Chinese characters
Archived Posts from this Category
Questions on the origin of writing: SPP 26
Posted by site admin on 17 Oct 2007 | Tagged as: China, Chinese characters, Sino-Platonic Papers, languages, oracle bones, writing systems
卍 
Sino-Platonic Papers has rereleased another issue related to the history of writing: Questions on the Origins of Writing Raised by the Silk Road (1.0 MB PDF), by Jao Tsung-i (Ráo Zōngyí, 饒宗頤) of the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
This work focuses especially on the use of two symbols, shown at right, in China and elsewhere.
This is issue no. 26 of Sino-Platonic Papers. It was first published in September 1991.
additional reading:
- Jao Tsung-i, a Web site in Mandarin
- Jao Tsung-i, Wikipedia
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.
Tailingua.com: an introduction to Taiwanese
Posted by site admin on 04 Oct 2007 | Tagged as: Chinese, Chinese characters, Hokkien, Hoklo, Minnan, Taiwan, Taiwanese, alphabet, languages, linguistics, literacy, romanization, writing systems
My friend Michael Cannings has just unveiled his new Web site on the Taiwanese language, Tailingua. Here is how he introduces it:
Taiwanese is a Chinese language spoken by two-thirds of the population of Taiwan. It forms one dialect of the group known as Southern Min, which has a total of around forty-nine million native speakers, making it the twenty-first most widely-spoken language in the world.
However, there is very little information in English available on the internet (or in print, for that matter) about Southern Min in general, and Taiwanese in particular - a lack that Tailingua is designed to remedy, at least in part.
The site provides concise summaries of romanization and other methods for writing Taiwanese. It also offers fonts, input methods, a list of useful books, and more.
A very promising beginning!
A nose for foreign food?
Posted by site admin on 25 Sep 2007 | Tagged as: Banqiao, Chinese, Chinese characters, Hokkien, Hoklo, Minnan, Taiwan, Taiwanese, bopomofo, literacy, writing systems, zhuyin
Imagine some white guys in a fairly large U.S. city open a restaurant named “Mr. Taiwan Slant-Eyes Asian Cuisine.” And imagine that this restaurant specializes in distinctly Americanized dishes such as egg foo yong, fortune cookies, and California wraps. Now imagine the response. Isn’t this fun?
OK, now imagine a different situation: In Taiwan’s fifth-largest city some locals open a place specializing in Taiwanized Western food and dub their restaurant “Miss UK Cafe Pointy-Nose Foreign Food.”
As you’ve probably guessed, the second scenario is real. The “Miss UK Cafe ㄚ度仔 異國美食” (Miss UK Cafe a-tok-a yìguó měishí) recently opened not far from my apartment in Banqiao.
A-tok-a (ㄚ度仔) is Taiwanese for “pointy nose” (i.e., Westerner), though perhaps the common translation of “big nose” conveys the spirit a little better. As Tempo Gain explains in the Forumosa thread on this word, “the initial ‘a’ often preceds names, and the final ‘a’ often is attached to nouns like the Mandarin ‘zi’ haizi, chezi, etc.”
Although most foreigners I know in Taiwan find the use of a-tok-a offensive to some degree, reactions are usually tempered by the knowledge that the word is very seldom used intentionally as a pejorative. It’s just the word most Hoklo speakers would use for “Westerner,” and they mean nothing bad by this and perhaps even see it as “cute” in a favorable way. So since I’m certain the restaurateurs didn’t intend any insult in choosing this name, I’m not going to carp about this any more than I already have — which is not to say that I will ever buy anything from that restaurant.
It’s still an interesting name, though. (Actually, this is probably two names: the standard one (ㄚ度仔 異國美食), which is for most people, and the English one (Miss UK Cafe), which is probably there in an attempt to look modern/foreign/cool.)
For those keeping count, that’s three scripts and as many languages on just one sign.
- Miss UK Cafe: English, in the Roman alphabet
- ㄚ度仔: Taiwanese, in a mixed script of zhuyin (ㄚ) and Chinese characters
- 異國美食: Mandarin, in Chinese characters
The mixing of scripts in “ㄚ度仔” is representative of the sad fact that most people in Taiwan are unsure how to write Taiwanese. Here are some of the ways this word gets written, along with the number of Google results and Baidu results for that exact phrase.
- ㄚ度仔 Google 555 / Baidu doesn’t recognize the ㄚ
- 阿凸仔 3,440 / Baidu 1,320
- 阿多仔 6,730/ Baidu 13,400
- 阿卓仔 11,300 / Baidu 2,810
- 阿荳仔 12,500 / Baidu 24,700
- 阿豆仔 12,500 / Baidu 24,700 (Google and Baidu apparently refuse to differentiate 荳 and 豆)
Also interesting is the use of yìguó (異國) instead of the more common wàiguó (外國), for “foreign.”
