Re-learning Arabic numerals
A quick post during another of my few breaks these days. I just dug this up from my photos as I clean my hard drive out. No one ever teaches you how to deal with numbers when you’re getting ready to head to China for the first time. Sure, 一二三四 is all well and good, and maybe even banking numerals are covered in your undergrad Mandarin class, but 1G.P?
Right. 18.9. This is actually very typical in China. The 8 is less common, but 9 looking like P is ubiquitous.
Spend a day in Shanghai and you’ll see it in the paint-pet graffiti phone numbers advertising fake documents that gets scrawled all over any concrete surface. I used to correct this when I taught in Nanjing, trying to get my students to write 9 differently when working in English, for the same reason that walk shouldn’t sound like work if you want native English speakers to really understand you.
In Mandarin, of course, it’s up to the foreigner to figure it out.
It goes both ways
you didn’t mention that for Chinese to understand our numbers … we’ve got to write 4 with the top connecting. I’m devious and always ALWAYS intentionally wrote the normal open-topped 4.
that’s a great point. I’d forgotten how often I’d experienced that. in fact I don’t think I’d even ever talked to anyone about 4 before, but it’s definitely exactly as you say.
I’ve heard the 9 explained as to make it more different from 4, actually. Never seen that 8 though.
I’ve also seen 8 as two circles with space between them, but only once or twice I think.
I write my 7s with the bar thingy through them. However you say that. Chinese people never fail to ask.
This is not confined to Chinese. The 7 with the bar through it is pretty European for me, and it’s written that way to distinguish 7 from 1, which Europeans write with a little ‘cap’ (rather long and downward sloping) that could lead to confusion with 7.
The Japanese write 7 with a little downstroke at the very left of the top stroke. It looks like a little Chinese character flourish (if made with a brush it would look like a dot) and obviously tries to follow the printed form, which has a serif at that position. I use it and people never fail to understand it, despite the fact that it probably doesn’t look ‘standard’.
I’ve had my cursive script corrected by a Chinese teacher-in-training. I think it was my ‘z’, which was written wrongly according to what they are taught in China. So writing in pinyin isn’t just a matter of using the roman alphabet — there are rules about how that alphabet is written, and you can’t just assume that it can be written any old way.
Certainly I never meant to suggest this is a Mandarin/English thing. It’s a universal thing. the barred
7is more European to me as well, as my European family members all use it while not all my American family members do.I’d say there are conventions and one can assume it could be written any old way. One just needs to know it may have an impact on how you’re understood. I’ll write my 5s to look like S until the day I die. People can gather from the context that 30S-93S2 is 305-9352 considering they asked for a phone number or whatever. If they can’t, I’m not sure my number writing style is their most urgent problem.
When I said there were rules, I wasn’t necessarily agreeing. I was more referring to the attitude of the 师范大学 student who corrected me.
sorry, which 师范大学 student do you mean? if it’s me, then I guess I don’t follow.
No, I was referring to a 师范大学 student (a ‘teacher-in-training’) I knew in the past who ‘corrected’ my pinyin, telling me in no uncertain terms that I was writing it wrong. Of course she was coming from a very narrow viewpoint since a PRC teacher is expected to teach and demand exact adherence to the norms. But it was rather interesting to be told that my ‘z’ was ‘wrong’.
Ah I get it. I went to a 师范大学 so I was thrown off a bit.
Maybe this is just me (ok, probably just me), but as I tend to idly write phrases out in Chinese when bored, I’ve let it influence my English letters. While cursive isn’t impacted at all, standalone Bs have become 阝s and Zs have become 子s No one’s mentioned it yet, so I’m guessing they just assume I have atrocious handwriting…which is probably true.
@pc: Not only you… my lowercase t’s are like 七.
I am a bit suspicious about this 9 story. I’m from Shanghai and have never ever seen it written like that. If I were shown this I would not have interpreted it as 9 either.
So can you give a bit more background and context as to where you encountered this? If it were an ad then a photo would definitely help.
Herbert,
where is everywhere, how often is daily. I’m sure I can dig up another photo if you’d like.
Here is a thread where parents of kindergarten kids are discussing their problems with writing 9, and you can clearly see that writing it as P is not at all acceptable.
http://www.ebama.net/thread-9719-1-1.html
Please do, I’m just curious as I have never seen it myself.
Here is another link where an adult corrects a child for writing 9 as P: http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_5f5561a80100g2b8.html
Here you go: http://www.flickr.com/photos/djcn0te/468702985/
See the red near the top.
Anyway it seems your links do enough to confirm its existence that a photo isn’t totally necessary. I’m sure not everyone has kicked their odd writing habits that they had when they were a kid. I know I still write my vertical strokes from the bottom up in English, despite much effort by teachers to ‘correct’ it.
Fair enough, sorry for doubting you
I guess not everybody has parents as strict as this: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:841jd608cR8J:mail2.cjhs.kh.edu.tw/blog/lib/files/2010/06/e5b08fe5b7a8e4babae69599e68e88e999b3e694b8e88faf.doc+%229%E5%86%99%E6%88%90p%22&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESiIqn_Es5ZHplGFe632byXGtElSmvBwYTH4i59_v6j-RJLSNTGtJfHAVho7FqzRNh5iYOaWF8BruDvs63WfeLNtet5FhUooNU7e0mTuHo4vh07fTYpVkTK3sJ9gEFJdSPJHFXF8&sig=AHIEtbSj7ZoHew-c6mMfm6B3MzREwLjheg
Coming from an English teacher in Shanghai, I haven’t seen the 8, but I agree that the 9 is fairly common as a “p”. Especially from things like delivery services and checks at restaurants.
My bigger problem with students was the written capital “I.” Because Chinese stroke order dictates top to bottom, students write the top part first, then the middle, then the bottom. When I think about how I normally write an “I”, I go middle, top, bottom, and most of my friends back me up on this. Now, it wouldn’t normally be a problem, but the result of top, middle, bottom is when students write really quickly. Anyone who’s seen scrawled characters knows that lines tend to connect. Which means that “I” becomes “2”. After getting confused on several occasions, I started working this into classes as a personal pet peeve.