I still correspond with a few people that I met in Changchun and Baishan, and to be fair to them I’ve started writing (as much as I can) in Chinese. They’re writing in English to accommodate me, so I thought it would be nice to return the favor.
Needless to say this has helped my Chinese composition skills tremendously. My writing, for the most part, still sounds like English translated directly into characters, but it’s getting better (mostly thanks to my friends’ polite corrections). Plus, it’s given me reason to learn all sorts of characters that, had I been focused totally on spoken communication, I wouldn’t have bothered with.
Today I was trying to tell one of my friends about my recent trip to St. Louis. I looked up baseball (bangqiu 棒球), but failing to find the Chinese translation of St. Louis I decided to just describe it as a major city in Missouri, give them the English, and let them figure it out. I then realized that other than Florida (foluolida 佛罗里达), I don’t know any other state names.
Not finding a good resource listing all of them, I decided to compile a list here, for my own use and for anyone else that is interested. I’m reasonably sure that these are right, but if there are corrections to be made please list them in the comments.
| State | Characters | State | Characters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska | 阿拉斯加 | Arizona | 亚利桑那 |
| Arkansas | 阿肯色 | California | 加利福尼亚 |
| Colorado | 科罗拉多 | Connecticut | 康涅狄格 |
| Delaware | 特拉华 | District of Columbia | 哥伦比亚特区 |
| Florida | 佛罗里达 | Georgia | 佐治亚 |
| Hawaii | 夏威夷 | Idaho | 爱达荷 |
| Illinois | 伊利诺斯 | Indiana | 印第安纳 |
| Iowa | 爱荷华 | Kansas | 堪萨斯 |
| Kentucky | 肯塔基 | Louisiana | 路易斯安那 |
| Maine | 缅因 | Maryland | 马里兰 |
| Massachusetts | 马萨诸塞 | Michigan | 密歇根 |
| Minnesota | 明尼苏达 | Mississippi | 密西西比 |
| Missouri | 密苏里 | Montana | 蒙大拿 |
| Nebraska | 内布拉斯加 | Nevada | 内华达 |
| New Hampshire | 新罕布什尔 | New Jersey | 新泽西 |
| New Mexico | 新墨西哥 | New York | 纽约 |
| North Carolina | 北卡罗来纳 | North Dakota | 北达科他 |
| Ohio | 俄亥俄 | Oklahoma | 俄克拉何马 |
| Oregon | 俄勒冈 | Pennsylvania | 宾夕法尼亚 |
| Rhode Island | 罗得岛 | South Carolina | 南卡罗来纳 |
| South Dakota | 南达科他 | Tennessee | 田纳西 |
| Texas | 得克萨斯 | Utah | 犹他 |
| Vermont | 佛蒙特 | Virginia | 弗吉尼亚 |
| Washington | 华盛顿 | West Virginia | 西弗吉尼亚 |
| Wisconsin | 威斯康星 | Wyoming | 怀俄明 |
Finally, I’m home so I can actually see the names. Sweet. I’m sure some Chinese I students are gonna love it when Google finally hits this.
Left by Jordan on May 16th, 2003
I love it when people first learning a foreign language do that (My writing, for the most part, still sounds like English translated directly into characters) It can really help in learning the way that their sentences are structured.
That said, you could greatly improve your situation in about a month if you looked into trying to learn the basics of Chinese syntax. I think that once you had a good reference-type source of formal instruction you’d be able to do a lot better when writing Chinese.
Left by David on May 16th, 2003
My sentence structure has improved greatly, mostly thanks to “A Reference Grammar of Chinese Sentences” by Henry Hung-Yeh Tiee http://isbn.nu/0816511667 . It’s a pretty tremendous resource. Simple sentences, with some basic time and action-state identifiers, are not a problem, but more complex things, specifically attributing action to people and the like, still mess me up.
Most of the time I try to break my sentences down into a number of smaller sentences that are easier to construct. It makes me sound more like a Chinese kindergarten student, but less like a stupid foreigner.
Left by John on May 17th, 2003
That sounds like a good solution. People often speak in short sentences anyway. Besides, once you get the short stuff down you’ll quickly grow out of the Kindergarten thing with all the help you seem to be getting from native speakers.
Left by David on May 18th, 2003