Mi casa es su kasha

Posted on Thursday, June 22, 2023 by Pinyin Info

I occasionally snap photos of instances of Chinese characters being used to write English (e.g., dog, butterfly, crunchy, oh my god). Here’s something that at least in Taiwan is far more rare: Chinese characters used to write Spanish.

米卡莎

米卡莎 is pronounced “Mǐ kǎshā”. In isolation, those characters are used in writing words associated with rice , card , sha sound, respectively — so nothing to do with “my house.”

Although Mandarin does have a “sa” syllable, which is associated with various Chinese characters (e.g., 撒, 仨, 挲, 灑, 撒, 靸, 卅, 颯, 摋, or 脎), making a closer phonetic match with mi casa possible, sa was not used. As the ABC Chinese–English Dictionary notes, 莎/sha is often “used in transcriptions, personal and place names,” whereas sa is not as much.

This store, near the border between Taiwan’s aesthetic Banqiao and Zhonghe, is now closed.

Mandarin words with more than one apostrophe

Posted on Sunday, June 11, 2023 by Pinyin Info

qīng’ěr’értīng
傾耳而聽
listen attentively

As I often note, apostrophes are used in only about 2 percent of words as written in Hanyu Pinyin. But when they’re needed, they’re needed. Don’t skip them.

A few years back, someone wrote to me to ask about multiple apostrophes in Pinyin. I dug through a 2019 edition of the CC-CEDICT (2019-11-12 04:41:56 GMT) for an answer. But I don’t think I ever posted my findings online. It’s time to rectify that.

CC-CEDICT is not an ideal source in terms of words, because some entries are phrases rather than single words, though they are not marked separately than words, which means that some entries might be better off with spaces rather than apostrophes, which would reduce the apostrophe count and percentage.

So, with that in mind, of the file’s 117,579 entries, 3,006 needed apostrophes, or 2.56 percent.

No entry needed three or more apostrophes.

Only 52 entries needed two apostrophes, or 0.04% of the total (1 per 2,261 entries).

Most of those were just Mandarinized foreign proper nouns. For example:

Ā’ěrjí’ěr: Algiers, capital of Algeria/ 阿爾及爾阿尔及尔
Āi’ěrduō’ān: Erdogan (name)/Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (1954-), Turkish politician, prime minister from 2003/ 埃爾多安埃尔多安
Běi’ài’ěrlán: Northern Ireland/ 北愛爾蘭北爱尔兰
Bì’ěrbā’è: Bilbao (city in Spain)/ 畢爾巴鄂毕尔巴鄂
Dá’ěrfú’ěr: Darfur (western province of Sudan)/ 達爾福爾达尔福尔
Dá’ěrfù’ěr: Darfur, region of west Sudan/ 達爾富爾达尔富尔
fēi’ābèi’ěr: (math.) non-abelian/ 非阿貝爾非阿贝尔
Fèi’àoduō’ěr: Theodor of Fyodor (name)/ 費奧多爾费奥多尔
gǔ’ānxiān’àn: glutamine (Gln), an amino acid/ 谷氨酰胺谷氨酰胺
Láiwàng’è’ěr: Levanger (city in Trøndelag, Norway)/ 萊旺厄爾莱旺厄尔
Léi’ā’ěrchéng: Ciudad Real/ 雷阿爾城雷阿尔城
Luójié’ài’ěrzhī: Raziel, archangel in Judaism/ 羅潔愛爾之罗洁爱尔之
Mài’ěrwéi’ěr: Melville (name)/Herman Melville (1819-1891), US novelist, author of Moby Dick / 麥爾維爾麦尔维尔
Pí’āi’ěr: Pierre (name)/ 皮埃爾皮埃尔
Shàng’àisè’ěr: Overijssel/ 上艾瑟爾上艾瑟尔
Sīfú’ěrwǎ’ěr: Svolvær (city in Nordland, Norway)/ 斯福爾瓦爾斯福尔瓦尔
Sītài’ēnxiè’ěr: Steinkjær (city in Trøndelag, Norway)/ 斯泰恩謝爾斯泰恩谢尔
Tèlǔ’āi’ěr: Tergüel or Teruel, Spain/ 特魯埃爾特鲁埃尔
Xīn’ào’ěrliáng: New Orleans, Louisiana/ 新奧爾良新奥尔良

