7.3: Nationality

Country names

Zhōngguó	Rìbĕn	Yìnní	Yìndù	Hánguó
Àodàlìyà	Jiānádà	Mĕiguó	Mòxīgē	Éguó
Făguó	Yīngguó	Déguó	Yìdàlì	Xībānyá

Some country names – mostly those with a history of independence and national power – are composed of a single syllable plus guó ‘country; nation’, on the model of Zhōngguó ‘China (middle-country)’. For these countries, the first syllable is chosen for its sound as well as meaning: Měiguó ‘the USA (beautiful-country)’; Yīngguó ‘England; Britain (hero-country)’; Fǎguó ‘France (law-country)’; Déguó ‘Germany (virtue-country)’; Tàiguó ‘Thailand (peace-country)’.

Countries with deep historical ties to China retain their old names. Nippon, a name that is cognate with the English name Japan, is the source of the Chinese name, Rìběn, literally ‘sun-root’, ie from the Chinese perspective, the direction of the sunrise. Vietnam, a name that contains the Chinese root nán ‘south’ and the name of an ethnic group called Yuè in Chinese, is Yuènán in Mandarin. Most other countries are simply transliterated: Jiānádà, Yìdàlì, Fēilǜbīn, Yìndù. City names, except for those in Japan and Korea, are almost all transliterated: Zhījiāgē, Bèi’érfǎsītè, Tèlāwéifū. A few are translated rather than transliterated, eg Salt Lake City, Yánhúchéng ‘salt-lake-city’. A more extensive list of country and city names, with English equivalents, is provided in the appendix to this unit.

Asking about nationality

rén ‘person’	-guó ‘country’	dìfang ‘place’
Zhōngguó rén ‘a Chinese person’	Zhōngguó ‘China’	shénme dìfang ‘what place’

There are several ways of asking about nationality, all of them involving the categorial verb shì. Recall that nǎ and něi represent the same word, as do nà and nèi; the first members of each pair (nǎ, nà) tend to be ‘free’ forms; the second (něi, nèi) tend to be bound to measures: nǎ but něi ge.

i) Nĭ shi nĕiguó [~ năguó] rén?	(‘you be which-country person’)
ii) Nĭ shi năr ~ nǎlǐ de <rén>?	(‘you be where DE person’)
iii) Nĭ shi shénme dìfang rén?	(‘you be what place person’)
iv) Nĭ shi <cóng> shénme dìfang lái de?	(‘you be from what place come one’)

Options (ii- iv) do not, strictly speaking, ask about nationality, but about place, and can be answered with a city or town, as well as a country name. The last, (iv) represents two options: with cóng [ts-] ‘from’, the question is, strictly speaking, about the country of residence – or by implication, where you were born. Without cóng, it could simply mean ‘where do you [happen to have] come from’.

The responses to the questions usually take the same form as the question, eg:

Nĭ shi <cóng> shénme dìfang lái de?	Where are you from?
Wŏ shi <cóng> Rìbĕn lái de.	I’m from Japan.
Nĭ shi nĕiguó rén?	Which country are you from?
Wŏ shi Hánguó rén.	I’m from Korea.

Occasionally in conversation, people will ask about nationality using the more formal word, guójí ‘nationality’:

Nĭ de guójí shi shénme?	What’s your nationality?
Wŏ shi Mĕiguó guójí.	I’m an American citizen.
Nǐ shi shénme guójí?	What’s your nationality?
Wǒ de guójí shi Jiānádà. or	My nationality is Canadian.
Wŏ shi Jiānádà rén.	I’m from Canada.

Foreigners

‘Foreign’ in Chinese is wàiguó ‘outside-country’; ‘foreigners’ are wàiguó rén. Foreigners are also called yángrén. Yáng actually means ‘seas’, but with implications of ‘overseas’; cf. words such as yángwáwa ‘a doll [with European features]’ or the now archaic yánghuǒ ‘matches ([over]seas fire)’.

In China, foreigners of European ancestry are generally called lǎowài ‘venerable foreigners’: Ei, nǐ kàn, lǎowài lái le ‘Hey, look, here comes the foreigner!’ In southern China, local equivalents of the Cantonese term, guailo ‘ghost people’ (incorporated in regional Mandarin as guǐlǎo) is used much like lǎowài. The presence of the rather respectable prefix lǎo makes both terms acceptable. Yáng guǐzi ‘foreign devils’, however, is regarded as rather disparaging; one recent and widely used Chinese-to-Chinese dictionary gives its definition as [translated] ‘an archaic term of disparagement for Westerners who invaded our country’. So even though one may occasionally use it tongue-in-cheek to refer to oneself, generally, it is better to avoid it.

