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The Tao of semiotics. Zen and etymology.
Posted by site admin on 10 Oct 2007 | Tagged as: Buddhism, Chinese, Chinese characters, Classical Chinese, English, Mandarin, Sino-Platonic Papers, Taoism, Victor H. Mair, Zen, languages, linguistics, philology, religions and beliefs
Sino-Platonic Papers has rereleased for free Tracks of the Tao, Semantics of Zen (950 KB PDF), by Victor H. Mair.
After a brief introduction, Mair, who has translated more than one classic Taoist text, asks, “How did Tao and Zen enter our vocabulary? And what do these two extraordinarily powerful words really mean?”
He then enters into a “somewhat lengthy excursion into the neglected realm of philology” but keeps to his word to “try to make it as painless and entertaining as possible.”
It’s a fascinating and wide-ranging essay, especially for those interested in historical linguistics.
This is issue no. 17 of Sino-Platonic Papers. It was originally released in April 1990.
Street names in English translation: trend or error?
Posted by site admin on 05 Oct 2007 | Tagged as: Chinese characters, English, Taipei, Taiwan, pinyin, romanization, signage
Ah, Park Street: Taipei’s lovely tree-lined boulevard next to a wonderful oasis of well-manicured nature.
Nope.
Here, “park” refers to Nangang Software Park (Nángǎng Ruǎntǐ Yuánqū, 南港軟體園區), an area in eastern Taipei of new buildings housing mainly software-development and biomedical companies. The software park itself is a pretty nice place and looks fine; its surrounding area, however, is anything but green and leafy, comprising mainly dreary brick buildings and vacant lots.
But what’s odder than the name itself is that it appears in English rather than in the mix of Hanyu Pinyin (with StuPid, StuPid InTerCapITaLiZaTion) and English (e.g., St., Rd.) that has become standard in Taipei. Also odd is that at one end of the street the signs read “Park St,” but at the other end “YuanQu St.” This is a fairly new street name, as the software park is only a few years old.
The flash on my camera helps reveal that the part of the sign reading “YuanQu St.” is pasted on top of something else — quite possibly “Park St.”
I spent about 15 minutes today getting my phone call to the Taipei City Government transferred from one desk to another before I was able to speak with someone who knew what she was doing. She stated that the Park Street version is in error and would be corrected to Yuanqu Street.
I really wish I’d asked for her extension number, because I’m certain to be making similar calls in the future.
New story in Pinyin: ‘Dashui Guohuo’ (’After the Flood’)
Posted by site admin on 29 Sep 2007 | Tagged as: China, Chinese, English, Hanyu, Mandarin, pinyin, tone marks
I’m very pleased to announce that Pinyin Info has a new story in Hanyu Pinyin: “Dàshuǐ Guòhòu,” by Zhang Liqing. It’s available here in two versions: Pinyin alone and Pinyin with English translation (as “After the Flood”), so one doesn’t even have to know Mandarin or Pinyin to read this.
The story recalls a girlhood friend in China, not long after the end of the Second World War.
Zhang is an associate editor of the ABC Chinese-English Comprehensive Dictionary and has translated a number of important works into English, including Zhou Youguang’s The Historical Evolution of Chinese Languages and Scripts and Lü Shuxiang’s Comparing Chinese Characters and a Chinese Spelling Script — an evening conversation on the reform of Chinese characters.
bilingualism among immigrant families in Southern California
Posted by site admin on 10 Aug 2007 | Tagged as: California, Chinese, Chinese characters, English, Vietnamese, languages, linguistics, literacy
Rubén G. Rumbaut of the University of California, Irvine, has written an interesting study titled The Evolution of Language Competencies, Preferences and Use Among Immigrants and their Children in the United States Today (PDF). It was prepared for the U.S. House Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law for a hearing in May on immigration reform and U.S. immigrant integration.
Rumbaut’s findings back up the reputation of the United States as a graveyard for languages. The study has much of interest; but for this post I’ll focus just on Asian languages, which Rumbaut said “can be expected to die out at or near the second generation.”
Of special interest to readers of this site are the figures for foreign language fluency among longitudinal samples of young adult children of immigrants, as surveyed in 1992 (age 14), 1995, and 2002 (age 24).
The groups in the longitudinal study are Mexican, Cuban, Nicaraguan, Colombian, Dominican, Haitian, Filipino, Vietnamese, Laotian & Cambodian, and Chinese. Between 1992 and 2002, the percentages of those who said they could speak their foreign language “very well” increased — often substantially — for every group but two: Vietnamese (dropping from 33.8 percent to 29.7 percent) and Chinese (falling much more sharply, from 29.4 percent to 17.6 percent).
The figures for reading and writing also follow a downward trend among Chinese — and only among Chinese. Moreover, Chinese had the lowest rates among the tracked groups for those who can read very well or write very well. In 2002 a mere 2 percent of the Chinese group reported they could write Chinese very well.
