Yearly Archives: 2006

At least 40% of people in PRC can’t speak Mandarin: official

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The head of China’s department charged with getting everyone in the country to speak Mandarin admitted on Monday that at least 40 percent of those in the PRC can’t speak the country’s official language.

A survey from 2004 gave the figure of 47 percent of China’s population able to speak Mandarin. Even assuming that figure is correct (not a wise thing to do with PRC statistics), I doubt there has been much of a change since then.

The figures include those who are not native speakers of the language and may not speak it often.

Yuan Zhongrui, director of the Mandarin popularization department under the Ministry of Education, said that those who cannot speak Mandarin “are mainly those with ‘little education,’ or ‘the illiterate,’ and most of them are rural residents.” This describes the majority of the country’s population — and also those hardest to reach with Mandarin programs.

China is unlikely have all of its population speak Mandarin any time in the foreseeable future, an official from the same department admitted earlier this year.

sources and further readings:

Taiwan city and county names

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As most readers of this site know, Taiwan has approached romanization and signage with a sloppiness that sometimes beggars belief. Although the situation has improved somewhat this decade, many errors remain. And even where there are not errors, people still must often contend with a variety of romanization systems.

Thus, my list of Taiwan place names may come in handy.

I made the list more than a year ago but put it on another website and never drew much attention to it. Now I’ve moved it here to Pinyin Info, where it may do more good.

The list, which is arranged by county and then by city, gives Chinese characters, Hanyu Pinyin (both with and without tone marks), Tongyong Pinyin (ugh!), and a commonly seen older form (usually bastardized Wade-Giles).

I have not bothered to include MPS2, because it is seen more on street signs than on maps. And, anyway, it’s on its way out. I strongly recommend using Hanyu Pinyin.

chlorinated alphabet

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images of Chinese characters and 'radicals' produced when typing various letters in a fontTian at Hanzismatter always manages to find good stuff. But this time, with the help of Alan Siegrist, he’s outdone himself. I’ve got tears streaming down my face because I’ve been laughing so hard at the font of random characters and so-called radicals that some people have apparently been mistaking for a phonetic guide to Chinese characters.

My title for this entry is in reference to the character given when the letter Z is typed: 氯. This is lǜ, which means “chlorine.”

Festschrift for John DeFrancis now available for free

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Most readers of Pinyin News will already know of John DeFrancis, editor of the ABC Chinese-English Comprehensive Dictionary and author of The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy and many other important works. (If you haven’t read The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy yet, order it now.)

In recognition of the 95th(!) birthday today of Professor DeFrancis, Sino-Platonic Papers is rereleasing Schriftfestschrift: Essays in Honor of John DeFrancis on His Eightieth Birthday. Previously, this important compilation, which runs more than 250 pages, was available only in a printed edition priced at US$35. The fifteenth-anniversary edition, however, is being released for free as a PDF (15 MB — so have a fast Internet connection, or a lot of patience).

I’d like to draw special attention to an article written in Pinyin: “Hanzi Bu Tebie Biaoyi,” by Zhang Liqing. (Zhang’s work also appears here on Pinyin Info, in her translations of The Historical Evolution of Chinese Languages and Scripts and of the amazing Comparing Chinese Characters and a Chinese Spelling Script — an evening conversation on the reform of Chinese characters.)

Feel free to print out a copy of the Schriftfestschrift for your own use or for inclusion in a library. Just don’t sell it.

The original publication contained several color photos. I’ll add those later. Also, the English tex is searchable to some degree, as I used OCR after scanning these pages; but the results weren’t perfect.

Here are the contents:

