Wenlin on sale

Wenlin

One of my favorite programs, Wenlin Software for Learning Chinese, is having a special sale. Normally Wenlin costs US$99. But through December 31, 2015, Wenlin is available for just US$49 for the version you can download directly to your computer (Windows or Mac OS).

Truly, there are few things more beautiful than Wenlin’s
Edit → Make Transformed Copy → Pinyin transcription.
But Wenlin is filled with all sorts of other great features as well. And it comes with the electronic edition of the terrific ABC English-Chinese/Chinese-English Dictionary built in.

I love this program and use it on a near-daily basis, so I can recommend it highly.

If you’re looking for a Christmas gift for someone studying Mandarin, Wenlin would be a good choice.

To receive the special price, use the discount code CCMS2015.

Common Taiwanese given names

This supplies the most common male and female given names in Taiwan. If you’re writing a story about Taiwan and need “safe” names for characters, this is a good reference — at least if your story is set in the present or not too far past.

For the most common family names in Taiwan, see Taiwan personal names: a frequency list. The data there are a few years older but remain valid, with only slight changes in the order of frequency. And don’t forget that over here the family name comes first, e.g., “Chen Ya-ting,” not “Ya-ting Chen.”

For the rankings of individual names in given years, see my PDF of the most common given names in Taiwan.

Note: Although I refer to these as “Taiwanese” names, I give the Mandarin forms (since Hanyu Pinyin is a system for writing Mandarin), not names in Hoklo/Hokkien (the language often referred to as Taiwanese).

Most popular given names for Taiwanese males, born 1976–1994

Hanzi Pinyin Spelling Likely Used by This Person
柏翰 Bǎihàn Pai-han
承翰 Chénghàn Cheng-han
冠霖 Guānlín Kuan-lin
冠廷 Guāntíng Kuan-ting
冠宇 Guānyǔ Kuan-yu
家豪 Jiāháo Chia-hao
家銘 Jiāmíng Chia-ming
建宏 Jiànhóng Chien-hung
家瑋 Jiāwěi Chia-wei
俊宏 Jùnhóng Chun-hung
俊傑 Jùnjié Chun-chieh
俊賢 Jùnxián Chun-hsien
威廷 Wēitíng Wei-ting
信宏 Xìnhóng Hsin-hung
彥廷 Yàntíng Yan-ting
宇軒 Yǔxuān Yu-hsuan
哲瑋 Zhéwěi Che-wei
志豪 Zhìháo Chih-hao
志宏 Zhìhóng Chih-hung
志偉 Zhìwěi Chih-wei
宗翰 Zōnghàn Tsung-han

Most popular given names for Taiwanese females, born 1976–1994

Hanzi Pinyin Likely Spelling
慧君 Huìjūn Hui-chun
惠如 Huìrú Hui-ju
惠婷 Huìtíng Hui-ting
惠雯 Huìwén Hui-wen
佳樺 Jiāhuà Chia-hua
佳慧 Jiāhuì Chia-hui
佳玲 Jiālíng Chia-ling
嘉玲 Jiālíng Chia-ling
佳蓉 Jiāróng Chia-jung
佳穎 Jiāyǐng Chia-ying
家瑜 Jiāyú Chia-yu
靜宜 Jìngyí Ching-yi
靜怡 Jìngyí Ching-yi
美玲 Měilíng Mei-ling
佩君 Pèijūn Pei-chun
佩珊 Pèishān Pei-shan
詩涵 Shīhán Shih-han
詩婷 Shītíng Shih-ting
淑芬 Shūfēn Shu-fen
淑華 Shūhuá Shu-hua
淑惠 Shūhuì Shu-hui
淑慧 Shūhuì Shu-hui
淑娟 Shūjuān Shu-chuan
淑玲 Shūlíng Shu-ling
淑貞 Shūzhēn Shu-chen
思穎 Sīyǐng Ssu-ying
婷婷 Tíngtíng Ting-ting
庭瑋 Tíngwěi Ting-wei
婉婷 Wǎntíng Wan-ting
琬婷 Wǎntíng Wan-ting
瑋婷 Wěitíng Wei-ting
筱涵 Xiǎohán Hsiao-han
心怡 Xīnyí Hsin-yi
欣怡 Xīnyí Hsin-yi
馨儀 Xīnyí Hsin-yi
雅芳 Yǎfāng Ya-fang
雅涵 Yǎhán Ya-han
雅惠 Yǎhuì Ya-hui
雅慧 Yǎhuì Ya-hui
雅玲 Yǎlíng Ya-ling
雅萍 Yǎpíng Ya-ping
雅琪 Yǎqí Ya-chi
雅婷 Yǎtíng Ya-ting
雅文 Yǎwén Ya-wen
雅雯 Yǎwén Ya-wen
雅筑 Yǎzhù Ya-chu
怡安 Yí’ān Yi-an
宜君 Yíjūn Yi-chun
怡君 Yíjūn Yi-chun
怡伶 Yílíng Yi-ling
怡如 Yírú Yi-ju
宜庭 Yítíng Yi-ting
怡婷 Yítíng Yi-ting
依婷 Yītíng Yi-ting
怡萱 Yíxuān Yi-hsuan
郁婷 Yùtíng Yu-ting
鈺婷 Yùtíng Yu-ting
郁雯 Yùwén Yu-wen

