Culture 5
Learn Chinese: culture of Unit 5
The dialogue of Unit 5 deals with nationalities and languages. A good opportunity to see how the Chinese name their country, how country names are built in Chinese, and what the polite form 您 is for.
1. The different words for talking about China
English has only one word: "China". Chinese has several, and each one carries its own nuance.
中国 , literally "the country of the middle": China. It is the official name, and the most common one. 中 means "middle, center" and 国 means "country". The name still carries the trace of a world view in which China saw itself at the center of the civilized world, surrounded by peripheral peoples.
You also come across:
- 中华 , "the splendor of the middle". More literary and solemn, it appears in the official name of the People's Republic of China: 中华人民共和国 .
- 华 , often used for overseas Chinese (华人 ) or for Chinese culture in general.
The common word for "country" is 国家 , made of 国 (country, State) and 家 (family, household), so literally "State-family". This is no accident: the country is thought of as an extension of the family. You owe it the same loyalty.
This link between nation and family sheds light on the attachment many Chinese feel toward their country. It also sheds light on a question that every Westerner in China ends up hearing:
你喜欢中国吗？ : "Do you like China?"
The question, a mix of curiosity and pride, comes up again and again. It throws an English speaker off: you can hardly picture walking up to a Chinese tourist in London to ask whether they like England. In China, the gesture is natural. You are being welcomed into the big family, and people hope you feel at home in it.
Answer 喜欢！ "Yes, I like it!". A nuanced answer, or worse a negative one, leaves your interlocutor ill at ease, a bit like a guest explaining to their hosts what is wrong with their home. This is not hypocrisy, it is the expected register. Save your reservations for a more intimate conversation, where they will be very well received, and sometimes even anticipated.
2. The different names of the Chinese language
The language too has several names, and the difference is not just a matter of vocabulary: it tells the linguistic history of the country.
中文 , literally "the writing of the middle": the Chinese language. The character 文 here refers to writing, to lettered culture.
The term has a historical reach. For millennia, China was a country of great linguistic diversity: from one region to the next, people spoke, and still speak, mutually unintelligible languages (Cantonese, Wu, Min, Hakka and others). But all of them shared a common written language, the 文言 , classical Chinese.
The 文言 was purely written: administration, literature, philosophy, official exchanges. A scholar from Canton and a scholar from Beijing did not understand each other when speaking, but corresponded without the slightest difficulty. It is this shared written language that held the cultural unity of China together across the centuries. I always find it worth pointing out: where Europe broke up into national languages, China held together through writing.
中文 therefore refers to the language of all of China, the one that rises above oral differences. Today the word designates the Chinese language as a whole, written and spoken.
汉语 , the language of the Han, the majority ethnic group (92% of the population). The character 语 refers to the spoken language. The term therefore stresses the oral side, and the ethnic group, as opposed to the languages of the 55 other minorities.
You also come across:
- 普通话 , the "common language", that is, standard Mandarin. It is the language of school and of the media, promoted in the 20th century to unify oral communication.
- 汉字 , the "characters of the Han", that is, the Chinese characters.
- 中文: the Chinese language in general, written and spoken, historically tied to the common written language;
- 汉语: the spoken language of the Han, the emphasis is on the oral;
- 普通话: standard Mandarin, the modern official norm.
3. How are country names built in Chinese?
Country names are phonetic transcriptions. You pick characters whose pronunciation is close to the original name, then you contract the result, often keeping only the first character, to which you add 国 (country).
- France → 法兰西 → contracted to 法国
- England → 英格兰 → contracted to 英国
- America → 美利坚 → contracted to 美国
- Deutschland → 德意志 → contracted to 德国
You read everywhere that 法国 supposedly means "the country of the law", 美国 "the beautiful country", 英国 "the heroic country". It makes a nice story, but this is not the original meaning.
The characters 法, 美, 英, 德 do have a meaning of their own (law, beautiful, heroic, virtue), but that is not why they were kept. They were kept for their pronunciation, that of the first syllable of the transcription. That the meaning happens to be flattering is not entirely an accident either: at equal pronunciation, an auspicious character is obviously the one you prefer.
Not all country names follow this model. Japan is 日本 ("origin of the sun"), which translates the meaning and not the sound. Spain is 西班牙 , a complete transcription with no contraction with 国.
For nationality, you add 人 (person) after the country name:
中国人 a Chinese person, 法国人 a French person, 美国人 an American.
4. The use of 您
In the dialogue, Bai Xue uses 您 to address teacher Li: 您是中国人吗？: "Are you Chinese?"
您 is the respectful form of 你 . It is used to mark respect:
- toward elderly people;
- toward superiors, a teacher, a boss;
- in formal contexts, an official meeting, business, service;
- toward a stranger, out of politeness.
Look at the character: 您 is made of 你 (you) sitting on top of 心 (the heart). A "you" addressed with the heart. Chinese is full of images of this kind.
您 is mainly used in the north of China, and particularly in Beijing, where it is part of everyday speech. In the south it is heard less, but it is understood and appreciated everywhere.
There is no common plural. People say 你们 even in a formal context, even though 您们 exists marginally.