Sleep Paralysis, Again

"You awake suddenly at night.  You try to rise, but feel hands pressing down on your chest, groping for your throat.  You try to cry out, but you cannot move or speak. You notice a shadowy figure at the foot of the bed, and hear the steady clomp, clomp, clomp of others climbing the stairs to your room.  Your terror grows, but then as suddenly as it began, the pressure releases and the presence in the room fades into nothingness.  You can now move, rise from the bed, and try to make sense of what just happened to you.  You have just had an episode of sleep paralysis." -- Michael W. Otto, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology at Boston University

It's almost exactly what happened to me last week. In the dream or nightmare, I was walking toward my bedroom alone, when I felt an invisible hand gripping my wrist. Terrified, I struggled to get away, but my feet felt like lead.  Strangely in my nightmares, I always seem goal-oriented, even when escaping from invisible ghouls and terrifying monsters. I remember that my mind, lucidly clear and determined, was willing me towards the bedroom, struggling against the formless ghost. I tried to yell, but my lungs were choked and my tongue stuck, but still I screamed deep from within my gut as if getting that sound out would release me from my tormentor.

I woke up yelling. Ju lay beside me still sound asleep. Wow. Another one of those. It was quite terrifying, the dream, and I still felt it after waking. The room was far from dark, but Daniel was away in Hong Kong and I had to calm my nerves. It took me more than 10 minutes to get back to sleep. Naturally, I was a bit afraid of a repeat paralysis.

According to Dr Michael Otto, when you dream, you are paralyzed.  "In sleep paralysis, however, the normal cycles of your sleep become out of sync:  your mind wakes up, but your body is still in a dream state.  You are aware of your surroundings, but cannot move and may also experience any number of hallucinations. Most commonly, these hallucinations include sensing the presence of others (including seeing shadowy figures), feeling external pressure on the chest, hearing odd knocking sounds, seeing your body as if from the outside, or experiencing vibrating or tingling sensations.  Any single episode of sleep paralysis may include one or more of these hallucinatory symptoms."

I can remember one or two other episodes I've had, and they were terrifying, to say the least, and likely why I still remember them vividly years later. My symptoms are similar to that described above, except in my case, the dream state is blurred with my consciousness of reality. For example, in one episode, I was lying in bed next to my sister in the house we used to live in, my childhood bedroom, even though in reality I lived someplace else. I was paralysed and an extremely infernal buzzing noise (like the television without a signal) was in the background. My mind was aware that I was in a dream-state (I thought to myself: "You're in a dream, try and wake up! Oh help, I can't move!") and spurring me to reach to my left where my mobile phone lay to call my boyfriend for help. 

The weirdest thing was, there was a dresser to the left of my bed in reality, where my phone probably lay. But the dream backdrop was the room of my childhood. I was suffocating (the heaviness in the chest) and paralysed but my mind willed my arm to move towards the "phone", my source of help. I wonder if in reality, my arm really was able to move since I seemed to be between two worlds, the dream state and wakefulness.

Apparantly, sleep paralysis occurs more often following sleep disturbances. It makes sense if you consider my recent nightly disruptions due to Ju waking in the middle of the night and requiring us to move him to our bed.  Overall, sleep paralysis is normal, and comes with a good scientific explanation. But you can be sure it was utterly terrifying during, and quite bad even after I had woken from it. I would like to know, though, why I seem to experience paralysis within a dream context (my mind is aware it is a dream, yet still experiencing "reality" in a dream world), as if I am straddling two parts of consciousness.

Happiness Revisited: Try Mental Discipline

I wrote about Dan Gilbert's thoughts on Impact Bias in an earlier post.  Today I am revisiting it after I found his thought-provoking and quite insightful lecture on TED. 

So if you have watched the 20minute or so lecture, you would pretty much know what it is that makes some people worry, fret, moan and some other people smile, rave and be in a state of seemingly unreal contentment. Gilbert's claim is it's all in your mind, to put it crudely. The Buddha and many other wise people have already said it so I shall not go further into how to be happy.

Instead, my thoughts are on a related question: how should I spend my time in such a way that makes me happy, i.e. what sort of work should I do that puts me in a happy state without having to manufacture synthetic happiness? I ask this because it's the question that bothers most people, not how to banish irreverent negative thoughts and make the "most" out of a bad situation, but how to LIVE life in such a way that you feel no negative feeling state at all and in fact would be happy.

And no, I don't count drugs as the answer. The answer has already been found. I believe it is Mikail Csiksentmihalyi's idea of flow. 

