I’ve just heard from a well-placed source that the official English name for Taiwan’s main international airport, formerly Chiang Kai-shek International Airport, has been finalized. The form “Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport” will not be used after all. Instead, it will be “Taipei/Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport.”
Huh?
I’m still seeking confirmation.
A Taipei city councilor with the KMT on Tuesday launched an attack on President Chen Shui-bian disguised as a signage proposal. His idea: Change the name of Ketagalan Boulevard (凱達格蘭大道 Kǎidágélán Dàdào), the street leading to the Presidential Office.
The city councilor, Yang Shi-qiu (楊實秋, Yang Shih-chiu), called for a change to Lǐ-yì-lián Dàdào, which is literally Propriety, Righteousness, [and] Honesty Boulevard. While that might sound nice, it’s actually a disguised insult.
John DeFrancis was all over this word play a long time ago in “The Singlish Affair,” the biting satire that leads off his essential book The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy. DeFrancis explains assigning the name Li Yilian to a person in his story:
The most complex is the name Lǐ Yìlián. Those who know Chinese may get the point if it is written in characters: 禮義廉 or, in simplified characters, 礼义廉. The three characters mean respectively “propriety, morality, modesty” and form part of a four-character phrase listing a number of Confucian virtues of which the fourth is 恥 (chǐ “a sense of shame”). The omission of the fourth character is part of a Chinese word game in which the reader is supposed to guess the last item when it is omitted — much as if we had to tell what is lacking in the list of the three Christian virtues of “Faith, Hope, and ______.” The omission of the fourth character is expressed as 無恥 or 无耻 (wúchǐ “lacking a sense of shame”). In short, calling someone Mr. Lǐ Yìlián seems to praise him as Mr. Propriety, Morality, and Modesty but actually insults him as Mr. Shameless.
By renaming the street “people will know that the person who works at the Presidential Office at the end of the boulevard has no sense of chi [恥, shame],” Yang said.
Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou, who also serves as chairman of the KMT, didn’t care for the idea of his city having a Lǐ-yì-lián Dàdào or Wúchǐ Dàdào (both of which could be translated as “Shameless Boulevard” — the first figuratively, the second literally) but said that the name Lǐ-yì-lián-chǐ Dàdào (“Propriety, Righteousness, Honesty, and a Sense of Shame Boulevard”) could be discussed.
The name of Ketagalan Boulevard is especially interesting from a number of standpoints.
Here’s a Mandarin-language story on this:
Miànduì dào Chén Shuǐ-biǎn huódòng bùduàn, Táiběi Shìyìyuán Yáng Shí-qiū jīntiān biǎoshì, tā yǐ zhǎnkāi lián shǔ, tí’àn bǎ Ketagalan Dàdào gēngmíng wéi Lǐ-yì-lián Dàdào; Táiběi shìzhǎng Mǎ Yīngjiǔ suī rènwéi yǒu chuàngyì, dànshì yǒu màrén “wúchǐ” zhī xián, tā bù zànchéng.
Táiběi Shìyìhuì xiàwǔ jǔxíng shìzhèng zǒng zhìxún shí, Yáng Shí-qiū zhìxún biǎoshì, Chén Shuǐ-biǎn zǒngtǒng zài Táiběi shìzhǎng rènnèi zài wèijīng mínyì zhēngxún xià, jiù bǎ jièshòu lù gǎimíng wéi Ketagalan Dàdào, rìqián yòu làngfèi Xīn Táibì shàng yì yuán, bǎ Zhōngzhèng Guójì Jīchǎng gēngmíng wéi Táiwān Táoyuán Jīchǎng. Yáng Shí-qiū yě lián shǔ tí’àn, yāoqiú shì-fǔ jiāng Ketagalan Dàdào gēngmíng wéi “Lǐ-yì-lián Dàdào”.
Mǎ Yīngjiǔ huídá shuō, dàolù yǐ zhèngmiàn mìngmíng wèi yuánzé, ér bù shì fùmiàn mìngmíng, yìyuán de yòngyì yǒu chuàngyì, dànshì kèyì shěnglüè jiùshì màrén “wúchǐ” zhī xián. Yáng Shí-qiū huíyìng shuō, ruò shì-fǔ yǒu yílǜ, Ketagalan Dàdào kě gǎiwéi “Lǐ-yì-lián-chǐ Dàdào”.
Mǎ Yīngjiǔ huíyìng shuō, tā bù zànchéng Ketagalan Dàdào gǎiwéi “Lǐ-yì-lián Dàdào”, zhèyàng huì biànchéng “Wúchǐ Dàdào”, dànshì ruòshì “Lǐ-yì-lián-chǐ Dàdào”, zhè kěyǐ tǎolùn.