‘I now pronounce this character Taiwanese and English’
Posted by site admin on 04 Aug 2007 | Tagged as: China, Chinese, English, Hanyu, Mandarin, Taiwan, languages, zhuyin
A movie currently doing well at the box office in both the United States and Taiwan is I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. In Taiwan, the film has been given the linguistically interesting title Dāng wǒmen gèi zài yīqǐ (《當我們ㄍㄟˋ在一起》 / 《當我們假在一起》 ).
The title is a Mandarin phrase that uses Taiwanese in order to make a pun involving English — an apt mix for the island.
The movie title is an allusion a well-known children’s song, “Dāng wǒmen tóng zài yīqǐ” (當我們同在一起), which was taken from the English-language children’s song “The More We Are Together.”
The more we get together,
Together, together,
The more we get together,
The happier we’ll be;
For your friends are my friends
And my friends are your friends,
The more we get together,
The happier we’ll be.
This song uses the tune of Ach du lieber Augustin but has radically different words.
Getting back to the Taiwanese title, “tóng” (同) of “Dāng wǒmen tóng zài yīqǐ” has been replaced by what in Mandarin is jiǎ (假 — false, fake). But the character 假 has been assigned a Taiwanese reading, gèi, as can be seen by the inclusion of zhuyin fuhao to the right of the character (ㄍㄟˋ = gèi in Hanyu Pinyin).
Gèi is of course meant to call to mind not just the “false” of the relationship in the movie but also the English word “gay” — this being a movie about two men pretending to be a homosexual couple.
In China, where foreign movies often receive titles different from those in Taiwan, the movie is called Wǒ shèngdà de tóngzhì hūnlǐ (《我盛大的同志婚礼》/ My Magnificent Comrade’s Wedding). Although the usual translation for tongzhi is “comrade,” the word has also become Mandarin slang for homosexual. Perhaps some readers can comment on how prominent or passé this use of tongzhi is now.
new book on bilingual education in China
Posted by site admin on 27 Jul 2007 | Tagged as: Aborigine languages, China, Chinese, English, Mandarin, languages, linguistics
Last month saw the release of Bilingual Education in China: Practices, Policies and Concepts, edited by Anwei Feng (University of Durham).
I have not seen a copy of this yet but thought it might be of interest to some readers of Pinyin News. Here’s the publisher’s description:
This work compares and contrasts two strands of bilingualism in China, one for minority nationality groups, the other for majority. It examines the history, policy, philosophy, politics, provision and practice in bilingual, trilingual or multilingual education involving Mandarin Chinese, English, and minority languages. This volume brings a mixed group of researchers together to discuss issues in bilingual or trilingual education for the majority and minority nationality groups in China and to explore the relationship between the two. Articles range from reports of bilingual or trilingual education projects in remote minority regions to discussions about Chinese-English bilingual education in major economic centres.
For a list of articles in the book, see the table of contents (PDF).
hardback:
ISBN: 1-85359-992-1
13 Digit ISBN: 978-1-85359-992-7
paperback:
ISBN-10: 1853599913
ISBN-13: 978-1853599910
Google’s new ‘cross-language information retrieval’
Posted by site admin on 25 May 2007 | Tagged as: Chinese, English, Hanyu, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, computers, languages, software
Google has just launched a “cross-language information retrieval” (CLIR) function to Google Translate.
Here is how Google describes it:
Now, you can search for something in your own language (for example, English) and search the web in another language (for example, French). If you’re looking for wine tasting events in Bordeaux while on vacation in France, just type “wine tasting events in Bordeaux” into the search box on the “Search results” tab on Google Translate. You’ll then get French search results and a (machine) translation of these search results into English. Similarly, an Arabic speaker could look for restaurants in New York, by searching for “مطعم نيويورك”; or a Chinese speaker could look for documents on machine learning on the English web by looking for “机器学习”.
These are the languages available, though for now these are not available in all combinations but mainly to or from English. (German and French are the only languages listed that can work with each other rather than English.)
- Arabic
- English
- French
- German
- Italian
- Japanese
- Korean
- Mandarin (in traditional characters)
- Mandarin (in simplified characters)
- Portuguese
- Russian
- Spanish
sources:
- Google Launches ‘Cross-Language Information Retrieval (CLIR)’, Search Engine Land, May. 24, 2007
- Search without Boundaries, official Google blog, May 23, 2007
Japanese literacy–an SPP reissue
Posted by site admin on 24 May 2007 | Tagged as: Chinese characters, English, Japan, Japanese, Sino-Platonic Papers, alphabet, computers, hiragana, kana, kanji, languages, linguistics, literacy, romaji, romanization, software, writing systems
Here’s another re-release from the archives of Sino-Platonic Papers: Computers and Japanese Literacy: Nihonzin no Yomikaki Nôryoku to Konpyûta, by J. Marshall Unger of the Ohio State University’s Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures. The link above is to the PDF version (1.2 MB), which reproduces the original exactly.
This is a parallel text in Japanese (in romanization) and English, so if any of you want to practice reading romaji, here’s your chance.
The English text alone is available in HTML: Computers and Japanese Literacy.
