

In Changing China, Being 'Suicided' or 'Harmonized' - hakan
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124913011

======
PhilChristensen
I had a hard time understanding this article, but it was really due to
translation issues, and my own lack of understanding about grammar.

I had to read up on the English concept of active- versus passive-voice. For
example:

    
    
      The cat ate the mouse.
    

is active, because the cat is the subject of the sentence, and is doing the
eating.

    
    
      The mouse was eaten by the cat
    

is passive, because the mouse is the subject, but is "having something done to
it", i.e., passive.

So in the case of "He was disappeared", the point is that you are implying
that he did not make himself disappear, but that it was done to them.

However, in Chinese, the language is so flexible that there are many far more
common ways to express the same concept. So when someone specifically uses the
passive voice in this way, while it is grammatically correct (or at least, is
a grammatical invention that follows existing rules), it is obvious to other
Chinese-speakers that it's an unusual way to say something.

The examples given start making more sense when you forget about the fact that
"suicided" isn't a real word. It's not supposed to be a real word, instead it
is meany to be a translation into English that preserves the 'strangeness' of
the phrase.

In the case of the Chinese, use of the passive voice in this way is kind of
like a shibboleth in that someone who agrees with your politics will know what
you really mean, but you still have plausible deniability for those that
don't.

~~~
tokenadult
I see the comments in this thread (several of them) are going off on the issue
of the author's description of the 被 construction as "passive voice." It
really isn't. The author was writing for an English-speaking audience and
tried to make an analogy to something familiar to English speakers. But the
Chinese language actually doesn't have the category of voice in its verbal
system at all, and the 被 construction is better described as an "adversative"
construction. I learned this from the authoritative Chinese grammar textbook
by the late Chinese linguist Y. R. Chao while an undergraduate student of
Chinese.

In Chinese in the most recent century, mistranslation of Western writings with
passive voice constructions by the 被 construction (whether or not the Western
passive constructions have an adversative meaning) tempts a lot of casual
observers to suppose that today's Chinese uses 被 simply as a marker of passive
voice. But I have many times tried out, as part of personal linguistic
fieldwork, newly composed sentences that use 被 as a straight-up translation of
normally grammatical sentences in English, and the Chinese sentences are
regarded as ungrammatical unless the 被 construction can plausibly be construed
as adversative.

(I just Googled for a good Web reference about this, but didn't find one quite
to my satisfaction.)

~~~
xiaoma
Yeah, it's pretty messy. 被 is usually but not always adverse. And while 被 is
the most common, there are at least half a dozen possible passive markers such
as 讓,弄,給,叫,據說, etc... The topic comment construction of Chinese further
complicates things, since it's very common for passive constructions to lack
any passive marker at all.

For example:

The article has been finished. 文章寫好了.

The meeting has been postponed until Monday. 會議延到星期一舉行.

------
mustpax
Catch 22's protagonist, Yossarian exclaims incredulously at one point:

 _It doesn't make sense. It isn't even good grammar. What the hell does it
mean to disappear somebody?_

------
patio11
My favorite line in the history of totalitarian repression was from one of the
Eastern European states. I can't remember the specifics, but it goes something
like this: $DISSIDENT committed suicide by shooting himself in the back of the
head eight times, pausing to reload, and then finishing the job.

------
kls
\--"is constantly coining and importing new terms to describe new ideas and
things"

This point is almost missed, Latin and latter English are the previous
languages where this happened. Most of the time other languages adopted and
sometime slightly localized the Latin or English word or expression. Being the
language that ideas are expressed in is a powerful statement in the ownership
of thought. With China's ascension, I am sure that new technology conceive of
in China will bare their trademark on thought.

------
ulo
The use of the passive voice in this respect is not unique to China. For
example, "dehoused" was a WWII Allied term to describe Germans whose homes
were destroyed by Allied bombs.

------
anabis
or 'River Crabbed'

<http://meiguozi.blogspot.com/2009/03/harmonious-crab.html>

~~~
papersmith
My favorite Chinese word of the day. :D

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZRYd78vMT0>

------
forinti
It's hard to be original in a planet with 6 billion people; this is done quite
often in Brazilian Portuguese. Since when, I know not.

------
sriram_sun
How about being "Baptized into Totalitarianism?"

------
gojomo
Conspicuous passivization: even better than a SarcMark, with no licensing fees
required!