Flow is a concept that refers to a state of ecstasy (out of the everyday routine, not the drug-adduced state), of utter and intense concentration that seems like an out-of-body experience. Prof Csiksentmihalyi explains that when we are in a state of such intense concentration, existence is temporarily suspended. It makes sense. Recall when you were so wrapped up in a task that "time just flew" by. Of course time also flies when one is stressed and doing 100 things at the same time, it doesn't mean we're in flow, or in some state of nirvana.

Flow is best experienced when we are doing something that requires a lot of skill and involves a high degree of challenge. Think musician, performer, athlete, even CEOs, all of these categories of people were researched by Prof C's team. All of them described experiences of flow. Now consider the following table:

I borrowed this from Prof C's lecture since it wasn't so hard to replicate with a little Paint and Powerpoint.

I've been trying to get into the yellow area for over a decade. It's the answer to the questions: what is my calling, where do I fit in, what should I do with my life (other than my job which gives me a mediocre mental challenge and sufficient remuneration to sustain my current standard of living)?

At least a half dozen people have discussed this dilemma with me over the past year. The dilemma being the choice between the status quo which gives them little personal life satisfaction and doing something that would be meaningful, rewarding and satisfying. Here's the problem with the second choice: it's iffy.

We tend to glorify the alternative life we could be living, much like how Dan Gilbert describes people who think that they would be happier if they had the freedom to choose among many options. We put it on a pedestal, this more meaningful work we should be doing and like a deity we worship it as the ultimate goal, like nirvana or God. I'm not saying it isn't worth aiming for, this other more meaningful work we ought to all be doing. I'm saying most of us fail to understand its true nature or properties. Hence, we all seem to chase an illusion, because happiness, like this mysterious "calling" which is our place in the sun, is a chimera.

I believe the properties of each of our calling is in Prof Csiksentmihalyi's diagram. Look at each of the 8 feeling states and you could identify yourself in one of them at some time of your day or week or period of life. Most of the day, I find myself at Boredom (low on skill and challenge), so to occupy my mind, I trawl the Internet for mental stimulation -- no not porn -- which leads me to sites like Big Think, TED, New York Times and the like.  If you asked me when I last felt like I was being mentally challenged, when I had to use a fair amount of skill, I will tell you without hesitation that it was when I was teaching a class of undergraduates Sociology or Psychology.  It wasn't only that I had the opportunity to stretch my intellect, use my knowledge and disseminate ideas in a creative manner, it had also a lot to do with the feedback I was getting from the students and those with whom I was interacting. It was a two-way street and I often felt I was in flow if the class was going well, our discussions were animated and students were challenging me and visibly enjoying or benefiting from my input.

Of course there are moments of Arousal when I have a heavy workload and deadlines to meet, papers to grade, a presentation to prepare. But that's to be expected because my time-management and stress-management skills are being worked!  Truth be told, I don't get that a lot now, but I am getting more rewards on a different front. I am mostly in Control segment at work and once in a while, at arousal when I am placed in a new and challenging situation.  But it's rarely Flow. And how can I blame the work or the organization that I chose to join? No one should if they had made their choice with wide open eyes.

Now I am going to posit an idea that is more extreme. I believe that to get into the yellow bit, you don't have to go searching the mountain ranges of the Himalayas or quit your job to be a do-gooder (but go ahead if you feel a real passion for it). There is something to be said about being in a state which requires a lot of skill and where you are highly challenged. Technical training. Lots of it.

According to the wise professor, you can't be creative, you cannot change something into something that is better than what it was before, unless you have at least 10 years of technical training. 10 years.

I can immediately think of a dozen people who spent the last ten years doing 10 different things, much less just one. I recall now Amy Chua's much-misunderstood ethos that children need to work, work, work until they're good at something. Only when they're finally good at it will they enjoy it. (I.e. nobody ever enjoys anything until they are good at it, that's why permissive American parents could never raise kids who are musical virtuosos). I now see her point.  I can recall the days when I spent hours each day labouring over a painting, barely aware of the pain in my shoulder blades as I hunched over my easel with my pastel-stained fingers. The more I did it, the better my technique became and the more I enjoyed it. It was the same for the piano, in which I received only a short two years of formal training.

Alas, I never took these hobbies further than the short amount of time I used to attain moderate ability and skill. I was never encouraged to continue, (if I had, I would have become more proficient and obviously, would have received more encouragement to persevere) I stumbled on art at the ripe old age of 17, right before I was about to enter University to earn a general degree that would qualify me for....well, general administration. There was no way that I would have or could have taken the thing that could have given me flow to the next level toward success.

A Case For Mental Discipline
So what I am essentially arguing is that in order to do the sort of work that would allow you to achieve flow, one must first put in the mental discipline required to become really good at something. Cos no successful (I am thinking wildly successful people like Buffet, Gates and Patricia Kuhl whose work I talked about recently) person ever got to the pinnacle of their success without working really hard at something until they were really good at it. This not only takes perseverance but a lot of self-belief.