The essay touches on many of themes Unger explores in depth in his books, all of which have excerpts available here on Pinyin Info: The Fifth Generation Fallacy, Literacy and Script Reform in Occupation Japan, and Ideogram: Chinese Characters and the Myth of Disembodied Meaning.
Here is the opening, in both English and Japanese (in romanization).
| Watakusi wa saikin, gendai no konpyûta siyô to Nihongo ni tuite kenkyu site orimasu. Gengogakusya mo konpyûta no nôryoku ya mondaiten ni tuite iken o happyo suru sekinin ga aru to omou kara desu. | I am currently engaged in research on contemporary computer usage and the Japanese language. Linguists too, I believe, have a responsibility to present their views on the potentials and problems of computers. |
| Sate, Amerika no zen- Kôsei Kyôiku tyôkan, John Gardner-si no kotoba de hazimetai to omoimasu. Sore wa “aizyô nasi no hihan to hihan nasi no aizyô (Eigo de iu to, “unloving criticism and uncritical love”) to iu kotoba desu. Gardner-si wa, Amerikazin no aikokusyugi ni tuite Amerika o sukosi de mo hihan site wa ikenai to syutyô suru hito wa kangaetigai da, aizyô nasi ni syakai ya bunka no ketten o hihan bakari suru koto wa motiron warui keredo, hihan sore zitai o kiratte kokusuisyugi o susumeru koto mo syôrai no tame ni yoku nai, to iimasita. Kono koto wa bokoku igai no syakai to bunka ni tai suru baai de mo onazi de wa nai desyô ka? Gengogakusya ya rekisigakusya mo “aizyô nasi no hihan to hihan nasi no aizyô” to iu ryôkyokutan o sakeru yô ni sita hô ga ii to omou no desu. Watakusi wa Nihon no gengo to bunka o senmon ni site, Nihon ni tai site aizyô o motte orimasu kara koso, Nihongo no hyôkihô ya Nihonzin no yomikaki nôryoku ni tuite no teisetu o mondai ni site iru wake desu. Iwayuru zyôhôka syakai no zidai ni hairi, ippan no hitobito ga pasokon ya wâpuro o kozin-yô ni tukau yô ni naru ni turete, nettowâku tûsin, kyôiku-yô sohutowea, sôzôteki na puroguramingu nado ga yôkyû sarete kite iru desyô. Mosi sono konpon ni aru yomikaki nôryoku no henka to genzyô o gokai sureba, gôriteki na konpyûta siyôhô o kaihatu dekinai darô to omou kara desu. | Let me begin by quoting the former U.S. Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, John Gardner. I am thinking of his phrase “unloving criticism and uncritical love.” By this, he meant that it was wrong for proponents of American patriotism to oppose even the slightest criticism of the United States: although it is bad to dwell unsympathetically on finding fault with social and cultural shortcomings, it is equally bad for the future of society to advance nationalism and eschew all criticism. I think that this is also true when considering foreign societies and cultures. Linguists and historians would do well to avoid the twin extremes of “unloving criticism and uncritical love.” As someone professionally involved with the language and culture of Japan, I have an affection for the country, but for that very reason, I wish to call into question the accepted theory of Japanese script and literacy. As we enter the age of the so-called informational society, and as more and more ordinary people begin to use computers on an individual basis, demands on network communications, educational software, creative programming, and so on, will steadily increase. Unless we understand the present situation and history of literacy, which underlies all these applications, we cannot hope to develop a rational basis for computer usage. |
| Sate, hyôi mozi to iu kotoba wa Nihongo ni tuite no hon ni yoku dete imasu kara kokugogaku no yôgo da to itte mo ii hodo desu ga, hyôi mozi to iu mono wa zissai ni sonzai site iru desyô ka? Kyakkanteki ni kangaete miru to, dono gengo mo konponteki ni wa hanasu mono desu. Mozi wa syakaiteki, rekisiteki na men ga arimasu ga, mozi wa kotoba no imi no moto de wa arimasen. Tatoeba, itizi mo yomenai mômoku no hito de mo, hoka no syôgai ga nai kagiri, bokokugo ga kanzen ni hanaseru yô ni narimasu. Sitagatte, hanasi-kotoba to wa mattaku kankei ga nai mozi nado to iu mono wa muimi na gainen desu. Gengo no imi wa gengo no kôzô kara hassei si, mozi wa sono han’ei de sika nai wake desu. Kore wa toku ni kore kara no konpyûta o kangaeru toki ni wasurete wa ikemasen…. | The term “ideographic characters” appears so often in books on the Japanese language that one might say it has become a stock phrase of Japanese linguistics. I wonder, however, whether such things as “ideographs” actually exist. When examined objectively, all languages are fundamentally speech. Characters are not the source of the meanings of words, although they do have their social and historical aspects. For example, blind people who cannot read a single character can nonetheless speak their native tongues perfectly, unless they suffer from some other handicap. The very idea of characters totally divorced from speech is therefore meaningless. For the meaning of language emerges from the structure of language, of which writing is merely a reflection. It is particularly important that we not forget this when we consider the computers of the future…. |
This was first published in January 1988 as issue no. 6 of Sino-Platonic Papers.
