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May 21st 2013, 17:55\u00a0<\/span>by R.L.G. | NEW \nDID Joe Biden insult China? \u00a0The American \n \n \n \nIn this sentence, “You CANNOT think different in a nation where you \nMr Mair explains:<\/p>\n \nThe weakness in Zhang's reasoning lies mainly in his confusion over \nIt is clear that, when Biden said “China is a great nation”, he was \nI leave it to Mr Mair and the Chinese-speaking commenters to \nPolitical scientists talk about “nations” carefully. The word \nThe concept is very European. The French are the \n \nIn this traditional European understanding, the Germans are a \nThings got confusing when new kinds of states began to appear. \nBut political scientists have no power to determine how ordinary \nSo not even English-speakers agree on the basket of concepts \n\u62dc\u767b\u6f14\u8bb2\u89c6\u9891http:\/\/v.youku.com\/v_show\/id_XNTYxMzk3NDI4.html<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u672c\u6587\u7531\u81ea\u52a8\u805a\u5408\u7a0b\u5e8f\u53d6\u81ea\u7f51\u7edc\uff0c\u5185\u5bb9\u548c\u89c2\u70b9\u4e0d\u4ee3\u8868\u6570\u5b57\u65f6\u4ee3\u7acb\u573a<\/small><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.economist.com\/blogs\/johnson\/2013\/05\/translation?page=1#sort-comments<\/a><\/p>\nOf nations, peoples, countries and m\u00ednz\u00fa<\/h3>\n
\nYORK<\/span><\/p>\n\n
\nvice-president has a habit of sticking his foot into his mouth, and
\nin this case, the recent graduation speech he gave at the
\nUniversity of Pennsylvania\u00a0<\/span>inspired
\na viral rant by a “disappointed” Chinese student at Penn<\/a>, Zhang
\nTianpu. What was Mr Biden’s sin? Was it Mr Biden’s suggestion that
\ncreative thought is stifled in China?<\/p>\n\n
\nYou cannot think different in a nation where you
\ncannot breathe free. You cannot think different in a nation where
\nyou aren’t able to challenge orthodoxy, because change only comes
\nfrom challenging orthodoxy.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\nNo, that wasn’t it.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nThe source of the insult is a surprising one: Mr Biden called China
\na “great nation”, and a “nation” repeatedly after
\nthat.\u00a0<\/span>Victor Mair, the resident sinologist
\nat the Language Log blog, translates Mr Zhang’s
\ncomplaint.<\/p>\n\n
\naren't able to challenge orthodoxy”, he used the word “nation”.
\nThis is what really infuriated me, because in English “nation”
\nindicates “race, ethnicity”, which is different from “country,
\nstate”. “Country, state” perhaps places more emphasis on the notion
\nof the entirety of the country, even to the point of referring to
\nthe idea of government.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n
\nthe multiple meanings of the word m\u00ednz\u00fa \u6c11\u65cf…. [M]\u00ednz\u00fa \u6c11\u65cf can mean
\n“ethnic group; race; nationality; people;
\nnation”.\u00a0 Coming from the English side, we must
\nkeep in mind that “nation” can be translated into Chinese as gu\u00f3 \u56fd
\n(“country”), gu\u00f3ji\u0101 \u56fd\u5bb6 (“country”), gu\u00f3d\u00f9 \u56fd\u5ea6 (“country; state”),
\nb\u0101ng \u90a6 (“state”), and, yes, m\u00ednz\u00fa \u6c11\u65cf (“ethnic group; race;
\nnationality; people; nation”).<\/p>\n
\nrespectfully referring to the country as a whole.\u00a0
\nYet the sensitivity to questions of ethnicity in China, especially
\nwith regard to the sh\u01ceosh\u00f9 m\u00ednz\u00fa \u5c11\u6570\u6c11\u65cf (“ethnic \/ national
\nminorities”), e.g., Uyghurs, Tibetans, and scores of others, caused
\nZhang to take umbrage over something that the Vice President never
\nintended.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\ndiscuss the ins and outs of\u00a0m\u00ednz\u00fa<\/em>.
\nBut the confusion lies partly on the English side of things.
\nEnglish-speakers use “nation” in a way unmoored from how it is used
\nin other western countries, not to mention differently
\nfrom\u00a0m\u00ednz\u00fa.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nrefers to the\u2014partly artificial\u2014notion of a people who share a
\nlanguage, history, religion, ethnicity and culture. When nations
\nawake, become self-aware as nations, and seek their own state, that
\nis\u00a0nationalism<\/em>.
\nAnd a nation that succeeds in getting its own state has
\na\u00a0nation-state<\/em>.
\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\ncanonical\u00a0“nation”, even if this identity is more
\nconstructed and less ancient than most Frenchmen realise. The first
\ndefinition for the modern sense of “nation” in the Acad\u00e9mie
\nFran\u00e7aise's dictionary is that of the political scientists:<\/p>\n\n
\nEnsemble de personnes \u00e9tablies sur un territoire
\net unies par des caract\u00e8res ethniques, des traditions
\nlinguistiques, religieuses, etc. [Collection of persons established
\non a territory and united by ethnic charcteristics, linguistic and
\nreligious traditions, etc.]<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\nnation. The Russians are a nation. Many European languages have a
\nword that encapsulates this concept. For the French it is of
\ncourse\u00a0nation<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>itself;
\nfor the Germans,\u00a0Volk<\/em>,
\nfor the Russians,\u00a0narod<\/em>.