Self-belief, also known as "passion", that cliched term that every career expert or some other person dishing out free advice would tell you about being successful. It makes a sense that to be free of self-doubt or doubters allows you to do the work you love and believe in unhampered. Not everybody who is good at something becomes successful and not every successful person can attribute said success to his own personal merit. The difference, I think, lies in how far you're willing to go with your work, and self-belief goes a long way to fuel that journey. As I said, I felt alive and sometimes in flow when I was teaching, sharing knowledge, interacting with people who wanted to learn. Why didn't I keep on at it, you wonder? Well, a lot of organizations have this evil, uncompassionate feature called bureaucracy. It kills passion, devours the innate goodness and potential of its members and pretty much destroys any possibility of a compromise between getting what you need and doing what you love.

Is it ever too late to go back to that thing that you love to do which allows you to go into the yellow zone and take it to the next level, or even better, make it your life's work? Pragmatic people will say it would cost too much once you are in your 30s, maybe 40s. Not surprising, as how many successful people you know started their technical training at age 35 or 40? Yes, the occasional grandmother graduates with a PhD at age 65, but you can be sure she isn't going to embark on a 20 year career in academia. That sort of thing is more like a wish-fulfilment for people, the goal of education they never achieved in their youth. I am talking about finding what you love and doing it because you're good at it -- financial success notwithstanding -- every day of your life because that is the place where you experience the yellow, the flow. Not the job you're currently doing because it pays well enough.

The Yellow is Right In Front of You
So is it ever too late? Many friends lament to me how they wish they could find their "calling", the job that really made them feel they were doing something meaningful. I believe they genuinely want that. Most are in their early 20s. Some already do things they love and are passionate about, but would face immense personal and social doubt and angst if they were to make that their day job. "Too much risk", is a common refrain.

I sympathise with that. We live in a culture that exhorts entrepreneurship but regards failure as a dirty linen best left in the closet. It is a society that holds up banners congratulating "winners" but does the minimum to cultivate and nurture those who are trying to live their dreams. I think there is a danger in putting up too many goal posts and believing that those goal posts are typical symbols of "success" -- a property, a car, an annual turnover of 100 million. These are the goals that would never put you in the yellow zone, you can drive for hours in your Ferrari, but the furthest you get is the next traffic light.

Byron Katie told someone who was fretting over this question that you can live up to your full potential every day. She does it when she washes the dishes for example. I'm not being facetious here. I took that advice very seriously. I can't say that I felt ecstatic each time I washed a pan or ironed Daniel's shirts but I can say that it helped me understand that you can be good at anything for it to be meaningful, not just the things that society labels as useful or laudable. Mother Teresa, for example, is one of the worst examples of human compassion in the history of mankind, her organization is rife with corruption and inefficacy, but still she has come to be a ubiquitous symbol of compassion and charity.  Go figure. The things or people that society at large regard as successes are like the book covers that hide the real contents of the pages. You have to read a long time before you can see for yourself if you had correctly judged it by its cover.

In sum, flow is not happiness, but many find happiness in doing the things that give them flow. I am in the lower end of the yellow whenever I am in the few moments of pure focus and attention on my son, when I lose consciousness of everything as my hands skim the keyboard as if they were being directly commandeered by the score of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, and when I am piecing together multiple ideas  into a coherent  opinion on this blog. I don't experience this all the time, and I am unafraid to admit I grapple with the "what could I be doing that's more meaningful?" question every day. But understanding the nature of flow has helped me conclude that the only way to live in the yellow is to keep doing the things I am good at without hoping for some magical trophy that reads "success" at the end of my endeavours.

I am going to end with this tremendously funny speech by Sir Ken Robinson because he is just so RIGHT. He talks about some of the stuff I've just gone about, and after you've listened to him, if you haven't gone to search for his 2006 talk, you would sit back and think: that's absolutely right.

Marriage 2.0

I'm going to talk about marriage and parenting because they've got to do with Population and Fertility,  one of my fave topics that rank right up there between Idiotic Politicians and Best Online Fashion Stores.

Enough has been said about why people are not reproducing (1.15 TFR last year, from 2.07 in 1975) which is mostly uninformed (read: unempirical) opinion-making by policy-makers who rely on mostly attitudinal studies by sociologists.  Yap explains that the attitude of wanting marriage and children (as revealed in the surveys) stems from a life-course perspective. In other words, at 25 when all of my friends are just graduated and are busy climbing the corporate ladder, the last thing on my mind is family planning; whereas ask a 30 year old that question and peer pressure plus a biological clock might induce a different attitude. Duh. It doesn't tell me anything useful, just that people have different priorities at different ages.

