Is the Chinese good? The Korean?

啊现在看得见了！

cute! unfortunate! funny! (as long as you do understand the Chinese and can be warned!)

http://t.douban.com/view/photo/photo/public/p327233114.jpg

suansuanru 我看不见哦~

Actually, Japan culturally owes much to ancient Korea because the Korean peninsula was one of main routes of transferring Chinese culture to Japan in ancient times. In this sense, argument such as "Korea gave birth to Japanese civilization" contains some truth.

If this kind of argument is justified, you could say, by the same token, that Japan gave birth to Korean modernization, because Korean people accepted western culture and techniques mainly through Japan between the end of the 19th century and the late 20th century.

I believe Korean people love to talk about their ancestor's contributions to Japan, but NOT about Japanese influence seen in modern Korean society, hehe. As you say, the history of cultural exchange is actually much more complicated than these simplified arguments.

Agreed, and a lot of nationalism embedded in the scholarship. I find a lot of energy goes into finding arguments to justify the inductive reasoning that "explains" how Korea gave birth to Japanese civilization or vice-versa. I subscribe to neither theory. It seems more likely to me that both civilizations were influenced by similar foreign powers (Chinese being the most recent), but I also think its quite plausible that there were cultures preexisting on the Korean peninsula and the Japanese archipelago that predated most of those influences and could possibly have been completely unrelated. Either way, it's undeniable that there are similarities between the cultures and languages that suggest mutual influences at different points in history; however, at the same time, the differences would be hard to explain by mere cultural-linguistic divergence over time. In the beginning, I'd presume, there were either two very different cultures that somehow converged slowly over time, or there were "brother" cultures that were seperately influenced by other foreign sources. I guess I'm being quite abstract. I don't, regrettably, know much about the actual history, but from what I've seen of linguistic comparison, there's obviously a very complex history there that is not easily explained by any existing scholarly work that I'm aware of.

Hi maktubhelou

Thanks a lot for your real-world information. That's just interesting.

As for Chinese honorifics, I also don't know much about it, but probably selection of words and characters is very important especially in feudal times. For example, you can show respect by using some respectful words such as “恭候”，“恭请” and “恭贺”. Furthermore, there were more kinds of personal pronouns used in classical Chinese than in modern Mandarin, some of which have different nuance from each other. Below are some examples.

I .... 予，余，台，朕，吾，我，寡人，臣，妾

You .... 你，尔，汝，若，乃，戎，君，公，子

As for your "sponge" theory, yeah, I agree it's very plausible. The problem is, as far as historical records concern, Japanese can only date back one thousand and several hundred years, just around the same time Chinese culture/literature started to flow in Japan in full swing.

So unfortunately enough, it's not easy to prove your theory. The situation is much worse in Korea, since there is only very scarce information about Korean language before the 15th century, when Korean alphabets were finally invented.

Exactly. You're dead on the nail when it comes to the arguments in soap operas. It always kind of strikes me as funny. I'll also never quite get used to my friends who are one year younger than me speaking to me in "존댓말" (respectful language). It always feels odd for me. Though, I certainly don't mind an affectionate "형" (Older brother) or "오빠" (Older brother, when said by a girl) used instead of my name, or in addition to it. I even find myself a little put off if younger people don't use it when they first address me, if we've just met. And by younger I mean 25 when I'm 27. It's amazing how a culture can influence you.

To be fair though, among most of my friends, we freely use 반말 (casual language or "low-speak") irrespective of age amongst each other. On soap operas, you tend to see a more conservative side of Korea. As for shops, I'd even personally be offended if the shopkeeper used 반말 (casual) when addressing me. There's only one place it happens, 동대문 (Dongdaemun) and I always reply with a quick "너 몇 살이야?" (How old are you?) if the person is clearly younger than I am.

So, to related this back to Chinese, I realize there are few distinctions other than 你/您 but I'm wondering if Chinese once had more such words to address people of different social ranking in more Confucian-influenced times? Does anyone know? I'm actually beginning to suspect that most of the honorifics in Korean and Japanese existed long before any Confucian values were spread to those countries - in other words they were both "sponges" ready to absorb the Confucian culture, which already fit pretty well with an existing patriarchal system. Any thoughts? This is mere speculation on my part, I'd be happy to be enlightened.

Hi maktubhelou

I've never lived in Korea, but judging from conversations used in Korean soap operas, your observation is very right. For example, a daughter uses honorifics even when she fiercely quarrel with her mother, which is not the case in Japan. Also, they say that some young Korean people use honorifics even in a fight on the street if they are younger than their opponents, although it might be a little exaggerated story, hehe.