Yìyuán Jiǎng Nǎi-xīn suíhòu qiángdiào, Yáng Shí-qiū de tí’àn jiùshì tíxǐng wéizhèng zhě bùkě wúchǐ, ruò Mǎ Yīngjiǔ dānxīn bèi rén zhǐwéi yǒu màrén wúchǐ de yìsi, tā jiànyì gǎiwéi “Bùkě Wúchǐ Dàdào”. Mǎ Yīngjiǔ xiào shuō, zhèige jiànyì gèng yǒu chuàngyì, dànshì xū jīngguò shì-fǔ nèibù tǎolùn.
sources:
The latest issue of Science features an article on a stone slab found in Veracruz, Mexico. Scholars have identified the inscriptions on the stone — tentatively dated to at least 900 B.C.E. — as the earliest writing yet found in the Americas.
Dr. Houston, who was a leader in deciphering Maya writing, examined the stone looking for clues that the symbols were true writing and not just iconography unrelated to a language. He said in an interview that he detected regular patterns and order, suggesting “a text segmented into what almost look like sentences, with clear beginnings and clear endings.”
Some of the pictographic signs were frequently repeated, Dr. Houston said, particularly ones that looked like an insect or a lizard. He suspected that these might be signs alerting the reader to the use of words that sound alike but have different meanings – as in the difference between “I” and “eye” in English.
All in all, Dr. Houston concluded, “the linear sequencing, the regularity of signs, the clear patterns of ordering, they tell me this is writing. But we don’t know what it says.”
The New York Times‘ use of the word “pictographic” prompts me to dig out DeFrancis’s important observation:
With regard to the principle, it matters little whether the symbol is an elaborately detailed picture, a slightly stylized drawing, or a drastically abbreviated symbol of essentially abstract form. What is crucial is to recognize that the diverse forms perform the same function in representing sound. To see that writing has the form of pictures and to conclude that it is pictographic is correct in only one sense — that of the form, but not the function, of the symbols. We can put it this way:
QUESTION: When is a pictograph not a pictograph?
ANSWER: When it represents a sound.
It looks like those working on the inscription know what they’re doing. But thinking of writing in terms of pictographs or ideographs certainly hindered earlier scholars of the ancient Americas. For a brief essay on this see “The Ideographic Myth as a Barrier to Deciphering Maya Writing,” by Michael D. Coe. This is found in Difficult Characters: Interdisciplinary Studies of Chinese and Japanese Writing, by Mary S. Erbaugh. Or see some of the other many works by Coe.
sources:
In what many view as a long-overdue move, Taiwan’s government has removed the name of Chiang Kai-shek, the island’s one-time dictator, from the title of the country’s main international airport. What has been reported as the new English name, however, is a bit strained in that the country’s name precedes the county/city name.
| English | Pinyin | Hanzi | |
|---|---|---|---|
| old | Chiang Kai-shek International Airport | Zhōngzhèng Guójì Jīchǎng |
中正國際機場 |
| new | Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport | Táiwān Táoyuán Guójì Jīchǎng |
台灣桃園國際機場 |
In Mandarin, there’s nothing tremendously odd about using “Taiwan Taoyuan.” In English, however, it’s a completely different story.
| exact phrase | romanization | no. of results in Google |
|---|---|---|
| Taoyuan Taiwan | 241,000 | |
| Taiwan Taoyuan | 42,400 | |
| 臺灣桃園 | Taiwan Taoyuan | 43,200 |
| 台灣桃園 | Taiwan Taoyuan | 220,000 |
| total for 臺灣桃園 and 台灣桃園 |
263,200 | |
| 桃園臺灣 | Taoyuan Taiwan | 5,720 |
| 桃園台灣 | Taoyuan Taiwan | 461 |
| total for 桃園臺灣 and 桃園台灣 |
6,181 | |
Almost all of the examples in English of “Taiwan Taoyuan” have punctuation (stronger than a comma, that is) or new lines separating the words, so running the two names together in that order is less common than the Google result implies, as most English speakers know intuitively.
“Taiwan Taoyuan,” when used in English, reminds me of nothing so much as the annoying term “Chinese Taipei” (Zhonghua Taibei / 中華台北). This name represents the international kissing of Beijing’s ass diplomatic solution worked out so Taiwan’s teams can participate in international sporting events without China throwing too much of a hissyfit. (We we still get some of those anyway, of course.)
Since using anything along the lines of “Chinese Taipei” would be anathema to the present administration in Taiwan, what’s going on with the new name for the airport? The logical name would probably be simply “Taoyuan International Airport,” the airport being in Taoyuan County rather than Taipei County. But outside of Taiwan, who has ever heard of Taoyuan? (That’s probably just as well for Taiwan, because much of Taoyuan is downright ugly.) And, anyway, I think that those deciding on the new name regarded adding “Taiwan” and taking out “Chiang Kai-shek” as the top priorities.