Other researchers are more interested in criticising policies for being too patriarchal and protective of the normative family form. This makes for an edgy Sociology 101 tutorial class, but it makes a very poor assumption that allowing alternative family forms to flourish would get you the desired TFR. Hypothetically, a policy tweak to relax the rules around who can qualify for maternity benefits and tax reliefs isn't magically going to raise the birthrate either, because unlike in the UK or US, women are still made to feel like sluts for being teenaged or unwed mothers here.

The state now know admits that Singaporeans, once married, would go on to have at least 1 to 2 children, and MCYS knows this well enough, as their own slightly inarticulate Minister has put it himself.  The state seems to have taken the entire TFR issue and dumped it into a new but no less prosaic marriage campaign.  They now blame the problem on people who don't get married soon enough to have that first baby in their twenties or those who don't marry at all. The state's newest scapegoat is the Finicky, Unrealistic Single.


How true is it then that marriage rates have faltered?  If you compare trends in the last five years, as opposed as comparing to 1979 when education levels of the general population were lower, you wouldn't see any change that's particularly eyebrow raising. The median age of first time marriages for both males and females didn't get much higher and the general rate of marriage slipped a few points but it doesn't tell you much unless you delve into the details of what sort of people were marrying at what age and if it's their first or second marriage. It's not that fewer people are marrying at such a significant rate, the picture shows that people are simply marrying later.

Source: Department of Statistics

So if people are marrying later, and therefore having fewer children as a result, why has this been happening? According to Yap Mui Teng, the opportunity costs for older women who have likely attained a more comfortable financial position or higher status position is obviously greater. Younger men likewise postpone marriage until they have attained a level of perceived financial capability, so unless a 35 year old man marries a 25 year old woman, chances are he isn't going to get further than two.

The Perception Gap

The problem about asking people why they are not having more children (or any at all) is you're asking them to rationalize something that could very well have nothing to do with reason.  In other words, measuring people's perception or attitude towards a decision they mostly haven't yet made is not going to get you any thing more than asking me to guess how many hairs are on your head.

If someone tells you it's "expensive" to have another baby and they "can't afford" it, how much face value are you going to give that statement? The birth rate has very little to do with the cost and benefit of parenting, which has been the premise on which policymakers have relied in their decades-long effort to up those stubborn fertility numbers. Yes, raising a family has to do with dollars and cents, and other more successful states in the Nordic and West European continents have shown that lots of state-sponsored help can raise the TFR, but the desire to raise a family has a lot to do with the perception of relative costs and not real costs.


I am going to argue that how much risk and cost that people perceive having a baby would entail directly correlates with how equal or unequal the society they live in is.

I think this is something worth considering because reason and rationality are only one way in which we come to our decisions. However, we need to acknowledge that rationality is not always so rational, and people's perceptions are relative to many things. One of those things, I believe, is how much their society fosters social trust, solidarity and a sense of fairness amongst its members. The higher the inequality, and trust me, Singapore is right up there, the less trust people have in the system and their state, and I dare to guess, the more likely they are to perceive high personal and economic costs to having children. This is why no amount of money (read Baby Bonus) or benefits would incentivise people who perceive themselves in a state of constant deprivation. They are perpetually comparing themselves with the Joneses next door. But if they see the Joneses, the Smiths and the Wongs down the street as JUST LIKE THEM, then your $6000 starts to look like an incentive rather than a number they would scorn as just not enough. On the other hand, many countries that are more equal than Singapore (check the GINI coefficient or index) are doing a lot better with their population growth.

Reduce Inequality and you Solve Your Birthrate Problem

Richard Wilkinson wrote in The Spirit Level that people in highly unequal societies like the US tend to feel pressure to enhance themselves by inflating their achievements and status. Status matters a lot (sound familiar?), and money matters even more because people use money to show their status. 

Wilkinson also found that in more unequal countries, children tend to have higher aspirations — but they’re completely unrealistic aspirations. They all want to be sports stars or celebrities or directors of large companies: the only thing that matters is being rich. In more equal societies, it may still be acceptable to be a skilled craftsman without being regarded as a loser. The culture shifts with inequality.

So what the MCYS should be examining isn't ways to get people to marry earlier because it isn't at all about choosy individuals and unrealistic ideals that is causing the problem of late marriages. The state needs to recognize that inequality affects us and our personal relationships intimately, making people increasingly neurotic about how they are seen, judged and valued by others. Status conscious people have expectations of themselves as parents in a whole different league than people who don't care about which school their cousin's child is in, or how much money their neighbour's kid is making as a banker. This feeds into their perception of relative deprivation if they were to marry earlier (before they get 3 promotions) or have that second child (and risk discrimination or further career advancement). 