- “異國” Google 1,510,000 / Baidu 14,700,000
- “外國” Google 6,420,000 / Baidu 46,500,000
Yìguó měishí, however, is more common than wàiguó měishí.
- “外國美食” Google 41,100 / Baidu 26,400
- “異國美食” Google 114,000 / Baidu 152,000
This, I suspect, is because yìguó měishí “sounds fancier” because of how relatively common the word waiguo is.
further reading:
- Big Nose in Taiwanese, Forumosa, thread started December 29, 2004
- Darlie/Darkie toothpaste, Wikipedia
- rice pizza = ‘mizza’, Pinyin News (more script mixing)
Reviews of books on oracle bones, language and script, violence in China, etc.: SPP
Posted by site admin on 22 Sep 2007 | Tagged as: Buddhism, China, Chinese, Chinese characters, Classical Chinese, Hanyu, India, Mandarin, Sino-Platonic Papers, Victor H. Mair, dialect, dictionary, languages, linguistics, oracle bones, pinyin, writing systems
Sino-Platonic Papers has rereleased the third volume in its series of book reviews: Reviews III (8.3 MB PDF).
This volume was first published in October 1991.
The main topics of the books in this volume are
- Violence in China
- Scientific Stagnation in Traditional China.
- Oracle Shell and Bone Inscriptions (OSBIs)
- Proto-Language And Culture
- Language and Script
- Reference Tools for Sinitic Languages
- Literature and the Life of Peking
- Religion and Philosophy
- Words
- The New World
- “Barbarian” Business
- South Asia
- Miscellaneous
For those who hesitate to download such a large file without knowing which books were reviewed, you may consult the table of contents (small HTML file).
‘Slips of the Tongue and Pen in Chinese’
Posted by site admin on 12 Sep 2007 | Tagged as: China, Chinese, Chinese characters, Hanyu, Mandarin, Sino-Platonic Papers, languages, linguistics, literacy, psycholinguistics, tonal languages, writing systems
David Moser wrote his highly popular work Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard (found right here on Pinyin Info) in the early 1990s. Around the same time he contributed another more academic but still highly readable essay to Sino-Platonic Papers, this one on the topic of “Slips of the Tongue and Pen in Chinese.”
This work has just been reissued for free (2.9 MB PDF).
Chinese Philology and the Scripts of Central Asia
Posted by site admin on 05 Sep 2007 | Tagged as: Buddhism, China, Chinese characters, Sino-Platonic Papers, languages, linguistics, writing systems
Sino-Platonic Papers has rereleased for free issue no. 30 from October 1991: Chinese Philology and the Scripts of Central Asia (742 KB PDF), by M.V. Sofronov of the Institute of Far Eastern Studies, Academy of Sciences, Moscow.
It begins:
The period of the tenth to fourteenth centuries was a time when the peoples who conquered Northern China established their own states and proceeded to create their own written culture. They rightly saw the basis of a new state culture in their own script. The Kidan state of Liao was established in 916 in the northeastern part of China. It was conquered by the Jucen state Jin in 1126. The Tangut state of Hsi Hsia was established on the northwestern frontiers of China in 1032. All of these states created their cultures in accordance with historical circumstances and taking into consideration the achievements of older cultural centers of East and South Asia.
The oldest and most powerful philological tradition which exerted an influence on the scripts of Central Asia was that of the Chinese. This tradition developed under the specific conditions of the Chinese character script. Primarily, it elaborated the problem of the explanation of the meanings of the characters and the establishment of their correct readings.
One of the important achievements of the traditional Chinese philology was the method of fanqie (”cut and splice”) according to which the unknown reading of a character is described by means of two other characters with known readings. Originally fanqie was designed, presumably under the tutelage of Indian phoneticians, to indicate the readings of characters in the philological works. With the development of Tantric Buddhism in China it was extended to the transcription of Sanskrit dharanis and related texts. In these transcriptions, Sanskrit syllables with phonemic components distributively incompatible in Chinese were constructed. In these cases the Sanskrit syllable was rendered by two Chinese ones. This pair of Chinese syllables formed the fanqie binom provided with appropriate diacritics. For rendering initial consonant clusters, two or three Chinese syllables were used respectively for clusters of two or three Sanskrit consonants. These binoms or trinoms were provided with diacritics, respectively erhe (”two together”) or sanhe (”three together”). This method of transcription constituted the counterpart to the orthographic techniques of the rendering of consonant clusters in Sanskrit and Tibetan syllabic scripts….
