Punctuation rules

Language Learning Chinese
1

I have been writing an online diary on a chinese website for the past week. I asked readers to comment on my Chinese and perhaps suggest ways in which I can improve it. A bunch of people have commented on my punctuation…I realised that I have no idea how to punctuate chinese whatsoever and have just been doing so as I would English.

Can anyone help me with the basic rules for punctuation in Chinese? It doesn’t EXPLICITLY feature in any of my books. :expressionless:

2

Care to share a link to your Web site?

3

Punctuation is quite difficult to learn well for non-native speakers of Chinese. Likewise, it’s pretty damn hard for Chinese students of English to punctuate properly in English. If you’ve ever proof-read a paper written by a Chinese student, you will probably remember that it was full of run-on sentences and sentence fragments. For advanced level students who are trying to learn composition in their second language, good punctuation is probably one of the last things that they learn well. This is especially true for Chinese students of English or English speaking students of Chinese because the punctuation rules for the two langauges are so different. Think about it. Unless you are specifically focusing on writing, punctuation is the last thing you’re going to pay attention to when reading because unlike the vocabulary or grammar that you might want to learn from reading and carry over to your other skills, understanding the ways of Chinese punctuation isn’t going to help you with your reading, speaking or listening. Even for reading, understanding the how and why of Chinese punctuation isn’t really going to help your reading comprehension too much. Its effect on the meaning of a sentence is either negligible or so subtle that it won’t be important for a non-native reader to try to understand unless his comprehension of the non-punctuation elements of a sentence (vocabulary and grammar) is already close to “100%” fluent.

My opinion is that unless you are really serious about writing and you are already an advanced student who has no trouble reading non-technical or non-literary Chinese, learning to write and punctuate well isn’t really worth the time. Even if your Chinese is pretty good, do you really need to learn to write? Consider that even if you do get a good grasp of Chinese punctuation and composition, you will almost surely never be able to write Chinese that isn’t obviously “non-native.” Writing is hard in our first language. Trying it in a second language is infinitely more difficult.

For punctuation rules, you could check any Chinese grammar book. I don’t think any of the books with English have good explanations of punctuation. There are also little books that just have punctuation rules. These are usually next to the simplified/traditional character conversion books in the bookstore. I don’t know how much these will help a non-native speaker, though. Although I understand the rules in them, these books haven’t helped me actually write with good punctuation. I guess that reference books like these are only good for people who already have a solid passive understanding of the rules of the written language, i.e. a native speaker who has a few years of basic education.

I think that to make any real progress with Chinese composition, you would need to be taught by someone who not only knows how to teach composition, but also knows how to teach composition to a non-native student. You would also need materials specifically designed for foreigners. I don’t think materials for native-speakers would be suitable for non-natives; the needs of these two types of students are still very different, even if the non-native has reached a very high level of proficiency in speaking and reading. The non-native has probably already learned how to write in his first language, so he will have to be trained to “turn off” the interference of his first language, even more so than when he learned to speak Chinese.

Good composition teachers and materials are damn hard to find. I’ve never had a teacher who had a clue about how to teach a foreigner how to write. I have seen a couple of good books, though. My favorite is
汉语写作教程 (ISBN 7-5619-1190-4/H.02137 2003 DW 0002) from the Beijing Language University Press; you can find it on their website: http://www.blcup.com.cn/. It is part of the series for their BA in Chinese as a second language program (对外汉语本科系列教程). The above number is for the second year book. As you might guess, the first chapter focuses on punctuation. I like this book because it breaks composition down to more manageable chunks for learning. It is still a hard book, though. I won’t tackle it until I have more time on my hands and I find a teacher who knows about teaching composition.

4

Try this:
cmi.hku.hk/Ref/Article/article08/

5

Thanks Cranky! That should help me a out a little(with the help of our old freind dr eye).

I was only looking for the BASIC rules for punctuating a sentence. I Don’t (at this stage) wish to write works of literary art. I’m at the lower end of the intermediate scale, I just wish to be able to write a short monologue such as a diary for no reason other than the fact that I want to have a that ability. My conversational ability is reasonable, my reading comprehension is not too bad either. But I feel that I want my writing ability to reflect my speaking level.

6

I do a bit of work as a translator from Chinese into English, and if it’s any comfort to you, even professional Chinese native-speakers can be terrible with punctuating in Chinese. Honestly.

