Do You Speak Mandarin and English?

2016-0726

This summer I still have a very small Mandarin class to teach; my young and smart students are actually "teachers" from Boston, Ms. Matisse Newton (倪美笛) and Ms. Abby Vorenberg (傅亞碧). While teaching them the Chinese language, I've been learning quite a lot from them about English -- Ah! English plus Chinese, the most important (and probably most interesting) two languages in the world nowadays!

During one of our meetings for Mandarin practice, our interests were so aroused that we started to compare the two languages by exchanging what we had learned about animal languages. How does a cow cry? How does a bird speak? ... Oh, it's Big, Big fun to know that the same kinds of animals or birds from different parts of the world will produce different sounds (or noises). For example, sheep in the US and sheep in Taiwan would speak very differently!

Sheep says, "Baa!" -- 羊的叫聲 (sheep's cry)： "Mie! Mie!" (咩咩)

Bird says, "Chirp!" -- 小鳥叫： "Zhi, zhi!" or "Zha, zha!" (小鳥 吱吱喳喳 叫)

Chick says, "Cheep!" -- 雞的叫聲： "Zhi, zhi, zhi!" (in general, like a small bird 吱吱 叫)

But a hen and a rooster will cry very differently: 

-- 母雞 (hen): "Ge, ge!" or "Go, go, go!" (咯咯咯)

-- 公雞 (rooster): "Gu-gu-gu!" or "Koo-koo-koooooo!" (咕咕咕-----)

Cat says, "Meow!" -- 貓的叫聲： "Miao!" (喵 sounds the same as "Meow")

Dog says, "Woof!" -- 狗的叫聲： "Wang!" (狗吠 汪汪)

Pig says, "Oink!" -- 豬的叫聲： "g/k-oooh!" ( It's easy to say, but hard to spell it out.)

Duck says, "Quack!" -- 鴨子的叫聲： "Gua, gua, gua!" (呱呱呱)

Cow says, "Moo!" (read as [mu:]) -- 牛的叫聲： "Mou!" (哞！)

Horse says, "Neigh!" -- 馬的叫聲：I don't really know, but I see the word "Si" (嘶)

Mouse says, "Squeak!" -- 老鼠的叫聲：?????

Well, I've forgotten how a mouse cries in Chinese; but to my surprise, this small creature (mouse) would say, "Squeak! Squeak! " in English. Ha! In Mandarin we just count and say, "一隻老鼠、兩隻老鼠、三隻老鼠 .........." In English, however, people (including my students Matisse and Abby) would say, "One mouse, two mice, three mice ..." Have you noticed the singular and plural forms of the English noun for 老鼠? Have you also noticed the classifier (or counter word) 隻 (zhi) -- used for animals, birds, etc. -- that follows the numbers one (一), two (二), and three (三)? 

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The following 3 pictures are taken from: #2016-0715B
The 42nd Graduation Ceremony of St. James' Preschool