\nIn all of these languages, the nation is distinct from the country
\n(pays,
\nLand\u00a0<\/em>or\u00a0strana<\/em>)
\nand most definitely from the state (\u00e9tat,
\nStaat, gosudarstvo<\/em>). We see the quasi-familial connection of
\nthe nation to its territory in terms
\nlike\u00a0patrie,
\nVaterland\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0rodina<\/em>,
\nall from “parental” etymological roots. All of these words mean
\nslightly different things to different people in these countries,
\nand they change over time. For example, the
\nFrench\u00a0peuple\u00a0<\/em>partly
\noverlaps with\u00a0Volk\/narod<\/em>.
\nAnd the Soviets used\u00a0narod\u00a0<\/em>to
\nrefer to the new “Soviet nation”, and\u00a0natsionalnost'\u00a0<\/em>to
\nrefer to nationalities like Russians, Kazakhs, Jews and so forth.
\nBut the point remains: the people\/Volk<\/em>\/nation
\nis a prominent and powerful concept in European thinking. As a
\nmetaphor, it has more in common with a blood-related family than
\nwith a group of like-minded people living together by
\nchoice.<\/p>\n
\nSmall mixed groups of people from Europe established footholds in
\nthe Americas\u2014among a population of indigenous Americans\u2014and then
\nstarted importing slaves and later accepting immigrants from all
\naround the world. These new societies were hardly “nations” in the
\ntraditional European sense, with a shared history, ethnicity,
\nculture, language, religion and the like. \u00a0Some of
\nthese things, of course, were shared among much of the population,
\nbut by no means all. In the United States, “Americanness” (for
\nidealists, at least) came to mean belief in American civic ideals;
\na kind of nation of the mind. Much the same happened in places like
\nCanada, Brazil and Australia, with their linguistically and
\nracially mixed populations. Each of these places, today, has a
\nstrong identity. But it does not rest on the old European idea of
\nthe nation, a single people with a single story. Some political
\nscientists cleverly introduced the idea of the “state-nation”, a
\ncommunity that came into existence because of the prior existence
\nof a distinct state. France is a nation-state; Brazil, a
\nstate-nation.<\/p>\n
\npeople use words. And in America, “nation” is now used broadly,
\nmore or less as a synonym for “country”. Politicians are very fond
\nof it in particular. A search of the\u00a0<\/span>Congressional
\nRecord for the 112th Congress<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>(2011-2012) maxes
\nout at 2000 results for the phrase “our nation”. In contrast,
\nBritish politicians are “nation”-shy: a\u00a0<\/span>search<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>of
\nthe Hansard, which records debates in the Houses of Parliament,
\nfinds just 109 instances of “our nation” in 2011-2012.
\n\u00a0A Google search of British and American books
\nover the 20th century shows much the same:Americans<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>write
\nabout “our nation” quite a lot more than the\u00a0<\/span>British<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>do.
\nThat “nation”-creep could be touchy does not occur to Americans
\nmost of the time. The official version of the story is that
\nAmerican-born citizen has as simple a claim on the American
\nidentity as any other. The questioning of Barack Obama’s
\nAmericanness, on so many grounds, shows that this is premature
\nself-congratulation. If there is such thing as an American nation,
\nit is a complicated one.<\/p>\n
\n“nation” should include. And English-speakers are far more
\nwide-ranging in their use of “nation” then Europeans are with their
\nloaded words like\u00a0Volk\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0narod<\/em>.
\nThis seems to have been the same conceptual mismatch that confused
\nMr Zhang in his response to Mr Biden. Though he was graduating from
\nan elite English-language university, he missed this subtlety of
\n“nations” in the course of his education. In that, he is like many
\nof the Americans graduating with him.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n![](\"http:\/\/simg.sinajs.cn\/blog7style\/images\/special\/1265.gif\")
\u00a0\u9752\u6625\u5c31\u5e94\u8be5\u8fd9\u6837\u7efd\u653e<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u6e38\u620f\u6d4b\u8bd5\uff1a\u4e09\u56fd\u65f6\u671f\u8c01\u662f\u4f60\u6700\u597d\u7684\u5144\u5f1f\uff01\uff01<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u4f60\u4e0d\u5f97\u4e0d\u4fe1\u7684\u661f\u5ea7\u79d8\u5bc6<\/a>![](\"http:\/\/sina.allyes.com\/main\/adfclick?db=sina&bid=204720,470173,475454&cid=0,0,0&sid=474001&advid=358&camid=37389&show=ignore&url=http:\/\/simg.sinajs.cn\/blog7style\/images\/common\/sg_trans.gif?t=0\"){kind=spacer}
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