispers, so we can remember the places, things, and ideas that made us who we are today.

Origins of Chinese Civilization, Part X: The Mandate of Heaven

Sup bozos, welcome back to Office Hours with the Brofessor: the Show where I say things. This episode is about something we’ve already talked about a little bit, but really deserves its own video: the Mandate of Heaven. So, let’s get started.

The year is 1046 BC. The corrupt Shang dynasty has fallen, and a new dynasty, the Zhou, has risen in its place. The bloodthirsty Shang regime’s victims could finally rest in peace.

But not everyone was happy with the new management. There were still a few Shang loyalists hanging around—probably guests at the last Shang king’s epic pool parties. They weren’t too thrilled about the new dynasty. “The Shang are ordained by heaven to rule,” they said. “You guys have no right to overthrow them. And no right to drain the beer pool. At least keep the beer pool.”

That’s when the Zhou king’s brother, the Duke of Zhou, stepped up to the mic. The Duke of Bro, as I like to call him, is not to be confused with his brother, King Wu of Zhou, or with king Zhou of Shang, whom they’d just overthrown. Confusing, I know. Sorry. Anyway, the Duke of Bro defended his brother’s regime against the loyalists by elaboration a doctrine that would shape the next three thousand years of Asian history: the Mandate of Heaven(1).

Through its excesses and depravity, the Duke claimed, the Shang dynasty had lost heavenly favor—and with it, the right to rule. The heavenly right—nay, the command—to rule had passed to the most qualified candidates: the house of Zhou. Therefore, the Zhou had simply carried out Heaven’s will in supplanting the Shang, just as—five hundred years earlier—the Shang had supplanted the Xia. The Mandate remained in effect only so long as a dynasty governed responsibly—every dynasty, eventually, would grow corrupt, wane, and be replaced(2). The Zhou dynasty would continue for eight centuries, the longest in Chinese history, but even it was not immune. When it finally did fall, it was to a mighty warlord who emphasised his heavenly legitimacy by taking for himself the title of 帝di4 “emperor”. This was a title previously used only to refer to the legendary pre-Xia rulers of the distant past, and eschewed by Xia, Shang and Zhou rulers in favor of the more modest wang2 “king”. The new emperor, having overthrown Zhou, set up a powerful but short-lived dynasty known as the Qin. It is this name, some scholars posit, that entered Latin by way of Persian as “Sinae”--later Anglicized as “China”.

So, that’s the story of how China got started. Let me know what you think, or if you feel like I left out anything important. Up next, we’ll just be having a bit of a conclusion and summary of what we’ve discussed in this video. So, everyone take care and I’ll see you next time!

Sources:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_of_Zhou

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandate_of_Heaven

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qin_dynasty

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warring_States_period

Origins of Chinese Civilization, Part IX: The Beer Pool

Hey everybody, welcome back to Office Hours with the Brofessor: the Show Where I Say Things. Today we’re going to talk about the fall of the increasingly depraved and corrupt Shang dynasty. Last time we discussed how, if you didn’t happen to be a member of the Shang aristocracy, you stood a pretty good chance of getting ritually sacrificed to appease the spirits. Now we’ll talk about how this bloody and cruel regime finally met its end.

The last Shang king, named Zhou (i.e. “Zhou of Shang) reigned during the 11^th century BC. He wasn’t a good guy. Remember the last king of the Xia dynasty, who liked to get drunk and make people give him horsey rides? This guy makes him look like Santa Claus.

Let’s start with the beer pool. Not content with being just another run-of-the-mill alcoholic, Zhou went so far as to actually make a swimming pool and fill it up with beer. In the middle of the pool he made an island with trees planted on it. From the trees were hanging skewers of barbecued meat, presumably so that he could eat back the calories that he burned doing beer-laps.

Now I don’t know about you, but I think that sounds like a pretty good idea for a fraternity party.  And while it does sound like an epic rager that would be the talk of the dining hall on Monday, it wasn’t exactly kingly behavior. One day, King Zhou’s advisor confronted him on it. He said, “Look your highness, this is pretty decadent, even by Shang standards.”

But Zhou would have none of it. “What an upright man you are!” he said. “Let’s find out what the heart of an upright man looks like(1).” So he killed the dude and ripped his heart out, straight up Temple-of-Doom Aztec Style.

