The Sound of Two Words… uh… Doing Something

Above image is Figure 1-1 from the Chinese-language edition of Just XSL,
one of my tech books. For the translation, see this page.

Recently, I received an email from a friend and distant relative, a trained hypnotherapist, counsellor, and general all-round wellness therapist. (The Missus and I once ordered a couple of self-help CDs from her, one on smoking cessation and one — not coincidentally — on weight loss.)

The email, obviously distributed to her professional mailing list, describes some steps you can take to calm your fears in jittery times like these. Early on, it includes this passage:

The Chinese symbol for CRISIS has two parts: one represents danger and the other represents opportunity. It’s a beautiful symbol of how every event in life is really an invitation to practice choice.

Wow, I thought, what a cool thing to know about the Chinese language. Just one more example, as if we needed more, of the wisdom of the Orient. I could easily envision dropping this little tidbit into conversations.

But then I started to wonder: what is the “Chinese symbol for CRISIS”? So, unsurprisingly, I turned to the Web. And, unsurprisingly, as with a lot of Web-based research, I found a muddled story:

• Victor Mair, a professor of Chinese language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania, scoffs openly.
• Benjamin Zimmer of Language Log has done at least two posts on the subject, focusing especially on the source of the “crisis = danger + opportunity” theme.
• Gary Feng of the Shadow blog says, in effect, “Sheesh — don’t be so literal-minded about the whole thing. It’s close enough to the truth that it might as well be true.”
• Cecil, of The Straight Dope, punts, declaring that both sides are and neither side is right:
  

  No question, it’s deep. But deep what? Here are my initial findings:

  1. In pinyin (romanized Chinese), the term for crisis is wei ji.
  2. Native Chinese speakers tend to think the crisis = danger/opportunity connection is complete bullshit.
  3. Maybe it isn’t.

So, as in most areas of life, It Depends. (I hate that answer.)

Still, this has got me wondering — about a subject I’ve discussed before, and which froog has recently picked up on, as well. To wit: the phenomenon whereby English speakers naturally try to draw connections between two words which have simply, randomly and without intent, happened to wind up next to each other. We can’t help it. We’re compelled, like literate, storytelling robots or versions of Pavlov’s dogs, to connect the dots.

You may or may not have noticed in the ReCaptcha box below the comment box here that there’s a little button featuring a tiny pair of clockwise-rotating arrows. It looks like this:

The idea is that one or both of the presented ReCaptcha words may be illegible to you. But if you click on this button, ReCaptcha will generate a different pair — ideally a more legible pair — for you. You can click, click, click forever (as far as I know), until finding something that you can read or that, well, makes a better story.

As I compose this post, for example, ReCaptcha is offering:

Messiter 70,000

And then, getting a few more word-pairs:

frazzled in
Godiva 150-foot
Wescott Korchnoi

(the latter, clearly an Anglo-Russian double agent, and perhaps the secret lover of froog’s Katrina Grinsley) and, finally:

went confined

If you’re coming up empty-handed after all that — perceiving no plotlines or “situations” at all — then you just may not be a native English speaker. Or you’re having a slow day.