AR&IO Chinese Course Episode 2: 白求恩是加拿大共產黨員

this is the AR ni o language course
episode 2 we open episode 2 but reviewing some of the vocabulary introduced in episode 1 and expanding on that vocabulary what does that mean it means we discuss some meanings that those words have or some ways that you can use those words in a sentence that were not covered in episode 1 but this will refresh your memory if you are using this series of videos more seriously and intensively as a real language course throughout this course we use examples drawn from Chinese history and from current and ongoing political controversies we deal with even the simplest aspects of the Chinese language in a sophisticated way if you don't know what AR and IO stands for it's active research and informed opinion I hope that you can cultivate an informed opinion about Chinese politics while at the same time working to improve your ability in the Chinese language so this word cho cho with tone 1 Cho we reflected on a quite some length in the first episode if I were to describe a fundamental meaning to it or a root meaning to it it would be this verbal sense of to pull something to draw something out and then in an abstract sense we can imagine the etymological origin of these other meanings as being linked to that fundamental meaning so the idea of pulling the smoke from a cigarette drawing it out and then most remarkably of all we have this sense of a meaning and abstraction like abstract reasoning also in the arts abstract painting so I just have this on screen without the pinyin for a moment because I know some of you would like to challenge yourselves if you're an intermediate student to see how much of this you can read how much this you can understand without relying on the pinyin interpretation job which is so much holy sound that don't see while my lovely assistant was reading that to you aloud you will have note that the word chosen is highlighted in yellow however long before we get to the word chose young we have this interesting word Cong Cong II suggests a protest or an objection of one kind or another in the case of the four character phrase Kanye yo scene then we are talking about a demonstration in the sense of people marching in protest now all of these words are also quite confusing in English if you look up the word demonstrate and demonstration in English it has many many meanings well we have to forgive Chinese because Connie has quite a few different possible meanings to it could just be that you are voicing your objection to something that you're disagreeing with something verbally that you know you're in a business meeting say and you're gonna voice your objection to what your boss is saying it could when combined with the right verb it could mean that you're giving in a written complaint that you're protesting in writing maybe you've even filled out a form however yes in this sort of political context you may mean street demonstrations you may mean even quite violent demonstrations I would say that this particular word Kong he has quite positive connotations though if you read Chinese government publications or Chinese government propaganda you will very often see more disparaging terms being used to refer to protest so tandel yungang de Connie so if you don't recognize Shang Gong that is how we say Hong Kong in modern standard Mandarin he spoke about the protests in Hong Kong this is not something abstract Shibuya Schama Joseon they don't see so much choice on the donkey in the English language we have a confusing relationship between the verb meaning to draw and then the noun a drawer to draw a desk drawer well if English is confusing on this I suppose Chinese must be permitted to be a little bit confusing on the same matter they do form the standard now on for desk drawer again using Cho although here it's it's not in a verbal sense it's just part of the noun in the same sense that drawer in English is in fact a noun even though it's related to a verb Totti Locke 8ot but we have the simple fundamental meaning the sense being to pull the string on a spinning top for example and as you see in the picture here the Chinese concept of what a spinning top is supposed to be as a toy it's not quite the same as what you might have in North America or Western Europe this is my finger this is a photograph I took myself living in Taiwan I felt this delightful example of a use of CHO in practice googling around I find that a great variety of products promotions promotions from restaurant chains coffee shops like Starbucks and also gambling seems to use this particular phrase cho chola here's another funny example that I found myself discovering a use of the word in the wild again this is my own finger this photograph 100 poles right you can pull on this box of tissue paper 100 times before it runs out of tissues so instead of saying it has a hundred items you get a hundred poles episode one concluded with a homework assignment for you in the audience we began to tell the tale of Norman Bethune so the first six characters at the top of the screen here are a phonetic transcription of his name into Chinese Norman by Chuang Chou chiana de Gong Chan down Yin da matta content down content down yang as you've just heard the first and most important fact that you need to hear about Norman Bethune is that he as a Canadian member of the Communist Party dear please pass word along to the party I'm extremely