Pinyin news

Too cool. Oh, I hope this comes to Taipei.

From the troupe’s English-language introduction:

In order to make theatre more accessible to the Tainanese, the troupe has utilised various dramatic forms to explore different local issues that may concern our audiences in their daily life. We even ask our actors to speak good Min-nan-yu, or Taiwanese (as opposed to Mandarin, the official language of Taiwan), in many of our productions, so that the local audiences can easily identify themselves with the characters and feel less intimidated by the language barrier.

Good. This is a basic point but one all too seldom ignored or dismissed: Until relatively recently Mandarin was a foreign language in Taiwan. The native language for most in Taiwan has been Taiwanese/Hokkien/Hoklo.

As an aside, I note that the ticket outlet translates Táinánrén jùtuán (台南人劇團) as the “Tainaner Ensemble”. Tainaner? Is that really what gets used in English for people from Tainan?

via Lomaji

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Although this post might seem like a cheap shot, errors such in found in this official brochure distributed in MRT stations, among other places, by the Taipei City Police Department are at least as much the rule as the exception, even though it would take very little effort to prevent such mistakes.

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According to a CNA story in the Taipei Times, the Gaoxiong/Kaohsiung City Government has decided to “correct and update all English translations of signage at 132 scenic spots” in preparation for the city’s hosting of the World Games in 2009.

A “group of specialists” from an ESL magazine are the chief advisers to the city government, which I suppose is better than just one randomly selected foreigner. Still, I wonder what these “specialists” know about signage — or romanization, for that matter. And will anyone check to ensure the signs are made correctly?

Here’s what is probably going to happen: Gaoxiong will replace some old signs with poor English and worse romanization with signs in tiny, unreadable English (probably still with mistakes) and sloppy romanization in a system that most foreigners actively dislike.

Deputy Mayor Cheng Wen-lung (鄭文隆), who is convener of a city committee formed to develop Kaohsiung’s English living environment, said yesterday that in addition to the changes, the committee was considering standardizing the English translations of food names in the area as a way to help foreign athletes — as well as the large number of foreign visitors who are expected at the upcoming World Games — recognize Chinese and local cuisines.

The city plans to update English translations on all of the city’s key signage within one month.

source: Kaohsiung looks to improve its English signage for games, CNA, June 28, 2006

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John DeFrancis — whose name should be familiar to most readers of this site, especially for his essential work The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, which contains his refutation of the ideographic myth — has just published a new article: “The Prospects for Chinese Writing Reform.”

This article is the first in the new, electronic-format releases of Sino-Platonic Papers. Moreover, these new issues will be available free of charge.

• The Prospects for Chinese Writing Reform (PDF, approx. 2.4 MB)
• The Prospects for Chinese Writing Reform (HTML format, approx. 100 KB)

I strongly recommend reading this.

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A member of the Standing Committee of the PRC’s National People’s Congress has called for members of China’s ethnic minorities to be educated in not only Mandarin but also in their native languages.

“Minority children today are reluctant to learn their own ethnic languages, and if the trend continues, these languages will disappear,” said Zhang Meilan, a member of the Hani minority group. Zhang made her comments on Sunday in an address to fellow lawmakers on the draft amendment to the Compulsory Education Law, which is in its final hearing.

Zhang also made the suggestion before the amendment was submitted to the legislature, but her proposal was omitted from the draft.

On Sunday, Zhang urged the legislature again to include an article in the amendment to make bilingual education compulsory for minority children in the nine-year free education from elementary school to junior high.

The legislature is expected to vote on the draft amendment on Thursday….

Zhang said that if her suggestion was accepted, the Ministry of Education and the Ethnic Affairs Committee should invest in bilingual education, providing a fund for minority language preservation.

Unfortunately, this will probably not be accepted. And even if it does pass, it will probably never receive much more than lip service.

source: Chinese lawmaker calls for compulsory minority language education, Xinhua, June 26, 2006

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No-sword’s post on this is already brief, so I won’t shorten it here other than to note that sentences like “The furigana undermine the kanji at the most fundamental level, but the overall meaning of the poster remains unchanged” are the sort of thing that really make my day.

Just go read the whole post, which discusses something at the intriguingly titled Moji no ura-dōri (which Matt translates freely as “The Back Streets of Orthography”).

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The Taiwanese literature program at National Chengkung University will soon be graduating its first doctoral student.

Chen Long-ting’s dissertation on the oral literature of Taiwanese puppet shows has already been accepted.

As a child, Chen loved to go watch puppet shows with his grandmother. In fact, this love was so strong that Chen gave up university studies in Chinese medicine to transfer to the department of drama at Chinese Culture University. Being constantly besieged with questions about “What is Taiwanese culture, anyway?” from foreigners, and discovering that there were precious few Taiwanese who could answer the question, he felt bad, and when choosing a specialty for his MA degree, began to delve into the folk songs that underpin Taiwanese culture. He went out into villages and towns to seek out artists, and did a field survey. When looking into the nature of puppetry and the cultural framework supporting it, Chen discovered a vital vein of primitive literature….

Chen’s dissertation looks at the oral literature in Taiwanese puppet shows. He began from the perspective of research into literature in the Minnan dialect. In an attempt to find an alternate route to investigate folk literature and oral and sung traditions in Taiwanese society, Chen looked primarily at the oral scripts of puppeteers. Chen invested a great deal of time and energy going out into the countryside to cultivate relationships with puppet artists and gather records, tape recordings and DVDs of early Taiwanese puppet theatre.

sources:

• First-ever Ph.D. in Taiwanese literature set to graduate (translation of article below), Taiwan Headlines, June 23, 2006
• Dì-yī wèi Táiwān wénxué yánjiū bóshì: Chén Lóng-tíng shēngēng dònglì láizì bùdàixì (第一位台灣文學研究博士 陳龍廷深耕動力 來自布袋戲), Liberty Times, June 23, 2006

additional reading:

• Lin Liu-hsin Puppet Theater Museum

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Dan of Jidanni.org has come up with a list of Taizhong’s busstops in the mixed style of Hanyu Pinyin and English that has become standard in Taiwan and is becoming so in China.

I hear that this list may actually be implemented! If so, that would be much to Taizhong’s credit, as local governments elsewhere in Taiwan are often not so responsive.

Here are the lists:

• Master list of all busstops in Taizhong
• busstops, given by individual bus routes

Good work, Dan!

Just out of curiousity, I removed the English and numerals from the list and then compared how it would be written in Hanyu Pinyin (the international standard) vs. Tongyong Pinyin (Taiwan’s international embarassment). This revealed that 337 of 633 entries would be written differently in Hanyu Pinyin and Tongyong Pinyin, giving a difference rate of 53.2 percent.

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