The names were derived from Chih-Hao Tsai’s list of 25 most common given names by year. I have added Pinyin and the spelling in the romanization system likely used by someone in Taiwan with that name (bastardized Wade-Giles). In addition, with the help of my wife, I assigned names to the categories of male or female.

The data are from the university entrance exams, 1994–2012. Positing that the students were age 18 when they took the exam supplies the range for years of birth.

Sign in seal script

It’s time again to play What’s That Character?

Feel free to ask others what they think, though enlisting the aid of historians and calligraphy masters would count as cheating, as all of these examples are not from a museum or a calligraphy scroll but from a sign outside a building meant to be read by all.

Chinese character number one:
mystery_hanziv

Chinese character number two:
mystery_hanziii

And Chinese character number three:
mystery_hanziiv

OK? Ready?

Here are the answers:

How’d you do?

*** SPOILERS BELOW ***

If you got even one right, hái bùcuò. That’s probably as well as or better than the average person literate in Chinese characters.

Here is the entire sign, which will probably make things much clearer.

If you’re a Mandarin speaker and used to reading Chinese characters, you can probably tell what the entire sign says without too much effort. But as this exercise may help to show, that is not because most people can truly read all the characters but because they can fill in the blanks, as it were, when presented with adequate context. Yes, those are all written in seal script, not in a modern style; but seal script is all that is given on the sign.

I want to stress that this isn’t a sign for a historical museum or even the Cultural Bureau. Nope, it’s for the Xinbei City Government’s Environmental Protection Department, here in lovely Banqiao. Those used to the ways of Taiwan (or maybe just the ways of the world) have probably already correctly guessed that it was the director who thought a seal-script font would be a good idea. (See the news stories below for more on that. Although the reports are from a couple of years ago, I took the photos just a couple of weeks ago.)

Don’t forget: If you want to put Chinese characters or tonal Pinyin in your comments, use the encoder first and copy and paste the results into the comments box.

News stories:

Dissolving Pinyin

Late last week, Victor Mair — with some assistance from Matt Anderson, David Moser, me, and others — wrote in “Lobsters”: a perplexing stop motion film about a short 1959 film from China that gives some Pinyin. In some cases, the Pinyin is presented for a second and then is quickly dissolved into Chinese characters. Since Victor’s post supplies only the text, I thought that I’d supplement that here with images from the film.

See the original post for translations and discussion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKYMO73hLRY

The film often shows a newspaper. The headline (at 7:57) reads (or rather should read, since the first word is misspelled):

QICHE GUPIAO MENGDIE
DAPI LONGXIA ZHIXIAO

longxia_pinyin_757

But since the image above doesn’t show the name of the paper, I’m also offering this rotated and cropped photo, that allows us to see that this is the “JIN YUAN DIGUO RI-BAO”
longxia_ribao

Elsewhere, there are again some g’s for q’s. For the first example of text dissolving from Pinyin to Chinese characters (at 2:11), I’m offering screenshots of the text in Pinyin, the text during the dissolve, and the text in Chinese characters. Later I’ll give just the Pinyin and Chinese characters.

