Monthly Archives: October 2008

another nail in the coffin of nicknumbering

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I haven’t posted anything in Pinyin lately. So here’s a story from a couple of days ago, giving some of the history of Taipei’s stupid and now disavowed “nicknumbering” system, under which the city’s main roads were given numbers for the supposed convenience of foreigners. But since no locals knew these numbers, the nicknumbering system helped basically no one find anything — something the city should have figured out before it wasted all that money putting up signs. The real problem was that the romanization on the city’s signs was FUBAR — something that was finally addressed a little later.

Táiběi shìyìyuán Lǐ Xīn zhǐchū, Táiběi shìzhèngfǔ zài Mínguó 89 nián [2000 — I’ve changed the rest of the dates to international years] tuīchū de “dàjiē dàdào” (lùpái jiāzhù Yīngwén xùhào) zhèngcè, jìngrán zài 7 yuè jīng shìzhǎng Hǎo Lóngbīn tóngyì, juédìng “bù wán le”. Tā tòng pī shì-fǔ zhèngcè fǎnfù, bànlǐ dānwèi Mínzhèngjú zéwúpángdài, yīng gěi shìmín yī ge jiāodài.

Mínzhèngjú biǎoshì, zǎo zài 2002 nián tǒngyī shǐyòng Hànyǔ Pīnyīn qián, yǐ tuīdòng “dàjiē dàdào” zhèngcè, gù bùfen biāoshì pái cǎi Tōngyòng Pīnyīn, liǎngzhě luóji bìngbù yīzhì; cǐwài, yuèláiyuè duō wàijí guānguāngkè juéde lái Táiwān jiùshì yào tǐhuì “Zhōng-xiào, Rén’ài, Xìnyì, Hépíng” de Rújiā jīngshén shì mìngmíngfǎ, shùzì xíng jiēdào míng fǎn’ér xiǎnde méiyǒu tèsè.

Mínzhèngjú juédìng cóngshànrúliú, gǎi yǐ Hànyǔ Pīnyīn zuòwéi tǒngyī yìyīn, bùzài zhíxíng “dàjiē dàdào” zhèngcè.

Lǐ Xīn biǎoshì, shì-fǔ yǐ “fāzhǎn guānguāng, xiézhù wàijí rénshì biànrèn” wéi yóu, 2000 nián qǐ dàzhāngqígǔ, jiāng shìnèi 10 tiáo dōng-xī xiàng zhǔyào dàolù dìng míngwéi “dì-yī zhì dì-shí dàdào”; 14 tiáo nán-běi xiàng zhǔyào dàolù dìng míngwéi “dì-yī zhì dì-shísì dàjiē”.

Bùjǐn zài zhèxiē lùduàn de lùpái, shì-fǔ xuānchuánpǐn dōu xīnzēng xiāngguān Yīngwén biāoshì, yě yāoqiú yuánjǐng shújì, yǐbiàn zhǐyǐn wàijí guānguāngkè.

Bùliào shíguòjìngqiān, céngjīng bèi lièwéi qián Táiběi shìzhǎng Mǎ Yīngjiǔ zhòngyào zhèngjì de dàjiē dàdào zhèngcè, yīn shíshī guòchéng hùnluàn, xiàoguǒ bùjiā, yǐ yóu Hǎo Lóngbīn qiānzì juédìng “shōubīng” bùzài shīxíng, wèilái jiāng zhúbù yǐ Hànyǔ Pīnyīn tǒngyī yìyīn.

Mínzhèngjú biǎoshì, 1998 nián guānguāng wěiyuánhuì wěiyuán kāihuì shí, dāngshí yà dōu lí zhì zǒngcái Yán Chángshòu tíchū fǎngxiào guówài dàjiē dàdào mìngmíng fāngshì, huòkě tíshēng lái Táiwān guānguāng de wàijí lǚkè, zài Táiběi jiào yì biànshí fāngwèi; shì-fǔ jīngguò duōfāng pínggū, 2000 nián zhèngshì tuīdòng dàjiē dàdào zhèngcè.

Bùguò zài lùpái jiāzhù Yīngwénbǎn dàjiē dàdào míng hòu, duì wàijí lǚkè bāngzhù bùdà, bùshǎo běndì mínzhòng bèi wèndào “dì-yī dàdào zài nǎli?” fǎn’ér yī tóu wùshuǐ, gēnběn huídá bù chūlai. Yīncǐ jiēxiàlái shì-fǔ huì zhúnián biānliè yùsuàn, yǐ Hànyǔ Pīnyīn tǒngyī lùpái yìyīn.