Have you been there? V-guo

Talking about nationality or place of origin is likely to lead to questions about prior travel, so it is worthwhile taking a short digression to introduce the basics of the verb suffix guò [usually untoned] prior to a more detailed exposition in a later unit. Here we concentrate on two exchanges, the first involving the verb qù ‘go’, and the second involving the verb chī ‘eat’:

	Nĭ qù-guo Zhōngguó ma?	Have you [ever] been to China?
+	Qù-guo.	[I] have.
-	Méi<you>qù-guo.	[I] haven’t.
	Nǐ chī-guo hǎishēn ma?	Have you [ever] eaten sea cucumber?
+	Chī-guo.	I have.
-	Méi<you> chī-guo.	No, I haven’t.

Note that responses to questions with guò retain the guò in negative responses as well as positive. The negative response, like that with le, is formed with méi<you>.

‘Experiential’ guò should remind you of a construction that you encountered in Unit 1. There you learned several ways to ask if someone had had their meal, one way involving final le, and another that involved both le and the post-verbal guò: Nǐ chīguo fàn le ma? / Chī<guo> le. ‘Have you had your meal? / I have.’ Clearly the question does not mean ‘have you ever eaten’, along the lines of: Nǐ chī-guo hǎishēn ma? 'Have you [ever] eaten sea cucumber?'

In this book, the two uses of guò are kept distinct by a convention not found in standard pinyin: the guò from Unit 1, that co-occurs with le, follows the verb directly (chīguo); the one introduced in this lesson, not associated with le and meaning ‘have ever done something’, follows the verb with a hyphen (chī-guo). In fact, even without this signal, context resolves most cases of potential ambiguity, just as it does in English with, eg ‘Have you eaten sea-cucumber?’ and ‘Have you eaten?’.

Nĭ shi Zhōngguó shénme dìfang lái de? Wŏ shi Xī’ān rén. Xī’ān, wŏ qù-guo Xī’ān. Xī’ān hĕn yŏumíng! Shì ma?	Where abouts in China are you from? I’m from Xi’an. Xi’an, I’ve been there. Xi’an’s famous! Is it?
Nĭ shi Mĕiguó rén ba? Bù, wŏ shi Jiānádà rén. <Nĭ shi> Jiānádà shénme dìfang rén? Wēngēhuá. Nĭ qù-guo ma? Méi qù-guo, kĕshì hĕn xiǎng qù.	I take it you’re American. No, I’m from Canada. Where abouts in Canada [are your from]? Vancouver. Have you been? No, but I’d love to go.

Notes

a) hěn yǒumíng ‘quite have-name’; the Chinese speaker responds unassumingly even though he probably feels that Xi’an, with 2500 years of history, should be hěn yǒumíng.

b) xiǎng, literally ‘think; think of’ but often, as here, used to indicate intention ‘want to; feel like’.

More on proximity

Cóng should be distinguished from lí, which has a similar meaning and appears in the same place in sentence structure. While cóng is associated with movement, lí is associated only with distance, and with the SVs jìn ‘close’ and yuăn ‘far’.

Tā cóng Dàlián lái de; Dàlián zài Liáoníng shěng, lí Bĕijīng bù yuăn.

She’s from Dalian; Dalian’s in Liaoning province, not far from Beijing.

An actual distance may be substituted for jìn and yuăn. Distances in Chinese are measured in lǐ (low tone), equivalent to half a kilometer (or a third of a mile), or in gōnglǐ ‘kilometers’, but not usually in English miles (Yīnglǐ). All are M-words, so 100 kms. would be yībǎi gōnglǐ. The noun lù ‘road’ can, in certain cases, be added to the measure phrase, optionally mediated by de: yībǎi gōnglǐ lù ‘100 kms [of road]’. Since mileage is a noun, a verb still has to be provided, and in Chinese it is usually yǒu ‘have’ (unlike English, which uses ‘is’). Distances are often approximate, of course, so it is also useful to learn the adverb dàgài ‘approximately’.

Jīchăng lí wǒ de jiā yǒu wŭ gōnglǐ <lù>.	The airport is 5 kms. from my house.
Xīníng lí Xī’ān dàgài yǒu yīqiān gōnglǐ – hĕn yuăn.	Xining is about 1000 kms. from Xī’ān – [it]’s a long way off.
Wŏ de jiā lí huŏchēzhàn yǒu liăng lǐ lù – bú tài yuăn.	My house is 2 ‘miles’ from the station – not so far.