Hongdang Louwang
Yipi hongdang zai daogi [sic] jiudian jihui buxing guanbu [sic] louwang

longxia_pinyin_211a

longxia_pinyin_211b

longxia_pinyin_211c

Soon thereafter (at 2:44), we get a handwritten note.
longxia_pinyin_244a

longxia_pinyin_244c

At 3:39 we’re shown the printed notice in the newspaper of the above text.
longxia_pinyin_339a

longxia_pinyin_339c

A brief glance at the newspaper at 3:23 gives us FA CHOU, which is probably referring to the stink the bad lobsters are giving off.
longxia_pinyin_323

Here a man is carrying a copy of Zibenlun (Das Kapital), by Makesi (Marx).
longxia_pinyin_911

Actually, it’s not really Das Kapital, just the cover of the book; inside is a stack of decadent Western material. “MEI NE” is probably supposed to be “MEINÜ” (beautiful women).
longxia_pinyin_558_meinu

I imagine that, in the PRC of 1959, the artists for this film must have inwardly rejoiced at the chance to draw something like that for a change, and that is also why there’s a nude on the wall in one scene.
longxia_pinyin_439_meinu

UTF-8 Unicode vs. other encodings over time

Some eight years ago UTF-8 (Unicode) became the most used encoding on Web pages. At the time, though, it was used on only about 26% of Web pages, so it had a plurality but not an absolute majority.

Graph showing growth of the UTF-8 encoding

By the beginning of 2010 Unicode was rapidly approaching use on half of Web pages.
graph showing a steep rise in the use of UTF-8 and a steep decline in other major encodings

In 2012 the trends were holding up.
UTF-8_website_use_2001-2012

Note that the 2008 crossover point appears different in the latter two Google graphs, which is why I’m showing all three graphs rather than just the third.

A different source (with slightly different figures) provides us with a look at the situation up to the present, with UTF-8 now on 85% of Web pages. Expansion of UTF-8 is slowing somewhat. But that may be due largely to the continuing presence of older websites in non-Unicode encodings rather than lots of new sites going up in encodings other than UTF-8.
growth in Unicode UTF-8 encoding on Web pages, 2010-2015

Here’s the same chart, but focusing on encodings (other than UTF-8) that use Chinese characters, so the percentages are relatively low.
asian_language_encodings_2010-2015

And here’s the same as the above, but with the results for individual languages combined.
asian_language_encodings_2010-2015_by_language

By the way, Pinyin.info has been in UTF-8 since the site began way back in 2001. The reason that Chinese characters and Pinyin with tone marks appear scrambled within Pinyin News is that a hack caused the WordPress database to be set to Swedish (latin1_swedish_ci), of all things. And I haven’t been able to get it fixed; so just for the time being I’ve given up trying. One of these days….

Sources:

Pinyin font: Skarpa

Today’s Pinyin-friendly font is Skarpa, by Aga Silva of Poland. It’s a bit quirky (e.g., second-tone o’s and lowercase q’s) but still sharp.

Hanyu Pinyin pangram using the Skarpa font

Skarpa was later modified into Skarpa 2, which is not free but which comes in several weights and types.

Most of Silva’s other fonts also can handle Pinyin with tone marks. Those are all commercial rather than free.

Popularity of Chinese character country code TLDs

Yesterday we looked at the popularity of the Chinese character TLD for Singapore Internet domains. Today we’re going to examine the Chinese character ccTLDs (country code top-level domains) for those places that use Chinese characters and compare the figures with those for the respective Roman alphabet TLDs.

In other words, how, for example, does the use of taiwan in traditional Chinese characters   .台灣 domains compare with the use of .tw domains?

Since, unlike the case with Singapore, I don’t have the registration figures, I’m having to make do with Google hits, which is a different measure. For this purpose, Google is unfortunately a bit of a blunt instrument. But at least it should be a fairly evenhanded blunt instrument and will be useful in establishing baselines for later comparisons.

A few notes before we get started:

  • Japan has yet to bother with completing the process for its own name in kanji (Japan, as written in kanji / Chinese characters), so it is omitted here.
  • Macau only recently asked for aomen in simplified Chinese characters    
  .澳门 and aomen in traditional Chinese characters    
  .澳門, so those figures are still at zero.
  • Oddly enough, there’s no taiwan_super in traditional Chinese characters   
  .臺灣 ccTLD, even though the Ma administration, which was in power when Taiwan’s ccTLDs went into effect, officially prefers the more complex form of taiwan_super in traditional Chinese characters   
  .臺灣 to taiwan in traditional Chinese characters   .台灣 — not to mention prefering it to taiwan in simplified Chinese characters    
  .台湾.
  Google Hits Percent of Total
MACAU    
.mo 18400000 100.00
aomen in simplified Chinese characters    
  .澳门 0 0.00
aomen in traditional Chinese characters    
  .澳門 0 0.00
TAIWAN    
.tw 206000000 99.86
taiwan in simplified Chinese characters    
  .台湾 67600 0.03
taiwan_super in traditional Chinese characters   
  .臺灣 0 0.00
taiwan in traditional Chinese characters   .台灣 230000 0.11
HONG KONG    
.hk 193000000 99.94
xianggang  in Chinese characters 
  .香港 118000 0.06
SINGAPORE    
.sg 97800000 100.00
xinjiapo  in Chinese characters 
  .新加坡 2 0.00
CHINA    
.cn 315000000 99.61
zhongguo in simplified Chinese characters  
  .中国 973000 0.31
zhongguo in traditional Chinese characters   
  .中國 251000 0.08

So in no instance does the Chinese character ccTLD reach even one half of one percent of the total for any given place.