Honorifics are very important both in Korean and in Japanese, but there is a big difference between the usages in the two languages. On the whole, honorifics are more commonly heard in Korea than in Japan, because you're basically always required to use honorifics for whoever is older than you in Korea. In Japan, you can speak casually, for example, with a shop clerk even if he/she is older than you, but not in Korea.

In modern Japan, children usually don't use honorifics for their parents and grandparents, which is regarded as outright rudeness in Korea. In Japan, you don't have to use honorifics, e.g. when referring to your boss in conversation with other people, but in Korea you always need to use honorifics for your boss even before your customers. In short, Korean society is more influenced by Confucianism than Japanese society is.

Sorry maktubhelou--I reposted so I think you can see the photo now. The Japanese is like minimum-level formal (it could stand a little improvement grammar-wise, as Changye and I have said up there). As you know Japanese is like Korean in that way, we can't really omit honorifics or speak in chummy language with the customers even if we are a generally friendly establishment.

Ah, I've just realized the original was in Japanese, which changes things a bit. The original, I imagine, was probably pretty formal.

I can't see the original either, but I noticed you said that the store wouldn't have used that level of formality. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I doubt that it's possible to express this any less formally in Korean. It's a public message so therefore the honorifics are prety much mandatory. If you left them out, Koreans would find it very strange.

A similar phenomenon occurs in Korean dubbing of English (Chinese?) films where the a teenager says something like "Yo Mom, what's up?" and the Korean subtitles read "어머님, 뭘 하세요?" (Mother, what are you doing? replete with the required honorifics that even the most conservative Koreans would be satisfied with) While it's true that not everyone communicates this way, in most public communication they tend to lean towards the conservative side.

In short, it's not really possible to be "casual" in Korean given the strict linguistic adherence to social hierarchies and formalities.

Changye, I'd love to hear your take on this and your comparison to Japanese.

Hi zhenlijiang

The wording in the Japanese translation might be a little too polite, hehe. Actually, honorific expressions in Japanese are more "deep" (or complicated) than those in Korean.

Thanks Changye! wow I see ... this particular shop would probably not have such a tone! They carry casual wear and their customers are generally young. They have the kind of fitting rooms that have batik curtains as doors. They also have little signs asking the customers to think twice before they shoplifted--haha, wonder how that one would be phrased in this extremely deferential language!

* Thank you also for the Korean / Latin alphabet converter. I'll give it a try later.

Hi zhenlijiang

Let me translate the Korean sentence into Japanese. As for English translation, I'll leave it to you, hehe.

고객(顧客)님께서는 저희 매장(売場)에 있는 옷들을 한번 입어보실 때, 저희 매장직원(売場職員)에게 연락(連絡)을 해주시기바랍니다.

お客様におかれましては、手前どもの売り場の衣類をお召しの際、販売員までお申し付け下さいますようお願い申し上げます。

Hey suansuanru--thanks for doing that (pls thank your Korean friend for me!). I wish I could read it!

Hi suansuanru

Thanks a lot for the 地道的 Korean translation, although I feel it's a little too long, hehe. Please say hello to your Korean friend!

I`m living in Xi`an.It`s in north of China.

The public restroom is for 人妖, perhaps.

谢谢baba和小凉的解释。

misculine--cute!

Yes. Well. -ish. Toilets usually say "male", or "men". Masculine is a label for the gender, not a title...

bingo..you betcha

..some mistakes are more unfortunate than others. This one has a couple of possibilities:

there's a mis[s] in there [as in 小姐】...so is this loo for effeminate males [or girly men as Jenny likes to call em]?

is it short for miscellaneous? come one come all,hehe [though that's probably more of a stretch]

is Masculine correct?

Baba 真的很 literate! 佩服！ Despite everything wrong with this English you read on, and read in. Yes of course what they mean to say is hey, don't just go and use the fitting room--you got to ask us first (but much more politely).

I divide my head

Doh! Cheers mate, I multiply my thanks!

Yes it's the "multiply" and "by" that made a disaster out of this "translation". When are people going to get it, that machines can't do this work?

Well, I've had this problem since shortly after I got here, so about 5 months, and I live in the same province as tal. Though I have never been teased like that before, and access on my phone is new, so I was surprised to see photos there. I've been experimenting with VPNs, but haven't found a good one yet. A friend gave me a recommendation, so I will have to try that.

New firewall? That might explain all the Skype-problems I experienced yesterday with China-connections.

They are toying with us orangina. Actually, I have found that sometimes photos take a while to appear - I had that problem with channelle's cats in front of the heater. But disappearing suddenly? Well, that happened once when Changye put up a few photos for me - the GFW police took about three minutes to see them and then they were gone, never to reappear.

Maybe they are testing new firewall systems - the Press yesterday says that they are going to stamp down harder on unwanted material.

