您現在的位置: > Language Tips > Columnist > Zhangxin  
     





      Hurricane, typhoon and all that jazz
    [ 2006-03-27 14:07 ]

    Lest any of you think I exhibit your writings just to show you up, I promised last week to display a revised version of my own work to illustrate the benefit of rewriting.

    In a way, books are not written, but re-written. Ernest Hemingway once said: "I rewrote the ending of 'Farewell to Arms' 39 times before I was satisfied."

    I'm not suggesting that you re-write your thing 40 times to out-do Ernest. What I am suggesting is that we all of us should be as earnest as Hemingway in attitude at the very least, so that even if we fail, no one can fault us for not trying.

    With that spirit, you'll actually succeed because, you see, the secret of success in writing (and in life) lies in just doing it.

    Now, once again, 'Stormy Weather' from Lady Day (Read it along with the original version published on Wednesday, March 22 for comparison):

    I listened to Billie Holiday while roaming the web in the small hours of Tuesday morning. She was crooning "Don't know why there's no sun up in the sky. Stormy weather, since my man and I ain't together, keeps rainin' all the time", when I came upon this story:

    "Tropical Cyclone Hits Australia
    "CAIRNS, Australia (AP) - The most powerful storm to hit Australia in decades laid waste to its northeastern coast on Monday (March 20), mowing down sugar and banana plantations and leaving possibly thousands of people homeless."

    Well, it being autumn down under, Australia is prone to tropical storms this time of the year. That is hardly surprising. What struck me was the word "cyclone" in the headline. That word gave me trouble many years ago.

    It was this way. A beat reporter had written that a certain hurricane hit Taiwan, Guangdong and Fujian provinces, causing injuries, damages and so forth. By hunch, I, working as a copy editor at the time, changed "hurricane" to "typhoon" which led to this question from my puzzled younger colleague, who thought the two terms meant the same thing and were therefore interchangeable.

    "Don't both mean tropical storm, or cyclone?" he asked.

    They do. Just that hurricanes don't ever visit this part of the world. Typhoons do.

    However, at the time, I couldn't explain it so well, only saying meekly that the safe thing to do was to stick with "tropical cyclone", or better yet, "tropical storm", i.e. "a tropical storm with winds up to 120 kilometers an hour hit Taiwan Tuesday morning."

    Truth be told, even today, having done more research on the subject, I am not sure that I have come to definite terms with the lot of them - cyclones, hurricanes, typhoons, and all that jazz - except that I am quite convinced that either weathermen throughout the world are collectively insane or that they don't mind driving the general public (laymen like you and me) that way.

    One of my biggest findings is this: Hurricanes, tornadoes, typhoons are indeed more or less the same thing. They are all tropical storms (everyday language), or tropical cyclones (jargon), the worst stormy weather on earth.

    Stormy weather is easy to grasp when meteorologists are ushered out of the room so that common sense can prevail and we are allowed to call a spade a spade.

    The word "storm" itself comes from Old English "styrian", meaning to stir. Hence we understand a storm to be severe weather caused by an atmospheric tumult. It is Mother Nature's way of getting things back to normalcy, even though it behaves not unlike a pampered Chinese single-child, going on the rampage and throwing tantrums left, right and center.

    At any rate, when a storm is marked by strong wind, we have a windstorm. When it also rains, we have a rainstorm. When it's coupled with thunder and lightning, we have a thunderstorm. When hailstones are involved, folks in the city are delighted to duck under the roof and to observe a hailstorm. In winter, when the rain is replaced with ice, we have a snowstorm.

    When dust is whipped by the wind, as is normal in Beijing in all four seasons, we have a dust storm or a sandstorm when the situation becomes extreme. Beijingers accuse, often unfairly, the northern lands from Inner Mongolia and beyond of being responsible for the loss of visibility in their beloved city. In my view, littering local construction sites are the main culprit.

    So far so good. But, when it comes to tropical storms (the most tempestuous of all storms) and when we let meteorologists back into the picture, well, the picture begins to blur immediately.

    In the eye of the pro, all tropical storms are cyclones (caused by rotations of a volume of air of low atmospheric pressure in a certain area). The word "cyclone" is derived from the Greek word "kyklon" (circle).

    Fair enough.