Examples of more regular Mandarin entries with two apostrophes include:

bái’éyàn’ōu: (bird species of China) little tern (Sternula albifrons)/ 白額燕鷗白额燕鸥
báixuě’ái’ái: brilliant white snow cover (esp. of distant peaks)/ 白雪皚皚白雪皑皑
chū’ěrfǎn’ěr: old: to reap the consequences of one’s words (idiom, from Mencius); modern: to go back on one’s word/to blow hot and cold/to contradict oneself/inconsistent/ 出爾反爾出尔反尔
húnhún’è’è: muddleheaded/ 渾渾噩噩浑浑噩噩
pāi’àn’érqǐ: lit. to slap the table and stand up (idiom); fig. at the end of one’s tether/unable to take it any more/ 拍案而起拍案而起
qì’áng’áng: full of vigor/spirited/valiant/ 氣昂昂气昂昂
qīng’ěr’értīng: to listen attentively/ 傾耳而聽倾耳而听
qīqī’ài’ài: stammering (idiom)/ 期期艾艾期期艾艾
suíyù’ér’ān: at home wherever one is (idiom); ready to adapt/flexible/to accept circumstances with good will/ 隨遇而安随遇而安
xiù’ēn’ài: to make a public display of affection/ 秀恩愛秀恩爱
yǐ’échuán’é: to spread falsehoods/to increasingly distort the truth/to pile errors on top of errors (idiom)/ 以訛傳訛以讹传讹

A few of those present interesting questions in orthography. For example, Xīn’ào’ěrliáng or Xīn Ào’ěrliáng?

But, basically, those entries are outliers. Relatively few words in Pinyin need an apostrophe; only a minute subset of those need two apostrophes; and, to my knowledge, none need three or more apostrophes.

Can you think of any triple-apostrophe words? Sorry, written examples of stuttering don’t count.

Reagan candy

Posted on Friday, May 26, 2023 by Pinyin Info

From watching a brief documentary piece on TV about how jelly beans are made, I learned a new Taiwan-specific Mandarin term: Léigēn táng (雷根糖).

Leigen is a Mandarinization of the name of Ronald Reagan, who famously loved jelly beans. And táng is the word for sugar/candy. So Léigēn táng / “Reagan candy” is a term (but not the only one) in Taiwan for jelly beans. Cool name. I’m going to remember that.

Oddly, Google Translate didn’t know the term yet — or apparently even that Léigēn is how one says “Reagan” in Taiwan, given how Google Translate produced “Regan [sic] Candy”. But at least Google Translate didn’t produce “thunder root sugar,” which would be a literal translation of each morpheme, taken individually.

I sent feedback, so let’s see if it gets corrected.

In China, “Reagan” is usually written instead as 里根 (Lǐgēn). But it doesn’t look like either 里根糖 (Lǐgēn táng) or 雷根糖 (Léigēn táng) is a thing in the PRC. Instead, in China jelly beans are called “果冻豆” (guǒdòng dòu; lit. “jelly beans”) or “软心豆” (ruǎn xīn dòu; lit. “soft-heart beans”).

One wonders what jelly beans were called in Taiwan prior to Reagan administration. Maybe they just weren’t popular here yet.

It’s quite common for proper nouns to differ in Taiwan and China, especially for people. For example, see my old post on Obama, Bush, vitamin drinks, and puns.

The most common given names in Taiwan, by decade

Posted on Tuesday, May 23, 2023 by Pinyin Info

Some names have waxed and waned in popularity in Taiwan over the past century or so. This post gives tables of the top-three names for each decade (as calculated by the ROC calendar).

In this post, I give only Mandarin forms of names — out of familiarity, not preference. An exacting writer seeking character names might do well to investigate how such names might be pronounced in Taiwanese, Hakka, or even yet another Sinitic language other than Mandarin, depending on the who, when, and where.

Note: Although the normal style for names in Hanyu Pinyin is to write given names solid, without a space or hyphen, I have used hyphens in this post to preserve the style of writing names that has been standard in Taiwan for many decades. I am including the spelling in Wade-Giles, even though I don’t recommend using that system, because that is what is commonly seen in Taiwan — albeit without apostrophes or umlauts.