Donald Low wrote in his blog and which was published in the Straitjacket Times yesterday that high social inequality could have serious repercussions for Singapore and advocated more inclusive, universal programmes to help those who aren't experiencing any social mobility.  I believe that it the government takes his advice and starts shaping up and stop being so stingy with its redistribution, the snowball effect would be felt in our birth rate.

Am I saying that a universal welfare system would push up birthrates? Yes and no. A better system of redistributive justice is the DNA of social trust and social solidarity. When people feel more secure about their lives, when they genuinely feel that they have an equal chance of getting to where they aspire to be, they would feel less status conscious because they would see themselves as LIKE MOST OTHER SINGAPOREANS and not belonging to some sandwiched, marginalised lower-middle class. This is one of the things that define more egalitarian societies like Sweden and Finland. Only when you get this sort of balance in your society would people feel that the relative benefit of having children outweighs the cost of it. Only then will people appreciate the money you give them to have a second or third child.

After all, rationality is sometimes misguided and perceptions are relative. Fix the inequality, and the population fixes itself.

How Babies Learn Language

I watched this TED talk by Patricia Kuhl about a year ago, or sometime while I was pregnant with Ju. I remember being fascinated by what development psychologists were discovering about babies and how they learn language, particularly foreign languages.  Dr Kuhl gave a more in-depth lecture at the University of Washington, available for view on Youtube, but the TED talk summarises her research findings in a short couple of minutes.

The Golden Window

In a nutshell, the facts are pretty indisputable: babies are able to discern all the sounds of all languages in the word up till a certain age -- 10-12 months. Kuhl posits that between 8 and 10 months, all babies begin to take rapid statistics of adults' speech and these statistics are then used in later stages for their speech development. But get this, after 10 to 12 months of age, babies' ability to detect other languages other than the one they are most exposed to (the mother or native tongue) drops significantly. 

The science is simple: after the 8 to 10 month window when babies are rapidly taking statistics of the sounds they hear in adults' speech, the ones who are NOT exposed to more than one language start to tune out the foreign language sounds in order to focus on the native language sounds. Kuhl experimented with American babies at age 7-8 months, testing their ability to discern Chinese language sounds. All the babies could do so.  Then, one set of babies were exposed to 12 sessions of 35 minutes of Chinese (over 12 weeks) during the critical window and another group (the control group) were not.  The babies that were not exposed to any Chinese lost their ability to discern the Chinese sounds but the exposed group of babies were able to discern the sounds!

Kuhl argues that as native language acquisition begins at the 7 to 10 month stage (where babies start to actively take speech statistics), foreign language acquisition declines because all the babies are hearing are one language, their native tongue, unless of course, they are being raised bilingual or multilingual.  This also explains why adults have a horrible time picking up foreign languages, particularly after their teens. The OPTIMAL age span for learning language is from age 0 to 7. After that it decreases slightly and then dips at purberty. After that, it's just downhill.

Putting Science To Practice

I have always been a fan of science and experimentation. In fact, I've been testing Ju for a couple of weeks on his object permanence cognition. (Still negative, if you're wondering) Anyway, Dr Kuhl's research really stoked my excitement about language learning and how I can possibly help Ju in our multilingual project. To refresh your memory, here's the map of Ju's linguistic inputs. I've added in what I consider an assessment of the degree of exposure: High Exposure is where he hears the language passively as well as actively spoken to him on a daily basis. Medium High refers to daily exposure at a somewhat lesser degree, maybe 1 to 3 hours.

Ju has had this type and degree of exposure since birth.  If the research is valid, then this is the crucial period where Ju is taking statistics, absorbing German, Chinese and English. Dr Kuhl explains that it is through "motherese" (the universal way that people speak to their kids, in a high pitch, repetitive way) that the babies are able to take their statistics. When we speak "motherese", our speech becomes slower, vowel sounds are extended ("Hiiiii Babyyyy!" instead of "Hi Baby!") and as a result, we produce better acoustics, our articulation of words and sentences is clearer, and hence these form the “little nuggets” that map your baby's brain as he absorbs the sounds.

Newsflash for those who think popping in a DVD with Chinese songs in bright, fun animation is going to help your child pick up Chinese.  The study also measured the effect of audio and audio/visual input on the babies. Result? No result. The babies who heard or watched a videorecording of the very same Chinese lessons given to the "exposed" group had no significant improvement in their ability to discern Chinese sounds.

Learning is SOCIAL, i.e. the social part of our brains are responsible for language acquisition.  Not surprising, since it was during constant exposure to my in-laws or other people while I was in Germany that my German improved at the most tremendous rate.  They don't recommend "immersion" for nothing.
So don't be lazy and take heart!  Every child can learn multiple languages and the best way to do it is through interaction. Throw away the DVDs and shut off the television and computer. Your child is like a piggy-bank with a supercomputer, the more you speak, read and expose him/her to languages, the more likely that one fine day the supercomputer will start churning out the very things you hoped to hear.