That was it. His vassals weren’t going to just sand back and watch their friend get be-hearted. So, in 1046 BC, they decided to fight back at the decisive Battle of Muye(2). The rebels were led by the valiant king Wu of Zhou--not to be confused with his enemy, King Zhou of Shang! Although the rebels only had fifty thousand troops against the Shang’s seven hundred thousand, their morale was high and their hearts were brave! It must have seemed unreal to the doomed Shang king as his mighty force crumbled before a relative handful. As the conquering heroes closed in on his palace, the king decided to deny the victors the satisfaction of killing him themselves. In the end he burned his palace down, with himself inside(3). Zhou of Shang would later become so reviled by history that his very name would be changed later records to 纣 zhou4 “crupper”--that is, the part of a saddle that’s strapped to a horse’s butt(4).

The once-mighty Shang had fallen. A new dynasty would rise, with the heroic Wu of Zhou at its head. Learn more about them next time, on Origins of Chinese Civilization, Part IX: The Mandate of Heaven. See you next time!

Sources:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Zhou_of_Shang#Late_reign

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Muye

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Zhou_of_Shang#Fall

4. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%B4%82#Chinese

5. http://www.lishiquwen.com/news/538.html (Image)

Origins of Chinese Civilization, Part VIII: The Dark Side of the Shang Dynasty

Hello friends, welcome back to Office Hours with the Brofessor: The Show Where I Say Things. Today we’ll be delving into something a little more sinister: the dark side of the Shang dynasty...and how!

Most of what we know about the Shang dynasty today comes from their capital at modern Anyang, in east-central China’s Henan province. Given the richness of documentary and material evidence recovered from the Anyang site, it appears that the 13^th century BC represented the apogee of Shang power. This was a civilization that, finally, had all of the trappings of a historical Chinese dynasty: ritual, stratification, urbanization, and now the written word.

All this talk about the cool stuff from the Shang dynasty might lead one to think it was a pretty cool time to be around. It wasn’t. Although the Shang got off to a good start, life under the dynasty’s later kings wasn’t exactly Woodstock.

Of course things were pretty good if you happened to be the king or one of his buddies, but for the other 99% of the population life seems to have been pretty rough. For one thing, the Shang upper crust seems to have been pretty keen on human sacrifice, often using highly creative methods(1—don’t read if you’re eating). Sacrificed and decapitated skeletons in the hundreds have been excavated from Shang royal tombs:

It appears that life was cheap to the Shang aristocracy, and commoners were seen as little more than livestock, fuel for the twin engines of food productions and ritual.

In part five I showed you a picture of an extremely disturbing Shang-dynasty axehead. Just in case you haven’t had any good nightmares lately, here it is again:

(2)

Good gravy. It looks like something from a DnD campaign run by Tim Burton. Whoever made this thing needs therapy.

Imagine the cruel grin on the axe gleaming red in the firelight as it rises and falls from one helpless victim to the next. Blood drips from its greedy maw as it drinks the life of a new sacrifice. The executioner—Fu Hao, we talked about her last time—is a beautiful woman, swaying back and forth in her trance. Her hands purple with gore, she kneels before a fire, scratching arcane sigils onto a bone. Three thousand years later, that very bone is again held in human hands, and the mysterious carvings thereon are read once more. The blood is gone, but the innocent bones filling the Shang tombs remain. And they cry out to us over the chasm of history at the cruelty of their fate; and though in this life their suffering went unrewarded, we can hope that in the hereafter they have found rest.

So we have human sacrifice, axes with monster faces, a beautiful but deadly war-queen, and to top it all off they write on bones. This sounds like something out a fantasy novel, but it’s history! From the 13^th century BC on, the Shang dynasty gradually waned in power and waxed in decadence and cruelty. If the later records are any indication, what was already a dark and brutal society got darker and brutal-er:

The Shang dynasty, or at least the late portion of it, became something less in line with “splendorous ancient civilization” and more “Dark Eldar from Warhammer 40k”. So, to my friends with time machines, if you’re planning a trip I would rethink that.

But, the eventual fate of all tyrannical regimes is to fall, sooner or later, and the Shang were no exception. Next time we’ll be talking about the collapse of the Shang, so I hope you’ll look forward to it. See you then!

Sources:

1. http://international.uiowa.edu/files/international.uiowa.edu/files/file_uploads/ wangpingMethodsofHumanSacrificeinShangNEWEDITION.doc

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shang_dynasty#/media/File:CMOC_Treasures_of_Ancient_China_ exhibit_-_bronze_battle_axe.jpg

3. http://alicia-hardlydead.blogspot.hk/2012/03/dynasty-of-shang.html