Primary Sources 1A.01—I Get Up 我起來了

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Primary Sources."
One year ago on Round and Square (23 April 2011)—The Prologue of the Canterbury Tales
Click here to access Round and Square's "Primary Sources" Resource Center  

[a] First RF

Over the course of the next year or so, Round and Square will take readers step-by-step through a very particular kind of primary source—the elementary school readers used in the mid-1980s in the Republic of China educational system. Every schoolchild on the island of Taiwan read these texts back then, and they are the foundation for understanding matters of education, acculturation, language acquisition, and translation. They were also the source of a very large chunk of my early anthropological and historical education. 

I encourage readers of Round and Square to follow these posts whether or not they read Chinese. It is clear enough where I begin speaking to language learners (the section called "Language Notes" at the end). Everything else, with the exception of the actual Chinese text, can be understood by anyone who takes the time to think about what an entire education from the ground up might be like. The introduction to this series explains these matters thoroughly, and will be posted soon. In the meantime, take a look at how first-graders (for that is where we begin) started to read their world in Taiwan a generation ago. This is "textbooks from history," and there is much to learn.

The first semester of first grade starts with the beginning of the day. The sun rises "early" and our young student wakes up early, as well. The very first text a student read back in 1985 focuses on getting up and getting started. It is a quintessential beginning (like sunrise on Mt. Tai). Learning the first sets of characters begins with the cycles of the cosmos, and good human habits begin by following the patterns of nature. 

1 —I Get Up

The sky brightens, and I get up; the sun also gets up.

I rise early. The sun also rises early.

I get up early every day. The sun also gets up early every day.

一     我起來了

天亮了，我起來了，太陽也起來了。

我起得早，太陽也起得早。

我天天早起，太陽也天天早起。

來     了     天     太     也     早

                 我     起     亮     陽     得 

Text in Simplified Chinese (简体字)*

一 我起来了

天亮了， 我起来了，太阳也起来了。

我起得早， 太阳也起得早。

我天天早起， 太阳也天天早起。 
*A simplified text is unthinkable in an ROC worldview. I don't "work" for them, though, and am including it for two reasons. First, an almost disturbingly large number of my students these days can't read traditional characters. This is a travesty, but I acknowledge (grudgingly) the reality. Second, it should be an eye-opener for students on either side of the "simplified/traditional" divide. Just look. Finally, if you want to read anything written before 1950, you need to learn traditional forms. Get over it. It's not political. It's literature...and politics and history. If you can only read simplified forms, you can read what (Mao) wrote, but not what he read. Think about it.

History and Culture Notes

Never forget that this is the start of everything—the beginning of a life of reading for a little first-grader on the island of Taiwan. It would be roughly October of 1985, and students would already have learned the basics of pronunciation over the course of the early autumn. Only with this text does the long path to reading Chinese characters begin in earnest. This is the beginning.

It should not be lost on anyone that themes of earnest effort and drive are embedded in this first text. Ben Franklin had nothing on the Republic of China first-grade readers. 

Language Notes

Note the heavy use of 了 in this text's first lines, and do not forget that it is the first full character-reading text a first-grader would have seen (or at least on which she would be tested). The emphasis on completed action is significant. The English translation seems clunky to me with "I got up," and that underlines all sorts of interesting issues with language, culture, and translation.

It is also noteworthy that first-graders are being introduced here to the adverbial use of 得. Many "de"s will follow and (remember you heard it here) some of them will be highly problematic.

Note the play on words from the second to the third lines. 我起得早 gives way to 我天天早起. The play of these three grammatical patterns on the first page of Chinese reading signals just how important they are.

[b] Sunrise RF

Fieldnotes From History (28)—Settling In Again

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Fieldnotes From History."

[a] Language RF

Part of an occasional Round and Square series that follows the blog’s main theme (east meets west, round meets square, and past meets present), these snippets from my early fieldnotes are reproduced as they were written by hand—and then revised on an ancient desktop computer—during my first fieldwork stay in Taiwan (1985-1987).  All entries are the way that I left them when I returned to the United States in 1987—some nicely-stated and some embarrassing. Although the series began with my assumption that the entries can stand alone, I have found that separate comments and notes might help readers understand a world that is now, well, history. These are always separate from the original fieldnote. 

Comment

[b} Budding RF

By early 1986, I had come to terms with some of my frustrations and had begun refining my goals. I also found myself in an exhilarating state. I had learned a great deal. My Mandarin was clicking along, and I was reading with increasing fluency—the result of a combined program of studying classical Chinese and K-12 textbooks. I will have more to say about that method in another set of posts, but the next few notes show a combination of growing knowledge and maybe a little bit of complacency. 

Note

Although I will not go into a long linguistic explanation here, suffice it to say for the reader who does not study Chinese that the spoken and written languages are much further apart than people in Western countries tend to realize. Reading is a specialized skill; there is very little potential for "sounding out" Chinese characters. While that doesn't mean that the two are unrelated, whole generations of Western specialists on China prided themselves on their reading abilities while disdaining speaking (some—a few—even regarded inability to speak well as a point of pride). This situation is almost wholly gone today, but a little of that old "sinology" has crept into this fieldnote, I think.

[c] Slope RF

3 January 1986 

Taipei

 I am currently attending the Taipei Language Institute ten hours a week. It may not sound like much, but it is concentrated: just one student and one teacher for two hours. You can’t hide, like I used to in high school French. The combination of spoken Mandarin and my reading program in the Four Books and primary education readers is paying dividends already. I am beginning to “get” relationships between everyday experience and the classical past in ways that made little sense to me in college.

My job—which gives me a chance to speak Chinese four hours a day—combined with my Chinese class, was the boost my spoken Chinese needed. During May and June I was in a holding pattern, not regressing, of course, but not really improving very quickly either. Now, however, I can almost feel myself becoming more confident, and speaking better everyday.

When I came here I thought that speaking didn’t matter, that only improving my reading was important. I still have (compared to the majority of Americans here, most of whom are illiterate) an inordinately strong interest in the written language. But the pleasure I get out of speaking well is hard for anyone to understand unless he is a foreigner, or has lockjaw.