Languagle #60: Zhuang
Gwn haeux ndiep daengz naz, gwn bya siengj daengz dah
"Eat rice and think of the field; eat fish and think of the river."
What it means
Remember where the things you have came from. When you eat rice, think of the field; when you eat fish, think of the river. A saying about gratitude, with a close parallel in the Chinese idea of remembering the source when drinking water.
How to say it
gun how dyep dang na, gun pya syeng dang da
Zhuang is tonal. The final z, j and h in words like daengz, siengj and dah aren't said: they tell you the tone.
Word by word
- Gwn gun: eat
- haeux how: rice
- ndiep dyep: cherish, think of
- daengz dang: to, as far as
- naz na: rice field
- bya pya: fish
- siengj syeng: think of
- dah da: river
Where it was written down
A traditional proverb, passed down by word of mouth. From Two Thousand Zhuang Proverbs from China, a scholarly collection with Zhuang, Mandarin and English side by side.
Similar sayings
- Chinese: 饮水思源 (yǐn shuǐ sī yuán). When you drink water, think of its source.
How to recognise Zhuang
Zhuang is written in a Latin alphabet where the last letter of a syllable often isn't a sound at all: z, j, x, q and h at the end of a word mark its tone. Look for words like daengz and naz, and vowel groups like ae and aeu. Hmong's Latin spelling uses the same trick, but with letters like b, j, v and s.
About the Zhuang language
Zhuang is a Tai language, related to Thai and Lao, spoken by over 15 million people, mostly in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of southern China. The Zhuang are China's largest ethnic minority. Zhuang was traditionally written in Sawndip, characters adapted from Chinese; since the 1950s, it has had an official Latin alphabet that marks tones with letters at the end of a syllable, such as the final 'z' or 'x' in many words.
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