    However, when a tropical cyclone forms in the Western Hemisphere, it is by tradition called a hurricane (from Spanish "huracan" meaning the Storm God). When formed in the Western Pacific, it is called a typhoon (from the Chinese term Tai Feng - 颱風 - The character "颱" possibly means wind from Taiwan, 臺灣, as typhoons are indeed blown in from the direction of Taiwan, as observed from the standpoint of people on the mainland). In the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific, including Australia, it is called a tropical cyclone.

    Since all tropical storms are graded by their sustained speed (a hurricane referring, for example, to winds of 119 kilometers per hour or higher), you and I wonder why weathermen won't make their lives (and ours) easy by addressing them thus. That way, reporters can readily say, for example, a tropical storm with winds up to 100 kilometers per hour is going to hit the southern coast later today.

    However, this is decidedly not what weathermen of the world intend to do, not for the time being at least. You should look at the way they name all their lovely hurricanes and typhoons to fully appreciate the great lengths they go to in order to impress people of all other professions - only to make a fine mess of it, if you don't mind.

    According to WMO (World Meteorological Organization, the international governing body of global storms - I like this description, if you don't mind), in the Atlantic and Eastern North Pacific regions, feminine and masculine names are assigned alternately in alphabetic order during a given season. The "gender" (if you don't mind) of the season's first storm also alternates year to year: the first storm of an odd-numbered year gets a feminine name, while the first storm of an even-numbered year gets a masculine name. Six lists of names are prepared in advance, and each list is used once every six years.

    All the names are Greek to us too - Alu, Buri, Dodo, Emau, Fere, Hibu, Ila, Kama, Lobu, etc.

    And of course, don't forget Katrina, which wrecked havoc to New Orleans (the Jazz town, come to think of it) in 2005.

    Yes, please remember Katrina. She could be "retired".

    Yes, as though things are not complicated enough, they "retire" names too (so that future practitioners will HAVE TO come up with even stranger names if that were possible).

    I'm not making any of this up. According to WMO's naming schemes, names of storms may be retired by request of affected countries if they have caused extensive damage. The affected countries then decide on a replacement name of the same gender (if you don't mind) and if possible, the same ethnicity (if you don't mind) as the name being retired.

    Ah well, my point is, for more mazy rules and information, send no questions to me.

    Send them instead to the World Meteorological Organization directly. I'm sure their men all have the time, while working in between cyclones, to explain everything to you.

    Me? I'm going back to Billie. Having weathered the storm (if you don't mind), I find the voice of the melancholy Lady Day even more soothing.

    In fact, just "Fine and Mellow".

     

    About the author:
     

    Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for future use in this column.

     

     
     
     




    亚洲Av无码乱码在线观看性色| 成人午夜福利免费无码视频| 亚洲午夜无码久久久久| 中文字幕亚洲精品无码 | 最近2022中文字幕免费视频| 人妻少妇乱子伦无码视频专区| 日韩中文字幕在线不卡| 一本色道无码道在线| 人妻少妇伦在线无码专区视频 | 性无码专区无码片| 亚洲欧美日韩国产中文| 色吊丝中文字幕| 国产日韩AV免费无码一区二区三区| 亚洲日韩在线中文字幕第一页| 中文在线最新版天堂bt| 国产精品无码专区在线观看 | 九九久久精品无码专区| 亚洲AV无码久久精品色欲| 国产台湾无码AV片在线观看| 最近免费字幕中文大全视频| 无码中文字幕乱在线观看| 日韩精品无码久久一区二区三| 无码视频一区二区三区在线观看| 无码乱肉视频免费大全合集| 中文字幕亚洲免费无线观看日本| 中文有码vs无码人妻| 中文 在线 日韩 亚洲 欧美| 2024你懂的网站无码内射| 国产免费无码AV片在线观看不卡| 无码人妻一区二区三区免费看| 亚洲AV无码国产精品麻豆天美| 无码人妻一区二区三区在线| 人妻少妇精品无码专区二区| 日韩乱码人妻无码中文字幕 | 国产精品一级毛片无码视频| av大片在线无码免费| 国产成人无码专区| 无码人妻精品一区二区三区99不卡| 精品久久久久久无码人妻热| A最近中文在线| 亚洲国产日韩欧美在线a乱码日本中文字幕高清 |