On the photo issue, I rarely see photos on chinesepod these days. (I also cannot see any pictures on wikipedia.) Every now and again I will see one, but I see none of the ones posted here. Strangely though I could see bodawei's Journey to the West/snowboarder on my phone. (So small I didn't realize it was a snowboarder, but could immediately see that it (the snowboarder) was the Monkey King. But! using my phone as a modem, I still cannot see those same photos on my laptop. So I don't know what to say folks!

Hold that thought! I can see the photos in this post now! This is crazy.... I'll have to go check some others.

And they are gone! They were visible for literally the time it took me to type the last sentence plus 3 seconds of viewing time. Then without my touching anything they just disappeared!

Hi zhenlijiang

I'm not diligent enough to convert Korean alphabets into Latin alphabets by myself, hehe, so let me introduce you an online "Korean/Latin alphabets" converter.

http://www.kawa.net/works/ajax/romanize/hangul-e.html

哈哈。。

那云南是先进的文明国家吗？ 我多半同意，hee hee.

Changye--I know this is a lot of trouble--whenever you have time is there any way you could romanize the "corrected" Korean for us?

I can see it now - how very strange. So photobucket is working again for me. I now have photos in at least half a dozen locations on the Internet - that is 麻烦。

Thanks for your comments about Signs - I am building up enthusiasm for posting ...

Hi bodawei

As usual, I can't see the photo in your 维吾尔语 thread. 哎呀，东北地区太落后了，呵呵。

Bodawei I guess you were away traveling when I made this post. Maybe you want to advertise your 牌子 group? I enjoy those posts of yours.

http://chinesepod.com/community/conversations/post/8645

Hm so Changye can't see Flickr and you can't see photobucket? 好麻烦！

Oh no suansuanru. Now that Changye and I agree the Japanese also needs to be fixed up, that means nothing written on this sign is good!

Marie-san

As far as blocking concerns, the PRC has very sophisticated and state-of-the-art techniques. "Time shift blocking" and "regional blocking" are as easy as 一二三！

Changye & Zhenlijiang

I have posted a photo of a revolutionary slogan poster in my Signs group (it took me a good ten minutes to find my own Group). :) It includes some 维吾尔语 .. to make it challenging a 维吾尔 guy told me that 维吾尔语 is not standard Arabic script, it includes some unique characters.

Changye you're not alone. And I agree also. お声掛けください is probably "modern" but also a mis-use, of Japanese. I'll go edit my post.

http://nplll.com/mutter/archives/2008/04/post_1906.php

So you can see the photo now--? I didn't put these photo on Flickr, because the last time I did you weren't able to see them. And now Bodawei can't see? It's a time-shift kind of block is it? Very strange.

Hi zhenlijiang

Thanks, now I can see the photo. I feel the Korean translation is also "disastrous". I would say "시착하실때 스태프 한테 연락해 주십시요", and I think at least this makes sense, but I don't know if it's a natural way to say it in Korean.

Hi Zhenlijiang

In this case it is not Changye's behaviour that is the problem. ;-) I cannot see the photo either - Flickr works for me. How come Changye can see the English.. aaah .. he is just looking at tal's post.

On this topic (sort of) .. I was in Xinjiang for a week over the May holidays. At present the Internet is entirely cut off from the rest of the world! So it is really a Xinjiang intranet. Used mainly for playing games? Also I took a few photos of Uighur translations of revolutionary posters - I would love to know if they are 'machine translated' - do any poddies read Uighur I wonder? i imagined them saying something quite different to the Chinese, with most Chinese people blissfully ignorant. :)

changye is right,the chinese part is unnatural.

Hi zhenlijiang

The Japanese phrase "お声掛けください" sounds somewhat strange to me. Is that a modern way to say "声をお掛けください" in Japan now? If so, I'm afraid I need to learn Japanese from scratch.....

I don't think “請尋求服務員協助” is natural Chinese, even though local people would understand what it means. Perhaps something like “请告知服务员” might be more appropriate, although I'm not sure about that. I've never seen such a sign here in China in the first place, hehe.

As for the English translation, in a sense, it's very precisely translated word by word. I love "the sense of humor" very much.

I believe the Korean translation is not as disastrous as the English one.

No! I have to open yet another account with a different image hosting site?

(Changye I think it must be just in your 小区 as Bodawei has said before. What have you done, to get your privileges restricted--?)

The Japanese:

ご試着の際は、スタッフまでお声掛けください。

The Chinese:

使用前請尋求服務員協助

The Korean sorry I don't know how!

OK and I said the Japanese was "all good", but strictly speaking it's probably a case of "too much kanji". You can see where the problems with the English came from.