Category Archives: Mandarin

books bought in Beijing

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cover of a book by Zhou YouguangI didn’t have any luck finding anything in Sin Wenz (Lādīnghuà Xīn Wénzì / 拉丁化新文字), despite trips to several large used book stores. (Fortunately, the Internet is now providing some leads. Thanks, Brendan and Joel!) But I did find some other books to bring home.

I acquired lots of books by Zhou Youguang, not all of which focus primarily on linguistics:

Other than the Zhou Youguang books, here are my favorite finds of the trip, as they are for the most part in correctly word-parsed Hanyu Pinyin (with Hanzi underneath), along with a few notes in English:

I’ll soon be posting more about the above books with Pinyin, so watch this site for updates. Really, this is gonna be good.

Although this collection of Y.R. Chao says it’s volume 15, it’s actually two books:

  • Zhào Yuánrèn quánjí, dì 15 juàn (趙元任全集第15卷)

Some more titles:

  • Measured Words: The Development of Objective Language Testing, by Bernard Spolsky
  • Pǔtōnghuà shuǐpíng cèshì shíshī gāngyào (普通話水平測試實施綱要). Now with the great smell of beer! Sorry, Brendan, I owe you one — more than one, actually.

The following I bought because Yin Binyong, the scholar primarily responsible for Hanyu Pinyin’s orthography, is the author of these titles from Sinolingua’s series of Bógǔtōngjīn xué Hànyǔ cóngshū (“Gems of the Chinese Language through the Ages” (their translation)), all of which are in Mandarin (Hanzi) and English, with Pinyin only for the sayings being illustrated:

cover of 'Chinese-English Dictionary of Polyphonic Characters' (多音多义字汉英词典)cover of 'Putonghua shuiping ceshi shishi gangyao' (普通話水平測試實施綱要)cover of 'Xinhua pinxie cidian'

Other:

And finally:

Of course I already have that one — more than one copy, in fact. But it’s always good to have more than one spare when it comes to one of the two most important books on Pinyin orthography. I really need to follow up on my requests to use excerpts from this book, as it is the only major title missing from my list of romanization-related books (though it’s in Mandarin only).

sign in a Beijing bookstore reading 'Education Theury' [sic]

InTerCaPiTaLiZaTion: the Beijing trip

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To my relief, I saw very little in the way of the orthography-killing cancer that is InTerCaPiTaLiZaTion while I was in Beijing.

The worst offender I spotted was the cover to Qǐyè yǔ xíngzhèng jīguān chángjiàn yìngyòngwén xiězuò dàquán (企业与行政机关常见应用文写作大全 / 企業與行政機關常見應用文寫作大全), which to me just screams out “UGly NightMare”. But at least the word parsing is right, which is more than can be said for many uses of Pinyin in China.

intercapped_book_title

Note that the image is flipped:
detail from the above photo, showing how the title on a book spine is mirrored

More troubling, because it is on official signage, is the use of intercaps on some station guides above the doors of subway cars.

Route Map Of Bei Jing Subway Line 5
The capitalization of “Of” demonstrates that the bro-ken and InTerCaPiTaLized “Bei Jing” is probably due more to standard sloppiness than design. At least I certainly hope no one did that on purpose.

Fortunately, that usage isn’t found throughout the subway system, as this photo from a map of another line shows.
Route Map of Beijing Subway Line2

Reports of what style is to be found on other Beijing subway lines — especially the newest ones — would be welcome.

And Randy spotted this one:
'BeiJing Vikings Football' in black letters on a red van door, with Hanzi

But that appears to be a one-off, since the Beijing Vikings don’t use that style on their Web site or elsewhere that I noticed.

v for ü

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Typing the letter v to produce ü is pretty standard in most Pinyin-related software — the letter v not being used in Pinyin except for loan words, and the letter ü not being found on traditional qwerty keyboards.

Here’s an official sign not far from Tian’anmen Square in Beijing that provides an example of an unconverted v.

official directional sign reading '织女桥东河沿 ZHINVQIAODONGHEYAN' in white letters against a blue background

Of course there’s the usual word-parsing trouble as well, which can indeed be tricky in some cases (but not so much that everythingneedstobewrittensolidlikethis).

This should be “Zhīnǚ Qiáo dōng héyán” (织女桥东河沿 / 織女橋東河沿 / Weaver Girl’s Bridge, east bank) or perhaps “Zhinü Qiao Dong Heyan” or “ZHINÜ QIAO DONG HEYAN”.

Some people might not think this is worth categorizing as a problem. My position, however, is that government has an obligation to write things properly on its official signage. (If this were on some ad hoc sign put up privately it would still be interesting but less problematic.) So, if anyone’s OK with the V, would you also be OK with, say, “之釹喬冬和言”?

OTOH, as mistakes go, at least v remains distinct, unlike when ü gets incorrectly written as u, which is so common in Taiwan that I don’t recall ever having seen a ü on official signage. (Pinyin has the following distinct pairs: nü and nu, lü and lu; nüe (rare) and lüe are also used but not nue or lue since the latter two sounds are not used in modern standard Mandarin.

new name policy for naturalized ROC citizens

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Since July 9, naturalized citizens of Taiwan have been permitted to have a romanized form of their original name included along with their adopted “Chinese name” on their household-registration certificate (hùkǒu). (This is an important government document that states your official residence.)

For example, my original name is Mark Swofford. My Mandarin name is Shǐ Wěifán (史偉凡). If I were to take ROC citizenship (which I’d like but am unlikely to try to gain until Taiwan drops its insistence that I first renounce my U.S. citizenship), my household-registration certificate would have “史偉凡” and could now also have some romanization. But … the romanization would have to be along the lines of Make Siwafo’erde.