excited to be able to inform you today I arrived at my destination the headquarters of the jeans hygiene military district yes that's right there was a white Canadian medical doctor who flew to China to join the Communist revolution he saved a small number of lives and he supported the Communist Party in its mass murder of millions of others by Chuen chairman norman baesell Yaiba joining in science aha to show us Canada Ontario Joe Kowalewski Jerry tollen Toshiba Russia Kony such an attack on chandangadh party leadership mr. Tomita joaco issued to Georgia Tech Sanada to start open open the agent Alfonso no don't worry we're not gonna make use of that audio clip I just played where she's speaking Chinese much too rapidly for a foreign student of the language but I'm playing you that clip just to draw your attention to the fact that Norman Bethune is not merely the focus of Chinese communist propaganda from the 1960s no no the production of new cinema new TV shows new lectures new textbooks he is very much a featured protagonist in Chinese propaganda still to this day wait a minute one engine I do not know how much of the Chinese language Norman Bethune managed to learn when he was living and working in China but he is depicted here in this propaganda film as speaking plausible level one Chinese speaking very simple and slow Chinese in the same way that you or I might struggle to speak Chinese so he asks the young woman here why did you not complete your studies but to read this more word by word precisely wish emma mies villain why do not study to completion so this particular one is used in combination with many different verbs not all verbs but many many different verbs to suggest the completion of the action note that the negating particle here is May it's not booooo it's may may say 1 why did you not study until the point of completion where's my mystery one in which engine one thing that's consistent strangely in all the propaganda reinterpretations and representations of Norman Bethune is that they try to make him resemble the Russian revolutionary leader Lenin they make him look like Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and the actual historical figure if you look at the photographs he really didn't have any resemblance to lend him at all and yet by the way this intersects with my own family history in case you hadn't guessed my parents or Chinese communist extremists and they named my sister after Norman Bethune so even though my sister obviously born female she was named after this guy and so we were turned to your homework assignment from Episode one if you were wondering what textbook I am quoting this from let me tell you something there are some textbooks that really help you learn the Chinese language there are some textbooks that are chock full of government propaganda and there are some textbooks that are both this anonymously written publication from the Chinese communist government in 1976 is instructive in more ways than one it will help you to learn the Chinese language I sincerely doubt it will convince you to two Chinese communism you guys are familiar with most of this vocabulary by now so we can go fairly rapidly through the first sentence Norman by Jo Ann sure Jenna dot-com chun-yin my children she tell my chain thunkian let's pause for just one moment on this word Yin I try to draw your attention as before with text on screen it is not really the same as saying that someone is a communist party member in most of its uses UN really does mean an employee or especially an official in the sense of government official the very start of the episode I reiterated my promise that in each episode I try to take at least one word and break it down into its components into its radicals as we say in Chinese this one seems self-evident the bottom half is BAE BAE is one of the most common glyphs one of the most common symbols one of the most common radicals in the whole the Chinese language it is a pictograph of a calorie shell so this is a type of shell found in the ocean that in ancient times was used as currency it was used as money so today it's found in many words related to value treasure money that sort of thing you will hear in casual Chinese slang already at level one Bao bei bei however the visual etymology of this word does not stop with bei because it turns out that bei is just a corruption for Dean and what is Dean you will find the english translation of ding is ding this is in the class of words where we do not bother to translate it in English we now have a proper noun in the English language we say this is a ding of that as a ding what is a ding if you put the word into Google Image Search you will soon see that it is a ritual object from ancient times very commonly seen in museums today and probably very rarely seen outside of a museum if you live in the Western world this is a great example of how studying the etymology of Orden Chinese sometimes tells you everything but reveals nothing so the history of this character is that today we write it as a Cowrie shell a type of seashell with a square above it whereas in ancient times it was written with this ding this ritual object with a square above it how does that relate to the meaning perhaps not at all Norman by Chuang Chou chiana de Gong Chan down Yin Tasha Yong Ming the typhoon with a bunch of jang-ho the conger chang-jung ito San Shi en Lai Dow Chong go see you next episode [Music]