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.]
I’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.
In terms of signage, that covers the most frequently encountered needs for the hyphen.
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.)
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:
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.
(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.
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:
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.
The Ministry of Education’s National Languages Committee on Wednesday issued very general guidelines for how Taiwan will go about implementing Hanyu Pinyin.
Unfortunately, they’re not very clear. But long years of experience have taught me that the most pessimistic interpretation (from the standpoint of Pinyin advocates) is probably the correct one. One guideline, for example, states:
Guónèi dìmíng shǔ guójì tōngyòng huò yuēdìngsúchéng zhě, wúxū gēnggǎi.
(Dometic place names that are internationally known or established by convention need not change.)
That’s going to be the excuse used to justify keeping all too many names in bastardized Wade-Giles or other largely useless systems. Thus, we’re probably stuck with not just old forms of names of big cities and counties (e.g., Kaohsiung and Taichung rather than Gaoxiong and Taizhong) but also old forms of lesser-known cities and counties (e.g., Taitung and Keelung rather than Taidong and Jilong). If this is the extent of things, it would copy the policy that the previous administration applied, which I think would be a terrible mistake.
Taiwan’s romanization situation: plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
Of course, there’s also the possibility that this will be used an excuse to keep even more old forms than the DPP’s Tongyong policy did, e.g., Panchiao and Hsintien rather than Banqiao and Xindian (or Tongyong’s Banciao and Sindian). In which case the expression might better be, “Taiwan’s romanization situation: one step forward, two steps back.”
sources:
I’ve just added another long section of Yin Binyong’s book on the detailed rules for Hanyu Pinyin. This part (pp. 78-138) covers common nouns (2.4 MB PDF).
I should have mentioned earlier that this book isn’t useful just for those who want to know more about Pinyin. It can also serve as an excellent work for those learning Mandarin, since it tends to group like ideas together and gives many examples of how combinations form other words.
All that, and it’s absolutely free. So go ahead and download it now.
Here are the main divisions:
- Introduction
- Simple Nouns
- Nouns with Prefixes
- Nouns with Suffixes
- Reduplicated Nouns
- Nouns of Modifier-Modified Construction
- Nouns of Coordinate Construction
- Nouns of Verb-Object and Subject-Predicate Construction
- Locational Nouns
- Nouns of Time
- Noun Phrases that Express a Single Concept
The news on Taiwan’s romanization situation has been coming in fast over the past few days. Unfortunately I’ve been too busy to report much on this. But rest assured that I am trying to get some things done behind the scenes … for all the good that will do given Taiwan’s piss-poor record on this issue. Still, I’m trying to remain hopeful.
Last week the deputy chief of Gaoxiong’s (Kaohsiung’s) Bureau of Education said that he was in favor of the city adopting the international system for romanizing Mandarin, Hanyu Pinyin. But on Friday his boss, Cài Qīnghuá, slapped down that idea.
Cai said that almost no schools reported problems with Tongyong Pinyin. I have no idea what that has to do with anything. But that was part of his justification for backing Tongyong.
He also said it would cost too much money to change, throwing out a reportedly conservative estimate of NT$900 million (US$28 million), which I think is likely a gross overestimate.
Here’s the story:
Gāoxióng shìzhèngfǔ dàodǐ zhī bù zhīchí Hànyǔ Pīnyīn? Gāoxióng Shì Jiàoyùjú zhǎng Cài Qīnghuá zuótiān biǎoshì, quán shì yī sì wǔ suǒ huíbào xuéxiào zhōng, zhǐyǒu sì suǒ tíjí Tōngyòng Pīnyīn shǐyòng de wèntí, juédàduōshù xuéxiào bìngwú yìjian, Gāoxióng shìzhèngfǔ jiù “zhǔguǎn dānwèi zài yèwù tuīdòng shàng, shì-fǒu yǒu xūyào xiézhù shìxiàng” wèntí shí, huífù “pīnyīn zhèngcè xū yǔ guójì jiēguǐ, jiànyì cǎiyòng guójì jiān duōshù shǐyòng de pīnyīn xìtǒng Hànyǔ Pīnyīn.” Shì Jiàoyùjú zhǔ mì de yìjian, tā méi zhùyìdào.
Cài Qīnghuá shuō, mùqián háishi zhǔzhāng yányòng Tōngyòng Pīnyīn, fǒuzé gēnggǎi Gāoxióng Shì guāngshì lùbiāo, dìbiāo, biāozhì děng, bǎoshǒu gūjì jiù xū huāfei yīdiǎn jiǔyì yuán.
source: Gāoxióng Shì Jiàoyùjú zhǎng zhǔzhāng: yányòng Tōngyòng Pīnyīn (高市教育局長 主張沿用通用拼音), Zìyóu Shíbào (Liberty Times), September 20, 2008