Monthly Archives: January 2007

Taiwan officially recognizes the Sakizaya as a tribe

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Taiwan’s Executive Yuan will ratify the Sakizaya (撒奇萊雅 / Sāqíláiyǎ) as an indigenous tribe on January 17, raising the number of officially recognized tribes here to thirteen.

During Japan’s rule over Taiwan (1895-1945), Japanese ethnologists classified the Sakizaya as members of the Ami. Later scholars, however, have distinguished the two groups as a separate because of linguistic differences and the Sakizaya’s sense of their own identity.

Representatives of the Sakizaya applied in 2004 with the Council of Indigenous Peoples for official recognition.

The Sakizaya live mainly in Hualian City and Hualian County’s townships of Shoufeng, Ruisui, and Fengbin.

I hope to find more information about the tribe’s language, as well as the origins of the tribe’s name.

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Shanghainese are overusing English, says PRC academic

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From the China Daily a few months ago.

A linguistics expert has claimed Shanghainese are overusing the English language.

“It’s a blind worship of the English language,”said Pan Wenguo, dean of Chinese as a Foreign Language School at East China Normal University, at a conference held Monday to commemorate the 20th anniversary of promoting Putonghua, or Mandarin.

He added the business sector was particularly responsible for the trend, claiming many people used English “more for following others blindly than for practical needs.”

Pan said up to one-third of Chinese are studying or have studied English, while the number of English learners in Shanghai is even higher.

“English is not bad in itself, but the present mania of learning English is really too much,”said Pan.

Last Sunday, more than 50,000 Shanghai locals sat the English Interpreter Test of middle to high levels, an increase of 20 per cent on last year.

The time set a side for English learning has been on the rise for students at various levels….

In the increasingly competitive job market, the English Certificate has become one of the most important qualifications employees look for, ranking only behind diplomas.

Many employers, especially in the business sector, tend to hire only people with good English communication abilities….

source: Linguist criticizes ‘blind worship’ of English, China Daily, September 23, 2006

Taiwan license plates and English

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Taipei City councilors holding up signs resembling license plates with funny English: PIG-456 and EGG-008It seems that ridding Taiwan license plates of the dreaded number 4 wasn’t enough. A Taipei city councilor, Tim Chang (Cháng Zhōngtiān / 常中天) of the New Party, suggested last year that “drivers are making an ass of themselves” if they drive around with license plates that spell out something that is insulting, ill-omened, or funny in English. He called for such unfortunate combinations to be filtered out in advance and for motorists to be allowed to change their plate numbers.

As the Taipei Times article on this notes, “License plates in Taiwan are made up of two alphabetic letters and four digits for cars, while license plates on scooters have three letters and three digits.”

People in Taiwan can change to another random plate number for NT$1,250 (approx. US$38), while personalized license plates cost at least NT$3,000.

source: Lucky number plate? Not for this ASS, Taipei Times, August 23, 2006

Y.R. Chao works being reissued

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cover of the book 'Linguistic Essays, by Yuenren Chao'The Commercial Press has begun issuing a set of the complete works of Y.R. Chao (Zhao Yuanren / 趙元任 / 赵元任). This project, which will comprise some twenty volumes, will contain works in both English and Mandarin Chinese. All of the many fields Chao wrote about will be covered. Letters and journals will also be included, as will sound recordings. Wonderful!

For those who don’t want to wait for the whole series or don’t feel the need to buy all of them, the Commercial Press has also two volumes of Chao’s selected essays on linguistics: one in English and one in Mandarin. These are, respectively, Linguistic Essays by Yuenren Chao (ISBN: 7-100-03385-3/H·860) and Zhào Yuánrèn yǔyánxué lùnwénjí (赵元任语言学论文集) (ISBN: 7-100-03127-3/H·789).