We Have Teeth!

Ju's first front incisors are out!

Last week Daniel's finger got a good chomp down and when we pried open his mouth we saw a pearly little white just barely showing below the lower gum. It was rather sore looking and explained all the moaning he's been doing in the middle of the night.

Saturday we checked again and lo and behold! Two little babies peeking out from the gums. TWO.

My parents are amazed. A few of my friends' kids who are slightly older than Ju haven't started teething yet. We gave Ju his first toothbrush to play around with and he ended up with a waterfall of drool down his chin. Pigeon has a nice range, we bought the 3-in-one, with the beginner's brush for 2-3 teeth and two more for the next stages.

Poor Ju, meanwhile, is still waking in the night. It's likely from his growth hormones pushing the baby teeth out. He's not had any other symptoms besides waking in the night (we have to coax him back to sleep) but that means we have interrupted sleep as well. Ironic that it the sleep issues only came because of his teething.  We'll have to adjust to his night interruptions in the meantime and hope the poor chap gets over the pain soon and get back to sleeping through.

Hanyu Pinyin Part II

This post deals with pronunciation.  If you want to know how to pronounce all the possible words in the language, this post is for you. While figuring out which initials go with which finals, I found myself instinctively, if you like, knowing which initials to pick. How? Technically I am supposed to have learnt 2000-3000 words throughout my education, but knowing full well I'm probably left with half of that, I used my trusty pinyin writer to be sure.  If you can get used to how the initials and finals (consonants and vowels) are pronounced, you would be able to correctly pronounce any Chinese word that comes with pinyin.

All you need to know is how to pronounce the consonents (initials) and vowels (finals) in the Chinese language. Initials (声母) are like consonants and finals (韵母) are like vowels. But there are compound finals (复韵母) where a "medial" is paired with the final, such as:

Initial    Final
m            a       = ma 马

m            ai      = mai 买

For this post, I will dispense with medials, you don't need to care. Just think of everything as either a simple or complex final. We start with initials, with many of them having no equivalents in English. Consider this complete set:

b p m f d t n l g k h j q x zh ch sh r z c s w y
 
b as in bai = purse your lips and let the sound out as if you are making a bubble. This "b" is not pronounced as in English "bat" as that would be a hard "b"

p, m, f = exactly as you would pronounce them in English "pen", "men" and "fish"
d as in dai = again unaspirated t as in stop, let out the sound without saying it as in "dog"

t, n, l = exactly as you would pronounce in English "ten", "nine", "love"

g as in gong = unaspirated k, as in skill, and not as in girl

k, h = exactly as in English "kite" and "house"

j as in jie = no English equivalent; in the English "j" (as in Joe), your lips are rounded, instead you make a smile with jaws clamped in the Chinese "j"

q as in qi = No equivalent in English. Like cheek, with the lips spread wide with ee. Curl the tip of the tongue downwards to stick it at the back of the teeth and strongly aspirate. Note that "qü " would sound more like the English "ch"

x as in xi = No equivalent in English. Like she, with the lips spread and the tip of your tongue curled downwards and stuck to the back of teeth when you say ee.

zh as in zhi = No equivalent, like the "j" in joke except unaspirated

ch and sh = exactly as in English "chair" and "share"

r and s = exactly as in English "rat" and "sit"

z as in zi = No equivalent, similar to suds in a toneless syllable

c as in ci = No equivalent, similar to the German "z" as in "zwei"

w and y = exactly as in English "water" and "you"

The only syllable-final consonants in Standard Chinese are -n and -ng, and -r, which is attached as a grammatical suffix.

nan 男
neng 能
er 二

Here come the finals (vowels). Vowels or "finals" are pretty easy, with the exception of the ü sound which does not exist in the English language.  The thing about finals is when you stick a "y" or "w" in front, they sound different, we could call them exceptions if you like. Here's what I mean:

i as in ci, ri, zi, zhi, shi, chi, si = No equivalent, similar to the German "oe" except your mouth is not so open
Exception: yi is pronounced "yee"

a  = just like "father" (paired with the initials b p m f d t n l g k h zh ch sh r z c s w y)

e = just like the French and German "e" except stretched, like "duh" (paired with the initials d t n l g k h zh ch sh r z c s)
Exception: ye is pronounced "yeh"

ai = like the English "eye" (paired with b p m d t n l g k h zh ch sh z c s w)

ei as in hei = like the English "hey" (paired with b p m f d n l g h z w)