  • Tabula Gratulatoria
  • Introduction, by Victor H. Mair
  • Publications of John DeFrancis
  • Hanzi Bu Tebie Biaoyi, by Zhang Liqing
  • Typology of Writing Systems, by Zhou Youguang
  • Dui Hanzi de Jizhong Wujie, by Yin Binyong
  • The Information Society and Terminology, by Liu Yongquan
  • A Bilingual Mosaic, by Einar Haugen
  • The Polysemy of the Term Kokugo, by S. Robert Ramsey
  • Memorizing Kanji: Lessons from a Pro, by J. Marshall Unger
  • Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard, by David Moser
  • Ethnolinguistic Notes on the Dungan, by Lisa E. Husmann and William S-Y. Wang
  • Korean Views on Writing Reform, by Wm. C. Hannas
  • Language Policies and Linguistic Divergence in the Two Koreas, by Ho-min Sohn
  • Okinawan Writing Systems, Past, Present, and Future, by Leon A. Serafim
  • Proposal of a Comparative Study of Language Policies and Their Implementation in Singapore, Taiwan, and China (PRC), by Robert L. Cheng
  • The Topical Function of Preverbal Locatives and Temporals in Chinese, by Feng-fu Tsao
  • Yes-No Questions in Taipei and Peking Mandarin, by Robert M. Sanders
  • Patronizing Uses of the Particle ma: Bureaucratic Chinese Bids for Dominance in Personal Interactions, by Beverly Hong Fincher
  • Gender and Sexism in Chinese Language and Literature, by Angela Jung-Palandri
  • A zhezi Anagram Poem of the Song Dynasty, by John Marney
  • Some Remarks on Differing Correspondences in Old Chinese Assumed to Represent Different Chinese Dialects, by Nicholas C. Bodman
  • Can Taiwanese Recognize Simplified Characters?, by John S. Rohsenow
  • Simplified Characters and Their (Un)relatedness, by Chauncey C. Chu
  • The Teaching of Culture and the Culture of Teaching: Problems, Challenges, and Opportunities in Language Instruction, by Eugene Eoyang
  • The Culture Component of Language Teaching, by Kyoko Hijirida
  • Thinking About Prof. John DeFrancis, by Apollo Wu
  • Wo suo Renshi de De Xiansheng, by Chih-yu Ho
  • Two Poems for Professor John DeFrancis, by Richard F. S. Yang
  • Announcement, by Stephen Fleming

Happy birthday, John! And many happy returns!

Aborigines: tuzhu vs. yuanzhumin

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In May, a delegation of Aborigines from Taiwan attended the Fifth U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. (Of course, since the United Nations shuns Taiwan, the delegates were able to attend only by registering with a U.S. NGO.) The delegates raised objections to the U.N.’s Mandarin translation of “original inhabitants”/”indigenous peoples” as tuzhu.

The UN’s translation calls Aborigines tu chu [tǔzhù] (土著), which has negative and barbaric implications, the representatives said. They requested the UN instead use yuan chu min [yuánzhùmín] (原住民), which is the term used in this country. Although both terms are translated into English as “original inhabitants,” tu chu [tǔzhù] was too derogatory, they said.

(I’ve added correct Pinyin above in red between square brackets.)

This is not the first time groups have voiced this complaint to the United Nations. (See the sources below.)

Here are some comparative frequencies of use:

total within .tw domains within .cn domains
土著
(tuzhu)		 1,130,000 59,500 283,000
原住民
(yuanzhumin)		 2,520,000 1,210,00 112,000
土著+原住民
(both tuzhu and yuanzhumin)		 49,300 12,000 6,140

Although tuzhu gets used much less of the time in Taiwan than yuanzhumin, it still shows up in significant numbers. So, what’s so bad about tuzhu? Do Taiwan’s aborigines use that word to refer to other people, just not themselves? If so, why? Which word is older? Why the difference between usage in Taiwan and China, and when did it arise?

I don’t have answers here, just questions.

sources:

Don’t use rare characters in teaching Taiwanese: official

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It looks like some standardization might slowly be coming to the teaching in Taiwan of Taiwanese and Hakka. Beginning with the 2007-2008 school year, material from publishing companies for teaching “local languages” (i.e., Taiwanese, Hakka, and, sometimes, the languages of Taiwan’s tribes) must first pass inspection by the Ministry of Education. The ministry should have its own teaching materials ready by the 2009-2010 school year. Schools will be free to choose among textbooks from publishers or from the ministry.

Specifically, publishers should by all means avoid dredging up obscure Chinese characters to use for Taiwanese morphemes, Pan Wen-zhong, a high-ranking official with the ministry, said on Monday. There are easier ways to read and write the language than with such characters, especially when teaching elementary school students, he noted.

As much as I agree with this, it is still probably a case of too little, too late.

國小鄉土語言教材怪字連篇、拼音混亂的情況，很多家長教起孩子既頭痛、又氣 憤。教育部國教司長潘文忠表示，96學年度起，民間編印的鄉土語言教材，一律要 先經過審查，才能選用，一些罕見的怪字可望從教材中消失。

教育部國語推行委員會也已經著手編印閩南語、客家語教材，預計98學年度開始， 學校教閩南語或客語，就可以選用部編本教材。

在審定本和部編本教材還沒有出來之前，潘文忠呼籲老師使用既有教材教鄉土語言 時，盡量不要教、不要用罕見漢字。尤其是小學生，他強調應該使用「老師教過、 學生學過」的字辭，像蟑螂就用蟑螂，不必刻意教閩南語發音的新辭，更不要用罕 見字。