Most popular Taiwan boys names, by ROC decade of birth

Birth Year	Chinese Characters	Pinyin	Wade-Giles
1912–1920	明、金水、健	Míng, Jīn-shuǐ, Jiàn	Ming, Chin-shui, Chien
1921–1930	金龍、金水、金生	Jīn-lóng, Jīn-shuǐ, Jīn-shēng	Chin-lung, Chin-shui, Chin-sheng
1931–1940	正雄、文雄、武雄	Zhèng-xióng, Wén-xióng, Wǔ-xióng	Cheng-hsiung, Wen-hsiung, Wu-hsiung
1941–1950	正雄、武雄、文雄	Zhèng-xióng, Wǔ-xióng, Wén-xióng	Cheng-hsiung, Wu-hsiung, Wen-hsiung
1951–1960	金龍、進財、榮華	Jīn-lóng, Jìn-cái, Róng-huá	Chin-lung, Chin-ts’ai, Jung-hua
1961–1970	志明、志成、文雄	Zhì-míng, Zhì-chéng, Wén-xióng	Chih-ming, Chih-ch’eng, Wen-hsiung
1971–1980	志偉、志明、建宏	Zhì-wěi, Zhì-míng, Jiàn-hóng	Chih-wei, Chih-ming, Chien-hung
1981–1990	家豪、志豪、志偉	Jiā-háo, Zhì-háo, Zhì-wěi	Chia-hao, Chih-hao, Chih-wei
1991–2000	家豪、冠宇、冠廷	Jiā-háo, Guàn-yǔ, Guàn-tíng	Chia-hao, Kuan-yü, Kuan-t’ing
2001–2010	承恩、承翰、冠廷	Chéng-ēn, Chéng-hàn, Guàn-tíng	Ch’eng-en, Ch’eng-han, Kuan-t’ing
2011–2018*	承恩、宥廷、品睿	Chéng-ēn, Yòu-tíng, Pǐn-ruì	Ch’eng-en, Yu-t’ing, P’in-jui

Most popular Taiwan girls names, by ROC decade of birth

Birth Year	Chinese Characters	Pinyin	Wade-Giles
1912–1920	秀英、英、玉	Xiù-yīng, Yīng, Yù	Hsiu-ying, Ying, Yü
1921–1930	秀英、玉蘭、玉英	Xiù-yīng, Yù-lán, Yù-yīng	Hsiu-ying, Yü-lan, Yü-ying
1931–1940	秀英、玉蘭、玉英	Xiù-yīng, Yù-lán, Yù-yīng	Hsiu-ying, Yü-lan, Yü-ying
1941–1950	秀英、秀琴、美玉	Xiù-yīng, Xiù-qín, Měi-yù	Hsiu-ying, Hsiu-ch’in, Mei-yü
1951–1960	麗華、秀琴、秀美	Lì-huá, Xiù-qín, Xiù-měi	Li-hua, Hsiu-ch’in, Hsiu-mei
1961–1970	淑芬、美玲、淑惠	Shū-fēn, Měi-líng, Shū-huì	Shu-fen, Mei-ling, Shu-hui
1971–1980	淑芬、雅惠、淑娟	Shū-fēn, Yǎ-huì, Shū-juān	Shu-fen, Ya-hui, Shu-chüan
1981–1990	雅婷、怡君、雅雯	Yǎ-tíng, Yí-jūn, Yǎ-wén	Ya-t’ing, I-chün, Ya-wen
1991–2000	雅婷、怡君、怡婷	Yǎ-tíng, Yí-jūn, Yí-tíng	Ya-t’ing, I-chün, I-t’ing
2001–2010	宜蓁、欣妤、詩涵	Yí-zhēn, Xīn-yú, Shī-hán	I-chen, Hsin-yü, Shih-han
2011–2018*	詠晴、子晴、品妍	Yǒng-qíng, Zǐ-qíng, Pǐn-yán	Yung-ch’ing, Tzu-ch’ing, P’in-yen

*: The counting of names continued until June 2018. I’ll give newer figures once I have them.

Source: Quánguó xìngmíng tǒngjì fēnxi (全國姓名統計分析). Department of Household Registration, Ministry of the Interior, Taiwan, 2018, p. 59.

Gwoyeu Romatzyh on Taiwan buses

Posted on Thursday, May 18, 2023 by Pinyin Info

Although in posts mentioning Gwoyeu Romatzyh I often note that romanization system can be seen in the wild in Taiwan most often on the sides of coach buses, I haven’t put online many examples of this. So here’s an image-heavy post with some examples of photos I’ve taken of the Gwoyeu Romatzyh romanization system on buses in Taiwan.

The captions give the Gwoyeu Romatzyh, along with the Hanyu Pinyin (with and without tone marks) in parentheses.