Of course, it could be worse. Some in the KMT have called for the name to be changed to “Taiwan Taoyuan Chiang Kai-shek International Airport.” Ugh.
However, the code letters for the airport, TPE and RCTP, will not be changed. These are both rooted in the Wade-Giles romanization system, under which we have Taipei (properly T’ai-pei) rather than Taibei.
Fortunately for all concerned, both “Taoyuan” and “Taiwan” are examples of names spelled the same in most romanization systems. So, at least in this case, the current administration’s attachment to the Tongyong Pinyin romanization system won’t lead to further international embarrassment.
I spoke earlier today with someone at the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, who informed me that although the Mandarin name of the airport was now officially Táiwān Táoyuán Guójì Jīchǎng, the English name has yet to be set by the Ministry of Education. So it’s possible the English name could change.
Anyone want to play Name That Airport? I’m more than half serious. The authorities here no doubt need some help with this. (Even though Taoyuan is one of the ugliest places in Taiwan, let’s keep this nice.)
Oh, in case anyone’s puzzled that “Chiang Kai-shek” and “Zhōngzhèng” don’t look much like each other or even have the same number of syllables, the reason is that Zhōngzhèng is a sort of assumed name, not the name by which he was known to his family, which in Mandarin is Ji?ng Jièshí (???). For more on this see the names section of the Wikipedia article on Chiang Kai-shek. (Me linking to a Wikipedia article? There’s a first time for everything, I guess.)
sources:
Most readers of Pinyin News will already know of John DeFrancis, editor of the ABC Chinese-English Comprehensive Dictionary and author of The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy and many other important works. (If you haven’t read The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy yet, order it now.)
In recognition of the 95th(!) birthday today of Professor DeFrancis, Sino-Platonic Papers is rereleasing Schriftfestschrift: Essays in Honor of John DeFrancis on His Eightieth Birthday. Previously, this important compilation, which runs more than 250 pages, was available only in a printed edition priced at US$35. The fifteenth-anniversary edition, however, is being released for free as a PDF (15 MB — so have a fast Internet connection, or a lot of patience).
I’d like to draw special attention to an article written in Pinyin: “Hanzi Bu Tebie Biaoyi,” by Zhang Liqing. (Zhang’s work also appears here on Pinyin Info, in her translations of The Historical Evolution of Chinese Languages and Scripts and of the amazing Comparing Chinese Characters and a Chinese Spelling Script — an evening conversation on the reform of Chinese characters.)
Feel free to print out a copy of the Schriftfestschrift for your own use or for inclusion in a library. Just don’t sell it.
The original publication contained several color photos. I’ll add those later. Also, the English tex is searchable to some degree, as I used OCR after scanning these pages; but the results weren’t perfect.
Here are the contents:
Happy birthday, John! And many happy returns!
Ang Lee (李安), the director of Brokeback Mountain, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Ice Storm, Sense and Sensibility, Eat Drink Man Woman, and many other films, was recently back here in his homeland of Taiwan.
I’ve long wondered how Lee ended up with such an odd form for the romanization of his name. I’m not referring to the spelling of his family name, Lee. Although the Anglicization of “Lee” for 李 is not standard in any of the main romanization systems, that particular spelling is almost certainly more common in Taiwan than “Li,” which is the form in most romanization systems other than Gwoyeu Romatzyh. In Gwoyeu Romatzyh, which nominally was Taiwan’s official romanization system until 1986 — long after Lee acquired a passport and had gone to the United States — Lǐ is written Lii; but I’ve never seen that spelling used for a name here.
No, what puzzles me is the g in his given name of “Ang.” In Mandarin, this is one of those relatively rare syllables spelled the same in basically all of the main romanization systems: an. So where is that g from? (Please don’t read through the rest of this message in any kind of suspense, because I still don’t know the answer to that question, though I’m hoping one of my readers will.)
For those unfamiliar with Mandarin, Ang Lee’s given name is not originally pronounced like American English’s bang without the b or sang without the s. Rather, the a is similar to that in the English word father; the n is about as you’d expect; and there’s no g. So the name is pronounced something like the French (not English) version of Anne or the end of the German Autobahn.
The Ang spelling doesn’t appear to come from Taiwanese. Even in Taiwanese 安 would be romanized as an, not ang, in the dominant systems. (Correct me if I’m wrong, please. I know almost no Taiwanese.) Also, at the time Lee would have adopted the Ang spelling, the use of Taiwanese romanization for names would most certainly have been intensely frowned upon by the authorities if not forbidden outright. Moreover, I don’t think Lee is even ethnically Taiwanese/Hokkien.
Of course, he may have chosen to use a spelling other than what he was made to use on his passport. But people in Taiwan seldom do that unless they adopt an “English” name, which “Ang” is certainly not. The g might be there to help prevent people from thinking he’s a woman named Ann. But if that were the concern, why not simply adopt an English name?