國小民編本鄉土語言教材怪字連篇的情況，多年來在立法院和地方議會經常被批 評，連官員都被考倒，家長更是苦不堪言。光是蟑螂、蒼蠅這些日常生活中常用 辭，不同教材，蟑螂就有「虼」、「假裁縫」等不同寫法，蒼蠅也有「真司公」、 「呼神」、「胡蠅」、「互蠅」等用法。

source: xiāngtǔyǔ jiàocái yào xiàn shěn — bùnéng yòng qíguài Hànzì (鄉語教材要先審 不能用怪字), August 27, 2006

English tips from the school formerly known as Peking University

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old logo of Peking UniversityPeking University, China’s most prestigious school, has announced that it is planning a change. First, the school’s logo will be redesigned. The original was made by Lu Xun, who was apparently not just a great writer and an impassioned advocate of romanization and critic of Chinese characters but also an artist.

Significantly, the new logo design will feature a different English name: the University of Beijing. This is especially interesting because “Peking University” had officially remained as such in English despite China’s official adoption of Hanyu Pinyin.

Moreover, “Beijing University,” which would match the Mandarin Chinese name of Beijing Daxue (English and Mandarin have much the same syntax), is not to be used except in informal contexts. Instead, the name is to be the “University of Beijing.” That is, according to the school, because in formal English names the place name has to come after “college” or “university”:

Běijīng Dàxué zài shuōmíng zhōng zhǐchū, gēnjù Yīngyǔ yǔfǎ guīzé, dìmíng zuòwéi xíngróngcí de xuéxiào míngzi wǎngwǎng zhǐshì yòngyú kǒuyǔ de jiǎnchēng, ér zài zhèngshì de shūmiànyǔ zhōng zé yīnggāi jiāng dìmíng zuòwéi míngcí zhìyú “xuéyuàn” huò “dàxué” zhīhòu.
(北京大学在说明中指出，根据英语语法规则，地名作为形容词的校名往往只是用于口语的简称，而在正式的书面语中则应将地名作为名词置于“学院”或“大学”之后。)

Danwei, where I first spotted this story, has helpfully translated one delightfully arch reaction to this English lesson.

Evidently the professors at PKU’s English department will have to give new names to the following British and American universities according to PKU’s English grammar rules:

Princeton University, New York University, Boston University, Syracuse University, Lancaster University, Coventry University, Cranfield University, Bournemouth University, Keele University, Middlesex University, Roehampton University, Athabasca University, Brandon University….

Would the leaders of PKU please inform the leaders of those universities the next time they meet with them? Some, like like Princeton University, New York University and such, are considerably more famous than PKU. Try to have them follow PKU’s English grammar rule first, and then it can become a wordwide rule of English grammar, and PKU can have a world-leading innovation.

Heh.

Before I close, here are a couple more points:

  • Peking is not the Wade-Giles spelling for what in Hanyu Pinyin is Beijing. (The Wade-Giles spelling for Beijing is Pei-ching, which never caught on in English.)
  • The correct way to write 北大 in Pinyin is Bei-Da, not Bei Da or Beida. Short forms of proper nouns take a hyphen, according to the rules for hyphens in Pinyin.

sources:

What Chinese characters can’t do-be-do-be-do

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It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that “shuing”!

David Moser uses the question of how would someone scat sing in Mandarin Chinese to start off an exploration of what Chinese characters can’t do well (and what Pinyin can).

Here’s an excerpt:

English has numerous conventions for representing casual oral speech: “Are you kiddin’ me?” “Whaddya wanna do tonight, Marty?” “I’m gettin’ outta here!” “Gimme that.” And so on. Such spelling conventions have been employed in the literature of most alphabetic traditions for hundreds of years, and are often an invaluable link to the vernaculars of the past. English-language writers from Mark Twain to James Joyce have used the flexibility of the alphabet to vividly re-created various speech worlds in their works. It is, in fact, hard to imagine how much of the literature of the West could have been produced without recourse to such devices.

Chinese characters, by contrast, cannot reproduce the equivalent elisions and blends of colloquial Chinese, except in rare cases, and only at the level of the syllable…. The result is that China effectively has no tradition of realistically notating vernacular speech. Wenyanwen ???, classical Chinese, exerted a virtual stranglehold on written literature up until the early twentieth century, and even then, most writers did not attempt to accurately represent common speech, despite the appearance of an occasional Lao She or Ba Jin. But even if such writers had so desired, working within the Chinese system of writing, they could never have notated the sounds of the language around them with the same kind of vivid verisimilitude of the following examples in English….

Read the whole article, here on Pinyin Info: Some Things Chinese Characters Can’t Do-Be-Do-Be-Do.

And if you haven’t seen it already, be sure to check out another work by Moser: Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard, which is one of Pinyin Info’s most popular readings.