Here are the results in a chart.

Graph showing that although China leads in domains in Chinese characters, they do not reach even one half of one percent of the total for China

Note that the ratio of simplified:traditional forms in China and Taiwan are roughly mirror images of each other, as is perhaps to be expected.

See also Platform on Tai, Pinyin News, December 30, 2011

Popularity of the Chinese character TLD for Singapore Internet domains

For quite a few years Singapore has had several choices for those wishing to register Singapore-specific domain names, including .com.sg, .net.sg,, .org.sg, .edu.sg, .gov.sg, .per.sg, and just .sg.

Of those, .sg is a top-level domain (TLD), whereas .com.sg, .net.sg,, .org.sg, .edu.sg, .gov.sg, and .per.sg are second-level domains. This post is mainly concerned with TLDs; but when I’m giving totals I also include .com.sg, .net.sg,, .org.sg, .edu.sg, .gov.sg, and .per.sg but exclude specific domains such as groupon.sg. OK, now back to the post.

Although English is the dominant language of Singapore, it is but one of four official languages there, along with Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil, with Mandarin (along with other Sinitc languages) being the most common of the latter three. Some three-quarters of the city-state’s population is ethnic Chinese, and around half of that group speak Mandarin as the main language in their homes. In addition, for decades Singapore has promoted its campaign to Strike Hard Against Hoklo, Cantonese, and Other Languages that Your Government Says Are Puny and Insignificant Because They Have Only Tens of Millions of Speakers Apiece Speak Mandarin.

So you might think that four years ago, when Singapore introduced Singapore’s name in Chinese characters ('Singapore' (Xinjiapo) in Chinese characters) as a top-level Internet domain (TLD), many in that multilingual society might jump at the chance to pick up some domain names ending with “Singapore” in Chinese characters. (Oh, it hurts me to use images instead of real text there; but until I get the hack fixed, that’s what I’m stuck with.)

Let’s take a look at what happened when the gates opened.

In September 2011, the first month that dot-Xinjiapo (.'Singapore' (Xinjiapo) in Chinese characters) domains became available, a total of 86 were registered. That’s not much of a land rush. The next month and the month after that saw no new registrations. But, OK, maybe they had a sunrise period limiting things. What happened later?

In December 2011 the number jumped to 218. This figure grew over the year 2012 to an all-time high that October of … 247 domains using the .'Singapore' (Xinjiapo) in Chinese characters TLD. Just 247. During the same month, Singapore had 143,887 registered domains, meaning that at the high point those with the Chinese character TLD were less than one fifth of one percent of the total. Since then, the number has fallen to a mere 210, with the percentage dropping to less than one eighth of one percent of the total.

Let’s look at this over time:
dot_xinjiapo_singapore_domains

A Google search for the .'Singapore' (Xinjiapo) in Chinese characters domains reveals that those domains are even less used than the already astonishingly low registration numbers might indicate.

results of a Google search for  .??? domains

So that’s a total of two active dot-Xinjiapo domains, one of which is for sale. In other words, basically there’s just one being used. Ouch. That’s about as close to utter insignificance as a Singapore TLD can get.

Indeed, the only sort of Singapore-related domain that is of even less interest to the netizens of Singapore is one within the dot-Cinkappur TLD, with Singapore written in the Tamil script: 'Singapore' as written in Tamil

Dot-Cinkappur (.'Singapore' as written in Tamil) domains have been available since December 2011, which is just a few months after the introduction of dot-Xinjiapo domains. The middle of 2015 saw the all-time record high in dot-Cinkappur domain registrations: sixteen. Since then the number has dropped to just fifteen.

A search on Google for dot-Cinkappur domains reveals zero active sites.

source: Registration Statistics, Singapore Network Information Centre (SGNIC), accessed October 27, 2015

See also: sg domain names in Chinese characters lag, Pinyin News, June 23, 2010.