What I could not have, according to the new regulations, would be either my original name or a romanization of my Mandarin name (i.e., neither “Mark Swofford” nor “Shi Weifan” would be permitted). Instead, I’d have to use a romanization of a Sinicized form of my original name (Make Siwafo’erde).

This is, well, rather odd. But I called the Ministry of the Interior and received confirmation. Apparently it’s part of the Legislative Yuan’s idea of helping Taiwan’s internationalization. I suppose this is a half step forward. Before the change, the only thing allowed would have been a name in Chinese characters and only Chinese characters.

source: Ministry changes name regulations for naturalization, Taipei Times, July 9, 2009

romanization in early communist propaganda

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pre-1949 Chinese communist propaganda woodblock featuring Sin Wenz romanization; a peasant man is shown with crops and farm animalsI’ve been reading War and Popular Culture: Resistance in Modern China, 1937–1945, by Chang-tai Hung, which is one of the University of California Press books available for free online. It contains a reproduction of a woodcut with with the following text in romanization:

XIANG WU MANIOU KAN KI
(齊看有满吴向)

To my disappointment, the book does not discuss the romanization movement at all, though the presence of Sin Wenz (Xīn Wénzì / 新文字) in the woodcut is an indication of its relevence.

Note: DeFrancis’s Nationalism and Language Reform in China has some good material on Sin Wenz. The sample chapter I have here on Pinyin.info, however, doesn’t cover that. And the long-out-of-print book is not presently searchable through Google Books either. But at the time of this writing Bookfinder has two copies for under US$40, which is a good deal for this hard-to-find book. So if you have the money and this is the sort of book you like, you should buy this now, as you’re unlikely to come across one for less money.

Anyway, back to the romanization in the illustration. In Hanyu Pinyin, which would not exist until some 15 years later, XIANG WU MANIOU KAN KI would read “xiàng Wú Mǎnyǒu kànqí” (“emulate Wu Manyou”). This Wu Manyou was a “model peasant” who got his very own official emulate-this-guy campaign in the early 1940s.

Notice that the use of the letter x predates Hanyu Pinyin. (Actually, x in romanization for Sinitic languages long predates Hanyu Pinyin, appearing even in Trigault’s seventeenth-century work.) But even though the xiang of Sin Wenz and the xiang of Hanyu Pinyin are written the same, the two systems handle the letter differently in most cases. In Sin Wenz texts, most of the time the letter x represents what would be written h in Hanyu Pinyin. For example, the full name of Sin Wenz is Latinxua Sin Wenz, not Latinhua Xinwenz. Note, too, the use of the original “Latin” rather than “Ladin”, just as Gwoyeu Romatzyh uses Romatzyh rather than Luomaatzyh, indicating the link between romanization and the alphabet of Rome (Roma).

Also interesting is the form of the character that is second from the right. (These Chinese characters are read from right to left. Put left to right, they would appear as 向吴满有看齊.) Note how it is not in the traditional form:
吳

Nor is it the standard “simplified” form (which would not have been officially adopted for more than decade after this woodblock was made):
吴

Of variant characters there is no end.

meeting Zhou Youguang

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I’m back from a great trip Beijing. Among the people I was able meet there is Zhōu Yǒuguāng (周有光), who is often referred to as the father of Hanyu Pinyin.

I’m pleased to report that even though he is well beyond 100 years old, he remains sharp, in amazingly good health, and in good humor. I’ll be reporting later on what he had to say during our meeting. But since that lasted several hours, I won’t try to cover everything in one post; instead, I’ll break it up into lots of smaller posts over the next few weeks.

For now, here’s a photo I took of him on Sunday afternoon.

Hanyu Pinyin creator Zhou Youguang (???) at his desk, autographing a book

major updates to Chinese KEY

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key_softwareIf you are using one or more programs from the Chinese Key family of software, you should definitely update if you haven’t in the past few months, as some significant improvements have been made.

One of the things I particularly like about Key is that it has the rare virtue of following proper Pinyin orthography. So if you’re not familiar with it, you might want to give it or one of its sibling programs a 30-day test drive.

No, I get no kickbacks from the company; I just admire the software.

photos of and around Xindian City Hall MRT station

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My friend David of David on Formosa kindly sent me lots of photos of the current signage at Xindian City Something-or-other Station. Here they are.

Note that some of the signage at the station itself gives the Tongyong Pinyin form (Sindian) as well as the Hanyu Pinyin form; but other signage does not. And the newest signs give Xindian City Office rather than Xindian City Hall.

MRT station main entrance, marked 'Xindian City Hall Station'

MRT station side entrance, marked 'Xindian (Sindian) City Hall Station'

Sign of things to come?
photo of station operation hours, with station name marked 'Xindian City Office Station'

sign on a pillar on the MRT platform reading 'Xindian City Hall'

closeup of a new map on a station wall, with the station called 'Xindian City Office'

map_detail

exit2

area_map

This closeup from the map above reveals that even city hall itself (not the MRT station) is labeled “City Hall.”

closeup from the photo above, as described

More than three years ago Taipei County Magistrate Zhōu Xīwěi (Chou Hsi-wei / 周錫瑋 / Zhou Xiwei) said that Taipei County should use the same romanization system as the city of Taipei (i.e., Hanyu Pinyin). But nothing has happened yet — not unlike his administration in general. So here we still see the Tongyong Pinyin form of “Sindian” rather than the Hanyu Pinyin form (now official at the national level) of “Xindian.”
photo of Xindian City Hall (the actual building, not the MRT station). It's labeled 'Sindian City Office'

Taipei County Police Bureau Sindian Precinct