Category Archives: China

And the language used for the PRC side is …

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Mark Liberman of Language Log has just added another to the series of Victor H. Mair’s guest posts on English in China. This one features an interesting news photo from the ceremony for the signing of an agreement between China and Cambodia.

photo of banner for a signing ceremony between Cambodia and China, with the text for China given in English, not Mandarin; click for larger image

And I wonder what language the agreement is in.

As Mair, who is also an occasional contributer to Pinyin Info, wrote in his initial post:

Judging from all that I have seen and heard during the last couple of years, however, it is apparent that the role of English in China will continue to grow at an exponential rate. The implications of this massive expansion of English in China will inevitably have a corresponding impact upon local language usage. In fact, the profound effects of the current surge in English usage upon Mandarin and other Chinese languages is already obvious in many respects.

sources:

only 33% of Chinese small businesses use computers: study

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Only 33 percent of small businesses (1-99 employees) in China have a computer, according to a recent study by Access Markets International.

China’s low rate of PC penetration among small businesses, however, is higher than that of some other highly populous countries in Asia, namely the Philippines at 24 percent, India at 22 percent, and Indonesia at 18 percent.

About 40% of the non-PC SBs in India, over a third in China, and about a quarter each in Indonesia and the Philippines have expressed their intent to buy PCs in the next 12 months….

Most of the non-PC SBs in these four countries are small — with 1-9 employees each. The bulk of SBs in these countries belongs to the wholesale and retail vertical sector. The exception is China, where more than 50% of non-PC SBs are in the manufacturing vertical.

What hinders them from buying PCs? The primary hurdle is the belief that PCs are not relevant to their line of business. About 30% of non-PC SBs in India and 14% in China told AMI that they just have not thought about buying PCs. A significant portion of SBs believe that a simple fax and phone is enough for their business. Lack of knowledge about the installation and operation of PCs is also a powerful deterrence.

source: Huge untapped market for non-PC SBs opening up, AMI Partners, November 13, 2006

via Most Small Chinese Businesses Don’t Use Computers, China Tech News, November 20, 2006

Guangzhou subway to switch from Pinyin to English-Pinyin mix

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Guangzhou’s Metro will be reportedly be changing from Hanyu Pinyin to a mix of English and Pinyin in the naming of its stations. Thus, for example, “Guangzhou Huochezhan” will become “Guangzhou Train Station” (or something like that) and Tiyu Xilu will become Tiyu West Road.

If the official website of the Guangzhou Metro is anything to go by, the Pinyin presently used there is terrible. The official website is infected with the Pinyin-crippling diseases of InTerCaPiTaLiZaTion and FailUreToSePaRateWords. 体育西路, for example, is given not as Tǐyù Xīlù but as TiYuXiLu. Horrible! And, of course, there are some typos too, which make matters even worse, such as TiYuZhongZin for what should be Tǐyù Zhōngxīn.

The last time I was in Guangzhou the subway didn’t exist, so I haven’t seen this signage for myself. Can anyone supply photos of station signage in Guangzhou? I’d also appreciate receiving photos of official Pinyin signage from elsewhere in China. (Photos can be sent to the address on my contact info page.)

And, of course, there’s no word on supplying what ought to be a basic: additional signage in romanized Cantonese.

I have written the authorities there seeking details about the conversion but have not received a reply.

source and resources:

typo of the day

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Ain’t it the truth.

sign in Guangzhou Province with 'ticketing hell' rather than 'ticketing hall'

Jìzhě zuórì (5 rì) qiánwǎng Dōngguǎn shìqū mǒu qìchē zǒngzhàn bànshì, zài zhàn qián guǎngchǎng xià le gōngjiāochē biàn xúnzhǎo shòupiàotīng wèizhi. Zǒuláng shàng xuángguà zhe yīkuài jùdà de zhǐshì pái, zhǐmíng chángtú shòupiàotīng de wèizhi, dàn Hànzì xiàmian pèishàng de Yīngwén ràngrén dàchī-yījīng, hèrán xiě zhe: Ticketing Hell (Zhōngwén zhíyì wéi “shòupiào dìyù”). Yuánlái shì dàtīng de Yīngwén “Hall” bèi wùxiě wéi “Hell” (dìyù).