ao as in bao = like "cow" (paired with b p m d t n l g k h zh ch sh r z c s y)

ou = like "mow" (paired with b p m f d t n l g k h j zh ch sh r z s y)

an as in nan = like "nun" except the vowel a is stretched (paired with b p m f d t n l g k h j zh ch sh r z s)
Exception: yan is pronounced like the English "tan"

en  = like "taken" (paired with b p m f n g k h zh ch sh r z c s w)

ang = like the German "angst" (paired with b p m f d t n l g k h zh ch sh r z c s w y)

eng as in peng  = like "ung" (paired with b p m f d t n l g k h j q x zh ch sh r z c s w)
 
er = on its own, not paired with any initials  
 
ia as in jia, qia and xia = like the English "yeah"
 
ie as in bie = like the English "yeh" (paired with b p m d t n l j q x)


iao as in biao = like the English "meow" (paired with b p m d t n l j q x)

iu as in jiu = like the English "ewe" (paired with m d n l j q x)

ian as in bian = like the English "yen" (paired with b p m d t n l j q x)

in as in bin = like "been" (paired with b p m n l j q x y)

iang as in liang = i + ang (paired with n l j q x)

ing as in bing = i + ng (paired with b p m d t n l j q x y)

u as in bu = like "boo" (paired with b p m f d t n l g k h zh ch sh r z c s w)

ua as in gua = u + a (paired with g k h zh ch sh)

uo as in tuo = u + o (paired with d t n l g k h zh ch sh r z c s)

o as in bo = like above, except shorter (paired with b p m f)

uai as in kuai = u + ai (paired with g k h sh)

ui as in kui = u + ei (paired with d t g k h zh ch sh r z c)

uan as in duan = u + an (paired with d t n l g k h zh ch sh r z c s)

un as in cun = like "oon" (paired with d t n l g k h zh ch sh r z c)

uang as in huang = u + ang (paired with g k h zh ch sh)

ong as in hong = ou + ng (paired with d t n l g k h zh ch r z c s y)

ü as in yü = like the German "über" or French "lune"(paired with j q x and y)

ue (or üe) = ü + eh (paired with j q x and y)

uan as in yuan = ü + an like English "an" (paired with j q x y)

un as in yun = ü + n (paired with j q x y)

iong  as in xiong = ee + ou + ng (paired with q and x)

***************

If you're not already turned off by all those consonants and vowels, you're on your way on to a great journey!  I love the language, yes, I do, in spite of all those years of torture and exams. It's a beautiful, deep and subtle language that should never be ruined by stupid exams and dull teaching methods. But no matter how I resented the way we had to learn it, I am at least grateful for what it gave me in the end.

Wait till you get to China.

Hanyu Pinyin Part 1

Disclaimer: I am not a Chinese language teacher, the following is a result of research available online coupled with my understanding of Chinese as a native speaker. I am seeking to simplify the understanding of pinyin as much as I can, while still doing justice to it of course. Part 1 deals only with tones.


Hanyu Pinyin is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet used in China, Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan.


The pinyin system uses diacritics to mark the four tones of Mandarin. The diacritic is placed over the letter that represents the syllable nucleus, and yes, there is a rule for which is the syllable nucleus (more below).

TONES

Mandarin is tonal, so if you're tone-deaf, it's going to be a little more challenging. The good news is there are only four plus one neutral tones, so even the worst singer could be understood by a native-speaker if he practised really hard. When I am asked to teach a Westerner or non-Chinese person some Mandarin, I start with a simple sound test: I ask them to repeat after me:

妈麻马骂 (mā, má, mǎ,  mà)

This never fails to get a chuckle and the student enthusiastically repeats after me with admirable accuracy. But start to test them on each individual tone and they begin to see why Chinese is arguably the most difficult language to master. Daniel himself has problems with the 3rd tone and telling the difference between the 2nd and 4th tones. But in his defence, Daniel is a terrible singer.

1) The first tone (Flat or High Level Tone) is represented by a macron (ˉ) added to the pinyin vowel:

ā ē ī ō ū ǖ as in 妈 (mā) = mother

2) The second tone (Rising or High-Rising Tone) is denoted by an acute accent (ˊ):

á é í ó ú ǘ  as in 麻 (má) = as in 麻烦 inconvenient

3) The third tone (Falling-Rising or Low Tone) is marked by a caron/háček (ˇ).
ǎ ě ǐ ǒ ǔ ǚ  as in  马 (mǎ) = horse

4) The fourth tone (Falling or High-Falling Tone) is represented by a grave accent (ˋ):

à è ì ò ù ǜ   as in  骂  (mà) = to scold


5) The fifth tone (Neutral Tone) is represented by a normal vowel without any accent mark:

a e i o u ü  as in 吗 (ma) = question particle

Before the advent of computers, many typewriter fonts did not contain vowels with macron or caron diacritics. Tones were thus represented by placing a tone number at the end of individual syllables. For example, mà can be written as ma4.

