Deborah Fallow\'s Dreaming in Chinese

¶ … Deborah Fallow's Dreaming in Chinese and how the Chinese language influences the Chinese worldview

Language and culture article review: Deborah Fallow's Dreaming in Chinese and how the Chinese language influences the Chinese worldview

When Deborah Fallows traveled to China, as chronicled in her 2010 book Dreaming in Chinese, she was a specialist in linguistics, and spoke several languages. Yet although Fallows had studied Chinese on an academic level, she found expressing herself within the confines of the grammatical structure of the Chinese language almost impossible. Mandarin Chinese is a language that is entirely context-dependent. Chinese society is famously 'high context' in the sense that the speaker's relationship with the listener influences the vocabulary, honorifics, and phrasing of the speaker. A word said in one context can mean something completely different if it is said to a different person, in a different situation. According to Fallows, while this is true of almost all languages of the Far East, Mandarin Chinese takes context-dependency to a new level.

"Chinese only has 400 unique syllables -- that's 1/10th of the number of the unique syllables in the English language. That means a lot of Chinese words sound alike to the untrained ear" said Fallows in an interview with National Public Radio. Homonyms, words that mean entirely different things but sound alike (like a 'seal of a letter' versus a 'circus seal'), run rampant, meaning the language tends to 'favor' the native-born and exclude foreigners from understanding its nuances. Of course, English contains homonyms, but they are relatively rare and can be memorized. In Chinese, homonyms are built into the very structure and culture of the language and society. This is why during the Chinese New Year, many special foods are eaten, not because of the way they taste, but because they sound like words that augur good fortune. Such a tradition would only be possible in a language where homonyms are epidemic. Because there are too many to be memorized, an individual must instead be attentive to the speaker's likely meaning. For a foreigner, this can be a very difficult challenge. Fallows found that she was constantly pointing and using body language (which was also often misinterpreted) to be understood during simple tasks like ordering food from a fast food restaurant. "The English language clusters consonants together, which results in a variety of complex syllables…Chinese syllables don't combine that way, so the only way to tell the difference between two otherwise identical syllables is by listening to the tone and the context" (Fallows 2010). Some Chinese tongue-twisters, like "The Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den" contain a variety of characters on the page, but when spoken all of the sounds are virtually identical.

Another surprise for Fallows in her linguistic encounters as a foreigner in China was the relative lack of honorifics between intimates such as children and their parents. Fallows had assumed that because of Confucian piety and her experiences in Japan, which has a highly formalized language system, that there would be heavy reliance upon words such as please and thank-you in Chinese society. She found quite the opposite -- the Chinese language of etiquette for family and friends was extremely abrupt. At first, to Fallows, it seemed like people were merely barking orders at one another.

Once again, this is partially due to the tonality of Chinese language, and its relatively limited vocabulary and reliance upon intonation and contextual meaning. The brusqueness Fallows noted was also due to the paradoxical Chinese notion that because intimate relationships are so valued, one sign of intimacy is eschewing the use of please and thank-you: "To someone who grew up learning all the 'pleases' and 'thank yous' of polite English, Chinese as it is spoken between family and friends can sound extremely terse and direct" (Fallows 2010). In Chinese, when offered a glass of water, an individual will simply say the English equivalent of 'no' or 'I don't need it,' rather than 'no thank you' as would be acceptable in and American context (Fallows 2010).

Fallows' experience illustrates how, conversely, it might be quite difficult for a Chinese person to assimilate to the U.S. An individual might come across as being very rude to a friend when blurting out 'no I don't want it,' while the native Chinese speaker believed he was establishing intimacy. Using 'pleases' and 'thank-yous' in Chinese is seen as setting up a distance between the speaker and listener, not unlike saying 'Mr. Jones' rather than 'Bill' when addressing a friend.

The relatively few words and the importance on being direct and simply understanding that what seems rude is actually a way of showing respect means that an outsider to Chinese culture can find it difficult to internalize Chinese social rhythms without long-term personal observations of the language in action. Fallows said that she never did fully lean how to 'dream in Chinese,' and contrary to her experiences in other languages, she always felt like an outsider consciously translating the words of two languages back and forth in her mind.