Today I was chatting with my facialist about ancient Chinese things, like tea ceremonies and somewhat obscure instruments: the guqin 古琴, guzheng 古筝, and xun 埙. It then occurred to me how funny (or weird) it is that the character qin 琴 is used for seemingly unrelated instruments —

• gāng qín 钢琴, steel zither = piano
• xiǎo tí qín 小提琴, small lifted zither = violin
• zhōng tí qín 中提琴, medium lifted zither = viola
• dà tí qín 大提琴, large lifted zither = cello
• gǔ qín 古琴, ancient zither = …well, guqin

Granted, they are all stringed instruments of a sort, but the first and last are freestanding (freesitting?) on a flat surface, played with both hands while the middle three are held and played with a bow. This made me wonder what exactly qin 琴 is meant to mean, and I think it is most accurately translated to zither, so that’s what I’m using. Nowadays, it seems to encompass stringed instruments of various sorts and compounding it with other characters leads to a variety of instrument names, as you can see above.

And so I thought it would be entertaining to point out some of the interesting and often confusing pieces of language and culture, namely the two I’m most familiar with, Mandarin Chinese and American English. I’d like to dabble a little in French where I can, and perhaps even draw on my friends’ knowledge of other languages and cultures as well. I’ve always enjoyed deconstructing and reconstructing words (protomolecule, anyone?) to gain a deeper understanding and appreciation of them.

My curious mindset has constantly led me to a fascination with nature as well, so I wanted to combine all these elements to share with others who might share the same intellectual interests: language, culture, and nature — with a dose of humor.

As luck would have it, the character qin 琴 shares the same sound as my family name, Qin 秦, which is pronounced “chin” when Anglicized. Leaning in to the play on words and sounds, “Qin”ese can look/sound like Chinese, hence the name of the site: Learn Qinese (which nicely translates to 学秦语 xué qín yǔ).

I hope you’ll join me in this journey to explore what the world is like through the “Qin”ese lense.

Edit March 2024: I have since discovered two other instrument names!

• kǒu qín 口琴, mouth zither = harmonica
• bān zhuō qín 班卓琴, class table zither = banjo (this one is more about it sounding similar when spoken, and not about meaning of the characters for those sounds)

@learn.qinese

Exploring the character 琴 qín, Chinese for “zither” and its uses. For more details, read the post on my blog. Happy Leap Day! If you listen closely, you can hear my cat climbing on to her favorite #moonpod in the background 😹 #learnqinese #qinese #learnmandarin #chineselanguage #learnchinese #speakmandarin #中文 #汉语 #华侨 #chinese #chineseculture #bilingual #mandarin #language #chineseamerican #minuetingmajor #bach #instruments #piano #violin #viola #cello #guqin #harp

♬ original sound – learn.qinese