7

I agree with tetsuo completely. Its very common for me to get a case in which the original Chinese is very poorly written and/or has nonsensical grammar. I fear that (just like in the US in recent years), Taiwanese students are NOT learning to write well at all.

8

Chinese sentences have punctuation?

all the chi nese sen tence s I have seen the char act ers all run to geth er like this with sep ar ate space s for each syll a ble so that it is of ten diff i cult to un der stand when one word ends and an oth er word be gins.

The only puncuation I’ve seen are commas, semicolons, colons, question marks, and periods that are borrowed from English. Did written Chinese have any punctuation at all before those elements from English were introduced?

9

I think that one part of the civil service exams was to put punctuation in sentences.

Here’s a punctuation joke:

「日記」

老王規定其兒子每天要記日記，
某天晚上他要抽查兒子的日記。
他查完日記後，
對兒子的母親大發雷霆。
其妻莫名其妙，
要求老王說明原因。
他憤怒地打開兒子的日記攤在桌前，
其上歪歪扭扭地寫著：

10

[quote=“mod lang”]Chinese sentences have punctuation?

all the chi nese sen tence s I have seen the char act ers all run to geth er like this with sep ar ate space s for each syll a ble so that it is of ten diff i cult to un der stand when one word ends and an oth er word be gins.

The only puncuation I’ve seen are commas, semicolons, colons, question marks, and periods that are borrowed from English. Did written Chinese have any punctuation at all before those elements from English were introduced?[/quote]

And then there’s the “backward comma”, used as far as I know only by Chinese and Japanese, used to separate items in lists.

Having worked as a Chinese-to-English translator for many years, I can attest to the fact that too much of the Chinese source material I translate from is horrendously written. Run-on sentences are the rule rather than the exception, redundancy is rampant, subjects are omitted, and isolated sentences that have no logical connection to the narrative are ubiquitous. However, I’ve come to accept that that’s simply the way modern expository Chinese is written. (Though it would be nice to see an example of well-written modern Chinese prose some day.)

But, when translating, it’s a good idea to warn your clients: “Garbage in, garbage out.”

11

[quote=“Jive Turkey”]
because the punctuation rules for the two langauges are so different. Think about it.[/quote]

I agree with you generally, but I would add that learning good grammar should, by and large, be sufficient. Putting aside ‘advanced punctuation’, and say just sticking with periods, a student with a good grasp of grammar should be able to write well ie no run-on sentences, no sentence fragments. Good grammar also means having subject-predicate, subject-verb agreement, antecedents, etc in order. My point is good grammar should be able to take care of most of the problems we seem to be talking about here.

I still seem to sense that:

  • students just aren’t taught good writing style. This means learning the way it’s ‘always’been taught’. Is there any reform movement? (what happened to the Lu Xuns and Hu Shis?)
  • there isn’t any fundamental Chinese grammar which is rigid enough to require good sentence structure. I guess part of the problem is that many things can be implied and depends more on context than, say, English.
  • there is still a prevailing attitude (and some might say excuse for laziness) that the more complicated and obfuscating an essay is, and the harder it is for any reader to make sense of it, the more “learned” and “educated” the author is seen to be. Ei gratis, if I write in Latin, I must be superior (joke). One need only look at the government texts (Gongwen Shu) to confirm this.

Today I just translated an entire paragraph which had about 10 different ideas, but made of 1 sentence. My co-worker said she can understand it, but of course, I watched her take quite some time to actually read and understand the contents. So, to me, it’s one thing to say you can read it. Hell, we can all read poorly written English (insert your language) if we really wanted to, but does that mean it’s written well. Does that aid in communication, or is it an obstacle to efficient, clear and easy communication?

of course, I am always aware that it’s a danger to compare languages like this, and I might be missing something. But I’ve had confirmation from quite a few Chinese native speakers as well. (Not to say good writing doesn’t exist. There are lots of authors that write novels without 50 word sentences. Newspaper are also in a different category of writing, but they exhibit similar problems. )

12

One of the problems is that good grammar only means that in English. It doesn’t mean that in Chinese, where omitting the subject is normal; subject-verb agreement is automatic, since the verbs don’t vary for person; what we would call run-on sentences and sentence fragments are normal; and the antecedents may seem in order to the native speaker of Chinese, but not to the native speaker of English.
The most frustrating and boring part of correcting student essays was always the punctuation. I finally gave them a list of a few simple and clearly explained rules, and then didn’t correct any mistake that fell under one of these rules. I’d just refer them to the list.