New year, old media [涨 as 2010 ‘character of the year’]
I don’t think it’s linguistic ignorance on Michael Meyer’s part. With a byline that reads “author of The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Back Streets of a City Transformed“, it’s safe to guess Meyer knows his Chinese scripts: Hanzi and Pinyin. So then why, oh why, does his New York Times opinion piece about inflation, which tells its story via the character 涨 (zhǎng as in zhǎngjià 涨价, “rise in price”) — a character the article says was voted the netizen’s choice for 2010 — not print said character even once in the article, even as a graphic?
Sure, maybe local rags like the NYT don’t have the typesetting equipment to handle hieroglyphics. But are you telling me they couldn’t handle a few tone marks in the Pinyin, at least, for the Hanyu-studying kids in the 3% of US elementary schools that are offering Chinese, who almost certainly have a grasp of Pinyin? At least that would give users of Pinyin-based dictionaries a fighting chance at finding the right zhǎng among the 38,000 zhang syllable possibilities.
Complain, complain. To tell the truth, though, I could live without the foreign scripts — I mean, I realize it’s the US. It’s my native land. I understand the reluctance to broach foreign languages and scripts with an audience that mostly doesn’t remember even voy vas va from their one year of college Spanish. The kind of practice we see with the NYT and “zhang” is a form of dubbing in print and I might as well get used to it.
What’s genuinely worth ranting about, though, is the lack of linking. You cite an online study and don’t link to it?! Oh, sorry, that’s right: I’m supposed to get all my news from the Gray Lady and nothing else is fit to print.
In any case, happy inflationary New Year! And just for fun, here’s a link with a bit more on that 涨 thing. [Warning: target article contains inscrutable hieroglyphics.]
Also, did you notice in the article “Primero hay que aprender español. Ranhou zai xue Zhongwen.” the use of “zai” instead of “cai”? I loved the article but I was shocked to consider a misspelling in a title of the NYT. Then I thought maybe it is simply that proofreading beyond linguistic borders is a different deal for them, or maybe they joke’s on me because I misunderstood the use of romanized Chinese.
Really, it’s more likely they just meant/used 然后在学中文, which I think doesn’t quite match the first, but.. my Chinese is bad, and my Spanish worse.
Shaday: thanks for pointing to that article. Interesting. I hadn’t seen it — shoulda mentioned I avoid reading pretty much all newspapers
when I can get away with it. Anyway, here’s a link to “Primero hay que aprender español. Ranhou zai xue Zhongwen” for those of you who were confused, like me.
Re the “zai” — Tim’s got the right idea. Should be a 再 instead of a 在, but the basic usage is to serve the same purpose as “before” in this case. In fact, I find the ABC Dictionary has this example: 吃完饭再看电视 = eat dinner *then* watch TV.
Ah, I’d thought it was the “X–ing” 在， making it something like “After (that) we’re studying Chinese”, –thinking that the Spanish is “First we’re learning Spanish” but not 100% sure
The Spanish part means “First one should study Spanish”. So the whole mixed-language sentence is something like “One should first study Spanish, and then later study Chinese.”