Living in China, as an individual who is a native English speaker and who can comfortably converse in Chinese, I often find myself struggling to express something in one language which is simple to say in another. This is expected with Chinese, since it is at a far lower level of proficiency than my fluent and (somewhat) articulate English, but this happens in my native language as well. With decent regularity I find myself searching for a suitable word or a phrase, search so much that is causes a clearly and noticeably long pause in the flow of conversation. Sometimes is it just how to say something in English for which has a slightly different meaning or use in Chinese. I jotted down a few (of what I view of as) shortcomings of the languages that I use, and I am going to go ahead and share those with you.
- One of the most basic things that I think English lacks and could benefit from is a gender neutral 3 person pronoun. In Chinese although 他 and 她 are written differently, they are pronounced identically, meaning that if I say that I am going to meet someone you cannot tell if I am meeting a male or a female. It would be useful for the U.S. obsession with political correctness in referring to people since any hypothetical situations could refer to a gender ambiguous individual rather than to a 'him' or to a 'her.' Incidently, 它 (meaning 'it') is also an homophone with 他 and 她, so one could state one's actions even more vaguely.
- I also think that English could benefit from a person singular possessive word indicating shared ownership and a seperate one indicating single person ownership. Chinese splits the idea of 'us' into two parts: 咱們 is used to mean 'us' when the person being spoken to (or written to or communicated to in any other way) is also included. For instance, "this is our world" might use 咱們 in Chinese. The other way of saying us is 我们, which is ambiguous if the listener is included or not. I would enjoy it if Chinese also had a way of saying 'us' which clearly excluded the listener, such as "This is our food, not yours."
- In both the English word proud and its common Chinese translation (骄傲) there is a double meaning of too fairly similar ideas, but which have fairly different connotations. In both languages the word can be used to indicate pleasure and/or satisfaction with one's accomplishments (which has a faint positive connotation), but it can also mean an arrogance and over-inflated view of one's self which has a very negative connotation.
- The English word patronize also has a double meaning, one with a clearly positive meaning and the other with a very strong negative connotation. If I have a patron (who technically would be patronizing me, right?) that means that I have the support, usually financial but sometimes social as well, of a powerful individual. For instance, some students from poor backgrounds have wealthy patrons that sponsor their studies. However, someone can also be overly paternal, which is also patronizing, because it involves someone being treated as an infant, a child, or someone that is generally ignorant or naive.
- I feel that English (and to my knowledge Chinese as well) lacks the vocabulary to describe friends and acquaintances to the specificity that I would like. The word 'friend' has such a wide meaning, from a person that I would choose to be my best man or to have at my deathbed all the way to somebody I met at a bar last night and with whom I had a general genial conversation. I would definitely make use of a wider range of words if there existed terms to describe personal relationships with more detail based on the length you have known someone, how close you feel to someone, how much you trust someone, how much you like someone, and other factors that I can't think of but differentiate my friendships from each other.
- I think it would be great if English had a verd to describe non-verbal communication.This would allow me to describe the ways I communicate with people or the ways that people communicate with me more succinctly. e.g.: "He non-verbally-communicated-with-me that we should juggle together" or "She non-verbally-communicated-with-me that I should come in for a cup of coffee."
- English needs a better word than 'dumplings' to describe a whole bunch of different world cuisines. Even just with Chinese food 包子, 饺子, and 粽子 are all different items, much like a BLT, a ham and cheese sandwich and a hamburger both involve some food items between two pieces of bread. They therefore are all of a similar basic structure; however, the preparation and the items contained within are clearly different.
- English has some words for non-physical growth, such as development and maturation. I guess maturation is the closest to the word that I am looking for, but I want something a little more value neutral. I want to be able to tell someone that I have changed mentally or emotionally is a way which is growth, but it is not good or bad; it just is.
- I also want more ways to say that something or someone is normal, mediocre, or average without the negativity attached to these words. If I want to describe some people as regular people, or if I want to describe my test scores as average that often implies that (by virtue of not being good) they are bad. I am very big on being able to describe things without attaching a value judgment, and there are many times I want to describe something as mediocre, or nothing special, or as average without implying an positivity or negativity.
- Although English has a word which is spot on for 利他主义 (altruism), Chinese has an opposite phrase which I cna only describe as "selfishism." Selfishness and greed can both describe this idea to an extent, but the Chinese word is really a philosophy/ideology; is has that "-ism" attached to the end, which I feel makes it of a much broader meaning than just selfishness.
- Speaking of selfishness, the Chinese language has a fairly wide view of it compared to English. In English, a private room or a private bath or a private anything wouldn't necessarily have any negative meaning attached to it. In Chinese, however, the character for private in Chinese (私) also has a meaning of selfishness, which I would describe as privacy for oneself at the expense of others. This means that elopement (私奔), personal matters (私事), and just the concept of privacy in Chinese has a bit of a negative meaning. After all, to the typical Chinese view (to which there are, of course, exceptions in various individuals) why should one hide and sequester away these things to keep them from others?
- I would like a word in English to differentiate between work that is paid (such as "I work at a preschool") and word that is more voluntary (such as "I am working on writing this paper" or "I am working at my friend's juggling shop this weekend"). I have run into difficulty in describing what I do recently when I have helped out various friends with various things, and whenever I describe it as 'work' people misunderstand and believe that I am being financially compensated for my time and efforts.
- In a similar vein, I want a better way to describe a class that I go to that is required as a part of school, and a class that I go to for recreational purposes, more as a hobby. When I describe a martial arts class, a dance class, a language class, or something like that, a responses that I have gotten include "You have a class on the weekend?", "Why are you going to a class in the evening?", and "But you are already graduated? Why are you still taking classes?". This might be a cultural thing as well, since a fairly small number of the Chinese people I know go out to pursue their interests and learn beyond formal schooling.
- The best way can think of to describe 主动 in English is to "take the initiative" and to "actively do something without anyone else prompting you to," but I would love if there was an adjective in English that could mean "she 'initiatively' started the work."
- One more differentiation that Chinese makes with a common word that english seems to lack are two different ways of signifying 'or.' The Chinese word 或者 indicated that either of the options listed would be okay. An example of this meaning in English would be "I would be fine with going to the museum or the movie theater." Chinese has another or though (还是), which indicates that one of the two options must be chosen; this or is used in questions promoting other people for information. An example of this or in use would be "Do you want to the museum or the movie theater?". In Chinese, if you use the second or to say something that is not a question looking for more information it will be very unusual, and people might not even understand what you mean. Conversely, if you use the first or to ask a question, people will just think you are making a statement that they have two options (e.g.: "You could go to the museum or the theater").