Thanks, Dan, for alerting me to this.

source: Dàjiē dàdào bù wán le — yìyuán tòng pī (大街大道不玩了 議員痛批), United Daily News, October 27, 2008

Sino-Tibetan, Indo-European, and the word for ‘wheel’

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The latest rerelease from Sino-Platonic Papers is “Sino-Tibetan *kolo ‘Wheel‘” (800 KB PDF), by Robert S. Bauer. Those of you who like historical linguistics should be sure to read this one.

Abstract:

That the horse-drawn chariot appeared suddenly in China in the Shang Dynasty (ca. 1500-1066 BC) has led some Western scholars to believe that it was not independently invented by the Chinese but was introduced there by Western invaders. This paper is based on the premise that there is a connection between the transmission of the horse-drawn chariot from the West into China and the origin of some words meaning “wheel” and “wheeled-vehicle” in Sino-Tibetan languages. In particular, the paper proposes that words for “wheel” in some northern Chinese dialects and Bodic (Tibetan) languages are ultimately derived from an Indo-European source. On the basis of the comparison of words for “wheel” from various Sinitic and Bodic languages, the author has reconstructed the Proto-Sino-Tibetan root *kolo “wheel” which is itself an Indo-European contact loanword.

This was first published in August 1994 as issue no. 47 of Sino-Platonic Papers.

all 325 ‘words that form the Chinese language’

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The New York Public Library’s Digital Gallery offers a glimpse inside a book published in the 1770s: The Chinese traveller. Containing a geographical, commercial, and political history of China..

The book provides a chart of 325 syllables identified as being “A LIST of all the WORDS that form the CHINESE LANGUAGE.” I’ll skip the obvious and not address why that’s ridiculous.

The chart is apparently in the first volume of the work. But since the NYPL doesn’t provide many images and Google Books provides only the second volume (scanned from the one in the NYPL collection), I wasn’t able to find any explanatory text about the chart or the authors’ views of Sinitic languages.

Here’s one column:

mouen, moui, moum, mouon, na, nai, nam, nan, nao, nem, ngai, ngan, ngao, ngue, nguen, ngeo, ngo, ni, niam, niau, niao, nie, nien, nieou, nio

Which Sinitic language these are supposed to represent isn’t clear. But, no, it doesn’t appear to be Cantonese, which tends to be the default first guess when it comes to Sinitic languages — at least until recently. My guess is that it’s some form of Mandarin that’s been written in a bastardized way, obscuring differences between what are represented in Pinyin by b and p, d and t, g and k, etc. But then there are those -m finals. What do the rest of y’all think?

sources:

gov’t unveils online Taiwanese dictionary

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Taiwan’s Ministry of Education has put online its new Taiwanese (Hoklo) dictionary, the Táiwān Mǐnnányǔ chángyòngcí cídiǎn (giving the Mandarin name) (臺灣閩南語常用詞辭典). The preliminary version, which is to be amended in six months, contains 16,000 entries.

I especially welcome the section on Taiwan place-names.

further reading: MOE launches first Hoklo-language online dictionary, Taipei Times, October 20, 2008 [Note: The headline’s use of “first” is almost certainly incorrect.]

When to use hyphens in Hanyu Pinyin

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cover of Chinese Romanization: Pronunciation and OrthographyI’ve just put online another excerpt from Yin Binyong’s book about Pinyin. This one covers use of the hyphen in Hanyu Pinyin (400 KB PDF).

I’ll summarize some of the basics.

First, I want to stress that in Pinyin a hyphen should never be used to indicate syllable breaks. Those are easy to discern in Pinyin without any such Wade-Gilish clutter — or without any such foolishness as InTerCaPiTaLiZaTion. And in those few cases that might otherwise be problematic, the apostrophe works nicely.

OK, so what are the correct uses of the hyphen in Pinyin? Often, it’s employed much like the en-dash in English, for ranges and connections. And it’s also used in many abbreviated forms, esp. in cases with proper nouns.

  • the road on Taiwan’s east coast between Sua’ao and Hualian: the Su-Hua Expressway
  • the rail line between Beijing and Tianjin is the Jing-Jin line (京津城际铁路)
  • Beijing Daxue (Peking University) –> Bei-Da (not Beida)
  • Guólì Táiwān Dàxué (National Taiwan University) –> Tai-Da (not Taida)
  • English-Chinese dictionary: Ying-Han cidian

In terms of signage, that covers the most frequently encountered needs for the hyphen.

photo of signage in the Taipei MRT system, pointing toward the 'Bannan Line'
This sign in Taipei Main Station should read “Ban-Nan Line”, not “Bannan Line”, because the line runs between Banqiao and Nangang. (Actually, now it starts farther out, in Tucheng; but it hasn’t been redubbed the Tu-Nan line.)

For most other uses, see the full document. (Or see the older HTML version, which is without Hanzi.)