Herng Chuen (Héngchūn/Hengchun)

Wuu Feng (Wǔfēng/Wufeng)

Diing Dong (Dǐngdōng/Dingdong)

Shin Shinn (Xīnxìn/Xinxin)

Jin Shii (Jīnxǐ/Jinxi)

Jiann Fa (Jiànfā/Jianfa)

Shuenn Yih (Shùnyì/Shunyi)

Two-syllable Taiwanese family names

Posted on Monday, May 15, 2023 by Pinyin Info

As of June 30, 2018, Taiwan had just 22,332 people with a disyllabic surname (i.e., one that takes two Chinese characters to write). They cover just 0.09% of the population — just less than one in a thousand. This is slightly less than the 0.11 percent of the population of China that has such a family name. Also, in China, by far the most common two-syllable surname is Ouyang; but in Taiwan “Zhangjian” is more seen.

Name	Name	total
張簡	Zhangjian	9,059
歐陽	Ouyang	7,860
范姜	Fanjiang	4,300
周黃	Zhouhuang	590
江謝	Jiangxie	523

Two-syllable Chinese family names

Posted on Monday, May 15, 2023 by Pinyin Info

By far the most common two-syllable Chinese family name in China is Ouyang (NB: this should not be written Ou-yang, Ou-Yang, or Ou Yang), with it representing more than twelve times as many people as the next most common name on the list: Shangguan.

Surname	Fùxìng (複姓/复姓)	Number of people in China with this surname
Ouyang	欧阳	1,112,000
Shangguan	上官	88,000
Huangfu	皇甫	64,000
Linghu	令狐	55,000
Zhuge	诸葛	48,000
Situ	司徒	47,000
Sima	司马	23,000
Shentu	申屠	19,000
Xiahou	夏侯	11,000
Helan	贺兰	10,000
Wanyan	完颜	6,000

Those figures for the most common two-syllable Chinese family names (commonly called “two-character” family names) total 1.495 million, or about 1.5 million, which is not an inconsiderable number but still just a drop in the bucket compared with China’s population of some 1.41 billion. Only about one tenth of 1 percent (0.11%) of people in China have such names.

The percentage is a bit less in Taiwan. The most common doubled surname in Taiwan, however, is Zhangjian (張簡/张简), which doesn’t appear at all on the list of the most common disyllabic family names in China. In Taiwan, Ouyang is second.

If you ever find yourself stuck on how to pronounce English

Posted on Sunday, May 7, 2023 by Pinyin Info

It’s times like this I especially miss John DeFrancis. How he would have loved this! It’s partially an example of what he dubbed “Singlish” — not Singapore English but Sino-English, the tortured attempt to use Chinese characters to write English. He details this in “The Singlish Affair,” a shaggy dog story that serves as the introduction to his essential work: The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy. (And I really do mean essential. If you don’t have this book yet, buy it and read it.)

Here are some lyrics from a popular song, “Count on Me,” by Bruno Mars, with a Mandarin translation. The interesting part is that a Taiwanese third-grader has penciled in some phonetic guides for him or herself, using a combination of zhuyin fuhao (aka bopo mofo) (sometimes with tone marks!), English (as a gloss for English! and English pronunciation of some letters and numbers), and Chinese characters (albeit not always correctly written Chinese characters — not that I could do any better myself). Again, this is a Taiwanese third-grader and so is someone unlikely to know Hanyu Pinyin.

“If you ever find yourself stuck”

If	ㄧˊㄈㄨˊ	yífú
you
ever	ㄟㄈㄦ	ei-f’er
find	5	five
yourself	Uㄦㄒㄧㄦㄈㄨ	U’er xi’erfu
stuck	ㄙ打可	s-dake

“I’ll be the light to guide you.”

I’ll	ㄞㄦ	ài’er
be	ㄅㄧ	bi
the	ㄌ	l[e]
light	賴特*	laite
to	兔	tu
guide	蓋	gai
you	you	you

“Find out what we’re made of”

Find	ㄈㄞˋ	fài
out	ㄠㄊㄜ	ao-t’e
what	花得	huade
we’re	ㄨㄧㄚ	wi’a
made	妹的	meide
of	歐福	oufu

“When we are called to help our friends in need”

~~What~~ when	花	hua
we	ㄨㄧ	wi
are	ㄚ	a
called	扣	kou
to	兔	tu
help	嘿ㄜㄆ	hei’e-p[e]
our	ㄠㄦ	ao’er
friends	ㄈㄨㄌㄣˇ的ㄙ	fulen-de-s
in	硬	ying
need	[?]	[?]

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news and discussions mainly related to Chinese characters and romanization

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