cover of the book '赵元任语言学论文集 Zhao Yuanren Yuyanxue Lunwenji'Note how the cover of Linguistic Essays, a book printed just last year in China, uses “Yuenren Chao,” the traditional spelling and Western order of his name, rather than “Zhao Yuanren,” the spelling used in Hanyu Pinyin. Also note how the Mandarin title is given in traditional, not simplified, characters: 趙元任語言學論文集, not 赵元任语言学论文集. A nice surprise, on both counts. On the other hand, the botched romanization on the cover of the Mandarin-language collection, which gives “ZHAOYUANREN YUYANXUELUNWENJI” instead of “Zhào Yuánrèn yǔyánxué lùnwénjí,” is particularly inappropriate and painful to look at on a collection of the works of this brilliant linguist. But don’t judge this book by its cover.

Here are links to all the volumes in the complete works that I’ve been able to locate information on:

cover of the first volume of Y.R. Chao's collected works

IPA for Mandarin Chinese

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Another back issue of Sino-Platonic Papers has been released as a free PDF: Chinese Romanization Systems: IPA Transliteration (1.34 MB), by Warren A. Shibles. This was first published in November 1994 as SPP No. 52.

This work, whose rather dim view of romanization I do not share, is primarily a useful compilation of various published forms of IPA transcriptions for all the syllables of Mandarin. To these the author adds his own stab at applying the International Phonetic Alphabet to Mandarin. Moreover, a variety of romanization systems are shown, including that from Werner Rüdenberg’s Chinesisch-deutsches worterbuch.

Elsewhere, Pat Moran recently posted an HTML version of his own IPA chart for Mandarin.

I hope that the variety of approaches will provide a useful reminder that standard Mandarin is represented by a range, not a fixed point. And also that standard Mandarin is not the same thing as a caricature of a Beijing accent. Too often, in their quest for “correctness,” students of Mandarin end up with so many ers that they sound like they’re part circus seal. Emulating the sounds of the Beijing dialect of Mandarin is fine (though generally unnecessary); just don’t go overboard.

Grace Lee — the name, the movie

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Korean-American filmmaker Grace Lee has made a movie about her own very common name, those who share it with her, and what cultural implications it may have, both in the West and Asia.

Here is the opening of one reviewer’s description of the film:

Smartly counterprogrammed opposite the orientalized depictions of Asian femininity in Memoirs of a Geisha, The Grace Lee Project is a breezy first-person video essay that goes in search of the average Asian American woman, all the while wondering if there is in fact such a thing. Early in her documentary, filmmaker Grace Lee points out that almost everyone knows a Grace Lee, and what’s more, is inclined to describe her the same way: nice, intelligent, quiet, sweet, studious, sort of forgettable. (Oh, and plays the violin.) Even G.L.’s often think of other G.L.’s—and of themselves—in those non- descript terms. Intrigued and disconcerted by the oppressive commonness of her name—and even more so by the perceived attributes that cling to it—Lee sets out to humanize the sociocultural abstraction and statistical mean that is “Grace Lee.”

Although the film premiered in late 2005 and received good reviews, it is not yet commercially available on DVD.

Taiwan aboriginal students can gain extra school-entrance points through language exam

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To help ward off the extinction of the languages of Taiwan’s tribes, the Council of Indigenous Peoples is establishing examinations in these languages. Those young people who pass will be given a 10 percent increase on their exam scores toward entry into high schools and universities. This would be on top of the 25 percent increase aboriginal students already receive automatically.

The first of the examinations will be held in March. Each test will have two parts: listening and speaking.

The council hopes this will encourage young people to retain the languages of their ancestors.

Students can prepare for the tests by studying books issued by the Ministry of Education. Although the ministry’s books have nine levels, tests will be based on only the first three levels.

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registration of aborigine names fails to reach target

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Taiwan’s Cabinet-level Council of Indigenous Peoples (formerly the Council of Aboriginal Affairs) has been encouraging members of Taiwan’s tribes to officially register themselves under their “original names,” which are recorded in romanization. But the total of such registrations reached only about half of this year’s goal of 10,000, with the majority of those having been registered in earlier years.

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