That section of the book, however, doesn’t mention one minor use of the hyphen in Hanyu Pinyin: hyphenated family names. These days, most women retain their original names when they marry. Formerly, however, a woman would often link her original name with her husband’s family name. Thus, if Ms. Guo Meihua were to marry a Mr. Li, she might choose to become Li-Guo Meihua, just as a Ms. Smith marrying a Mr. White might choose to adopt the name Smith-White (or White-Smith).

Note, however, that hyphens are not used in what are originally two-syllable family names. The well-known historian is Sima Qian, not Si-Ma Qian. (Similarly, Ouyang, not Ou-Yang; Zhuge, not Zhu-Ge.) Such family names, however, are rare.

For more on this, see p. 156 of the section on proper nouns in Pinyin (1.9 MB PDF).

(Wade-Gilish? Wade-Gileish? Wade-Gile-ish? Wade-Gileish? I still can’t figure out how best to style my nonce term. Oh well.)

Mandarin classes in Australia: ‘Chinese teaching Chinese to Chinese’

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A soon-to-be released study of enrollments in Mandarin classes in Australia has yet more evidence that the much hyped craze for Mandarin learning isn’t what it might seem to be (as I keep saying).

In Australia, by the final year of senior high school, 94% of those who began to study Mandarin sometime earlier have dropped the subject, and 94% of the relatively small group who remain are ethnically Chinese, resulting in a situation in which “the teaching and learning of Chinese in Australia is overwhelmingly a matter of Chinese teaching Chinese to Chinese.”

Things don’t get much more direct than that.

From a newspaper story that quotes the report:

Unless the drop-out rate is tackled, “there seems little point in planning to expand the number of students starting Chinese at school”.

The report attributes the drop-out rate to three factors. Students studying Chinese as a second language are “overwhelmed” in assessments by “strong numbers” of students who have Chinese as a first language.

Second, they don’t develop sufficient proficiency because of the difficulty in learning Chinese and the inadequate time set aside for it.

Finally, they are trying to learn Chinese “in an often unsupportive environment at school, in their family, and in the community”.

The report, by Dr. Jane Orton of the Melbourne Graduate School of Education at Melbourne University, will be presented to a forum late this month on Mandarin language education. I’ll post more once I’ve had a chance to read it.

Thanks to Victor Mair for alerting me to this.

source:

further reading:

new tools for writing Pinyin

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I’ve received word from software writers of not one but two useful new tools for writing Hanyu Pinyin with tone marks (i.e., not using Pinyin to enter Chinese characters but really writing Hanyu Pinyin texts).

Pīnyīn Editor, by Bengt Moss-Petersen, is an online tool that currently works best with IE 6+ and Firefox.

click to visit the online Pinyin editor

(I made text much larger than the default size, since I had to reduce the image to make it fit in my blog. Users can choose among several sizes and fonts.)

And Pinyin Builder, by Wayne Kirk, is freeware for Windows systems.

click to visit the download page for Pinyin Builder

If you have an open Microsoft Office document, clicking Pinyin Builder’s “GO” button will insert your Pinyin text into that document. You don’t need to bother with copying and pasting.

In both of these, ü + tone mark is produced by v + tone number. Pinyin Builder also offers a combination using the CTRL key.

The tone number can be entered either immediately after the vowel or later in the syllable (e.g., zho1ng, zhong1, and zhon1g all yield “zhōng”). Pinyin Editor also offers the option to simply click on buttons with the vowels and tone marks.

I hope people make frequent use of both of these terrific new tools.

Related:

convert Chinese characters to Unicode character references: javascript

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I’ve had a spate of requests recently for the code for Pinyin.info’s tool that converts Chinese characters to Unicode numeric character references (i.e., something that converts, say, “漢語拼音” into “漢語拼音”). Since I’m a believer in open-source work — and since people could find the code anyway if they look carefully enough in the Web page’s source code — I might as well publish it.

This tool can be very handy when making Web pages that use a variety of scripts. (It works on Cyrillic, etc., as well.) I often employ it myself.

Here’s the heart of the code:


function convertToEntities() {
var tstr = document.form.unicode.value;
var bstr = '';
for(i=0; i<tstr.length; i++)
{
if(tstr.charCodeAt(i)>127)
{
bstr += '&#' + tstr.charCodeAt(i) + ';';
}
else
{
bstr += tstr.charAt(i);
}
}
document.form.entity.value = bstr;
}

This sleek little bit of Javascript is originally by Steve Minutillo and used here on Pinyin.info with his permission. I may have tweaked the code a little myself; but that was so long ago I don’t remember well. (I’ve had the converter here for about five years.) Anyway, if you use this please acknowledge Steve’s authorship; and of course I always greatly appreciate links back to Pinyin.info.

If anyone knows how to do the same thing in PHP — preferably with no more code than used above, please let me know.

See also: separating Pinyin syllables: PHP code.