Poagao, who met Ang Lee in Taipei last week, met back in September with Lee’s little brother, who’s known as Khan (or perhaps Kan) Lee. As Poagao notes, there’s something strange with that name, too:
One thing I’d like to know is why “Ang” gets an unneccesary ‘g’ (it should be “An”), while “Kan” is one ‘g’ short (it should be “Kang”). Did Ang steal his little brother’s ‘g’ at some point?
Ang Lee’s brother’s name is Lǐ Gǎng in Hanyu Pinyin. (Theoretically, it could also be Lǐ Gàng or Lǐ Gāng because 崗 is one of many Chinese characters with multiple pronunciations.) The use of k rather than g comes from the Wade-Giles romanization system. In Taiwan, most people’s passports have names romanized using improper, bastardized Wade-Giles, which helps create a lot of confusion — as if Wade-Giles itself weren’t confusing enough already. Moreover, Taiwan’s passport office operates on the principle of chabuduo jiu keyi, which in this context is a close approximation of the English saying “close enough for government work.” In other words, if a spelling looks more or less correct it will probably pass — unless, that is, it has Hanyu Pinyin’s x or q in it, in which case it would probably be rejected. (I’m not making this up. I’ve spoken with people in the passport office about this.)
In looking through Lee Ang’s biography I noticed that he has two sons, one of whom is named “Haan,” at least according to the Internet Movie Database’s credits for Pushing Hands, one of Lee’s early movies. At first, I thought this might be a two-syllable given name that had been run together: Ha’an (or Ha-an, following the style used in Taiwan). Could this be the same an as in Ang Lee’s name — just this time without the mysterious g? But it turns out that Haan is a one-syllable name.
Here’s the character: 涵.
A doubled vowel in romanized Mandarin usually indicates the use of Gwoyeu Romatzyh’s tonal spelling. But the “Haan” spelling would be for third tone, while Haan’s name should be pronounced with a second tone. (This would be written “Harn” in Gwoyeu Romatzyh.)
So perhaps the IMDB entry is a typo, and the real spelling should be Han, as expected. Or maybe those in the Lee family just like funny spellings.
For a long time I’ve had making a “favorites icon” (“favicon,” for short) on the long to-do list for this site. These icons are small images, just 16 pixels by 16 pixels, that can appear in bookmarks for a Web site and in the address bar. In some browsers, such as Opera, they also appear on the browser tabs, which is a nice touch.
Probably the most common look for icons is achieved by incorporating a letter of the alphabet: Yahoo , Google
, Opera
, the New York Times
, Forumosa
.
Some icons use Chinese characters: Wenlin , No-Sword
.
And some are more abstract or pictorial: Notetab text editor , the Panda’s Thumb
, Photo Net
This being the sort of site it is, I’m not going to use a Chinese character — not unless I could fit romanization in as well. And I doubt that can be done within a 16 by 16 square.
Ideally, I’d like to have something in the style of Xu Bing‘s “new English calligraphy.” Here’s roughly the effect I’d be shooting for:
(That’s “P-I-n-Y-I-n”, in case you’re wondering.)
Unfortunately, however, that sort of thing doesn’t work very well when reduced down to icon size. About the best I could come up with is this: 
. But I’m not so sure about that.
I’d like to get input from my readers. Which of the following do you prefer?
— faux Xu BingPlease let me know what you think with a comment here or through e-mail.
If you have an image you’d like to use for your site’s icon but don’t have the software to turn it into icon format, you could try this online favicon generator. It will reduce your image to the correct size and put it in .ico format.
Then place the resulting image, which should be named favicon.ico for maximum browser compatibility, in the root directory of your site. To make Internet Explorer happy, you could also add the following to the head of your HTML:
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" />
In other Pinyin Info image news, I’ve added a script to the Pinyin Info home page that will put up random images and links to readings on this site. I hope it helps let people know that there’s a lot more on this site than might appear at first glance.
Finally, since logos and icons are often associated with “ideographs,” this seems like a good place to recommend John DeFrancis’s reading on the ideographic myth, for anyone who hasn’t read that already.
I just came across Woogle, which takes entered phrases and turns some or all of the words into pictures from Google searches. Basically, it’s a sort of rebus machine, especially if you play around with the spelling. Remember that the rebus principle is behind the creation of the Chinese-character writing system.
Here’s the result of one phrase I typed in:
(OK, it’s not a rebus. But those are a little harder to get to work.)
Woogle has a companion site named Toogle, which searches for the photo in Google that corresponds to an entered phrase and renders that photo in ascii art using the letters of the phrase itself.
Here, for example, is my poor-man’s Xu Bing of the phrase “Chinese characters”:
