常老师 (Chang laoshi), my favorite teacher, has a pointer that she uses to urge us to use particular vocabulary words written on the board. It looks like a tongue depressor but has a little cloth person in colorful dress pasted on one end. When I or my classmate Han Wei make a mistake or evince some uncertainty with regards to the primary directional terms in Chinese shang (on), and xia (under), Chang laoshi employs the pointer, placing it either on, or atop her palm (上), or holding her hand over it like an umbrella (下). Not that this makes things entirely apparent.
Why, in Chinese, are you under a particular situation (recession, gender discrimination, etc.) and not on it? Why do you refer to the past as something you are on top of, and the future as something you are beneath (on last week, or under next month, for example)? I suppose it makes more sense than the other way around, but why not in and out, or behind and in front of? Sometimes English directional complements map on to the Chinese ones, but it isn't for any kind of reason supported by universal logic. Why, for instance, does one bliss "out" and not "in"?
An admittedly amusing diversion when you are home sick and not feeling the homework, words are also very powerful and not to be trifled with. I once spent quite a lot of time trying to figure out what a fella meant by telling me he felt he was 'standing' in love with me, rather than 'falling' in it. Sounds safer really, but at the time I was rather offended. In Chinese, you can be "on" love (爱上), if the other party is unaware of your feelings, but not "in" love. Once two people are involved, you are "谈恋爱", or 'talking about love', and if you refer to a love affair in the past or present, you can throw in a little complement and be "at-talking-about-love".
I am always surprised when I learn of a word or saying that is identical to the English equivalent. Does the term 疼爱, or 'pain-love', indicate some universality of the experience of loving so much that it hurts, or just the influence of European languages on Chinese terms and ideas? I'm tempted to believe the former, but it does go against my best intellectual impulses.
For those less profound sensations, Chinese also has the 一夜情, or 'single-night-affection'. According to my electronic dictionary, this can also be called 一宿风流, the first pair of characters meaning 'single night lodging' and the following pair meaning either 'romantic; sentimental', or 'outstanding; accomplished'. Depending on your point of view you can pretty much take your pick. At least it makes more sense than 'one night stand' -- who's doing all that standing anyway?
5 comments:
Good post E to the KA. Why do you expect there to be some "universal logic" or "true translation"? Is it because 'on' and 'in' and their Chinese (Mandarin?) equivalents (whatever equivalent means, seems to be the issue at hand here) do mean the same thing in most cases like "the glass is on the table" or "the tea is in the box"? But then when the same words are used in phrases like "they are in love" or "you're living in the past" they don't match up?
Also, who is standing when the Phillies (or Mariners) are on a home stand? Or I get stood up? Or there's a standing invitation? Or there's standing water? Last time I checked water wasn't so good at standing up, it preferred to lay around. Around what? All words are metaphors and they suck at what they do but they make me get all misty sometimes and once in a while I use them to write comments on your blog.
When I was studying Japanese our Japanese friends that would come to class for conversation practice pointed out they had problems understanding our language's odd use of the word "on". "Why do people say 'do you have a dollar on you'?" they would ask.
Now I am taking a Spanish class and everything is boiled down to one beautiful word "en". It can be on, in, under...whatever. Our teacher complained about having to learn to use the words "in, on, between, under" ect.
For some reason, it makes since to be "on" the past and "under" the future, if you invision time being a verticle line instead of a horizontal one. If chinese children where to draw a time line would it be a straight line going up and down? We are so used to seeing time as a line going from left to right.
I never noticed how varied the work "stand" is. It's roots from latin mean to stop or be still-which makes sense in terms of water. Stand can also mean to "make available for breeding", more specifically to stallions. This makes "one night stand" more logical. I don't think I can say it now without envisioning some nobles of the past standing their stallions and bragging about their own stand the night before.
Without the non-literal use of prepositions American English would be robbed of such clever turns of phrase as "the best way to get over someone is to get under someone" and country song titles like "We Used To Just Kiss On the Cheek But Now It's All Over."
I for one don't want to live in a world like that.
standing in love does sound much safer. I think next time I will stand in love. yes yes.
or wait, stand ON love? Standing ON love sounds the safest
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