SYLLABLE NUCLEUS
This is for all those pedantic writers out there. How do you know which vowel (yes, it's always a vowel) to place the diacritic on? My Chinese teacher in primary school taught us a ditty to identify the nucleus which I remember to this day:

"有 a 不放过

无 a 找 o, e

i, u 并列标在后

单个韵母不用说"

 

Never let go of the a

in the absence of a, look for o, e

If i and u stand side by side, place it on the one behind

A single final (vowel) goes without question

 

If you can memorize this, it will serve you in good stead with everything. 

 

Writing Lesson 2: Eat and Know Your Vegetables

I went in search of some of those vegetables and fruit I never knew how to say in Chinese (duh, because my Dad either doesn't cook these stuff or I never heard him terming them ever). I have affixed the pinyin for easy pronunciation, the number refers to the tone. If you don't know which tone goes which which number, google it, or see Wikipedia.

Again, notice that each noun is made up of usually two characters. 瓜 (gua1) is a common character suffix, meaning "melon" and 菜 (cai4) on its own means "vegetable". In the course of researching this post, I realised something astounding: many of the terms we use on vegetables here don't exist in "proper" Chinese! For example, you will get a funny look if you asked for a 番茄 or a 黄梨 in China. Another discovery is we've been getting a famously Singaporean drink wrong, if you asked for 玉米水 in China expecting to get a barley drink, people would think you're asking for a corn or oat drink! (which sounds gross)


芹菜 - celery
qin2  cai4

花菜 - cauliflower (translated as "flower vegetable")
hua1  cai4

西兰花 - broccoli (translated as "western orchid flower"!)

菠菜 - spinach
bo1 cai4

大葱 - onion (or Chinese leek, the Western round onion is known as 葱头)
da4 cong1


西红柿 or 番茄 - tomato
xi1 hong2 shi4             fan1  qie2    (nobody calls it 西红柿, the local preference is 番茄)

芋 - yam
yu 4          (I am used to saying 芋头, as in 芋头糕, yam cake, but it doesn't exist in the dictionary)

番薯 - sweet potato (funny, this also refers to "yam" in the dictionary)
fan1  shu3

玉米 - corn
yu4  mi3  (strange! Our entire nation has been calling our local barley drink 玉米水 when    the correct word for barley ought to be 麦  !)

麦  - wheat, barley, oat or maize
mai4        (Oatmeal is also known as 麦片 mai4 pian4)

南瓜 - pumpkin (funny that a pumpkin is known as a "melon from the south")
nan2  gua1

西瓜 - watermelon (translated as "melon from the west")
xi1  gua1

冬瓜 - Chinese squash/ winter melon
dong1 gua1      (this sounds like 东 = east, so you might have thought, aha! Melon from the east! But 冬 is "winter", and probably explains why locals here call it a "winter melon" rather than a white gourd/ squash)

木瓜 - papaya (don't ask me why a papaya is known as "wooden melon"!)
mu4  gua1

黄瓜 - cucumber
huang1 gua1    (again, I don't know why a cucumber should be translated as "yellow melon")


菠萝 - pineapple
bo1 luo2    (this is the proper word in China, but locals here call it 黄梨 ("yellow pear"!)

哈蜜瓜 - honeydew melon
ha1  mi4   gua1

芦笋 - asparagus
lu2 sun3  (there are two kinds of asparagus, the Chinese ones and the ones you find in the West)

蘑菇 - mushroom (refers to the western button mushroom)
mo2 gu1

冬菇 - mushroom 
dong1 gu1  type of shiitake mushroom that comes in dried form. It's translated as "winter mushroom" and more commonly used in Chinese cooking

香菇 - shiitake mushroom (translated as "fragrant mushroom")
xiang1 gu1


四季豆 - green bean or french bean
si4 ji4 dou4 (aka "four season bean", again, a stumper if you used it in Singapore


大蒜 - garlic
da4 suan4  (to ask for crushed garlic, a local favourite with a Haninanese chicken rice dish, say 蒜茸 suan4 rong2)


柠檬 - lemon
ning2 meng2   (I've been saying it wrong all these years! It's not "ling meng"!)


柿子椒 - bell pepper/ capsicum

shi4 zi jiao1  (another stumper, I don't know if anyone would get this one here, but the green pepper is called 青椒 qing1 jiao1)


辣椒 - chili
la4  jiao1        (so it should be no surpriose that a chili is called a "spicy pepper")


鳄梨 - avocado
er1 li2  (this is the winner - translates to "alligator pear"!)