Zhè kuài zhǐshì pái de bèimiàn xiě zhe bùtóng de nèiróng, Zhōngwén shì “xíngrén tōngdào”, Yīngwén xiězuò “Pedestrain chenneling”. Zhuānyè rénshì gàosu jìzhě, “chenneling” bùzhī hé yì, shì zìjǐ shēngzào de cíhuì, kěnéng shì xiǎng xiě “channeling” ér chūxiàn le pīnxiě cuòwù, dàn “channeling” shì “gōuqú” de yìsi, “tōngdào” yībān xiězuò “channels”.

Zài guǎngchǎng de lìngyī cè, gōngjiāo zhàn de zhǐshì pái shàng bùzài xiě Yīngwén, érshì gǎiyòng Pīnyīn, dànshì xiězuò “gongjiaozan”, “zhàn” zì de pīnyīn yěshì cuòwù de.

Yǒu chéngkè gàosu jìzhě, zhèxiē zhǐshì pái yǐjing guà le hǎojǐ nián le, yīzhí méiyǒu huàn xiàlái. Rúguǒ wàibīn kànjian, bùzhī zuò hé gǎnxiǎng.

source: Yīngwén pīnxiě cuòwù: yīzìzhīchā shòupiàotīng biàn “dìyù” (英文拼写错误 一字之差售票厅变“地狱”), Guǎngzhōu Rìbào, November 4, 2006

online books from the University of California Press

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[Note: links revised July 2009.]

The University of California Press has made the full text of hundreds of its books available online. That’s right: hundreds.

Among these many books, twenty-four 29 are classified as pertaining to Asian studies, thirty-five 49 to Asian history, six to Asian literature, and five 10 to language and linguistics. (There is some overlap.)

Among these books is Passions of the Tongue: Language Devotion in Tamil India, 1891-1970, by Sumathi Ramaswamy, which has the following intriguing description:

Why would love for their language lead several men in southern India to burn themselves alive in its name? Passions of the Tongue analyzes the discourses of love, labor, and life that transformed Tamil into an object of such passionate attachment, producing in the process one of modern India’s most intense movements for linguistic revival and separatism. Sumathi Ramaswamy suggests that these discourses cannot be contained within a singular metanarrative of linguistic nationalism and instead proposes a new analytic, “language devotion.” She uses this concept to track the many ways in which Tamil was imagined by its speakers and connects these multiple imaginings to their experience of colonial and post-colonial modernity. Focusing in particular on the transformation of the language into a goddess, mother, and maiden, Ramaswamy explores the pious, filial, and erotic aspects of Tamil devotion. She considers why, as its speakers sought political and social empowerment, metaphors of motherhood eventually came to dominate representations of the language.

Beijing’s reaction to Taiwan’s language-education moves

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China’s unofficial propaganda machine has come up with a predictable response to Taiwan’s recent approval of an official romanization for Hoklo/Taiwanese, calling it an attempt at wenhua Tai-Du (“cultural Taiwanese independence”). And Beijing doesn’t much care for earlier developments, either:

Lìngwài jù bàodào, zǎo zài 2002 nián Táiwān dāngjú “Jiàoyùbù” jiù zuòchū juéyì, Táiwān xuésheng cóng xiǎoxué sānniánjí kāishǐ tíqián shíshī xiāngtǔ yǔyán Mǐnnányǔ, Kèjiāyǔ de “yīnbiāo fúhào” xìtǒng jiāoxué, yǐ tú jìnyībù qiēduàn Táiwān yǔ zǔguó dàlù de wénhuà niǔdài. Rújīn yòu zài Táiwān gè zhōng-xiǎoxué tuīxíng “Táiwān Mǐnnányǔ Luómǎzì pīnyīn fāng’àn”, qǐtú yǐcǐ ruòhuà yǔ Pǔtōnghuà jiējìn de “Guóyǔ” zài Táiwān de dìwèi. Zhèizhǒng kèyì zài wénhuà shàng zhìzào Táiwān yǔ zǔguó dàlù de chāyì yǔ qūfēn, shì Táiwān dāngjú chìluǒluǒ de “wénhuà Tái-Dú” tǐxiàn.

(另据报道，早在2002年台湾当局“教育部”就做出决议，台湾学生从小学三年级开始提前实施乡土语言闽南语、客家语的“音标符号”系统教学，以图进一步切断台湾与祖国大陆的文化纽带。如今又在台湾各中小学推“台湾闽南语罗马字拼音方案”，企图以此弱化与普通话接近的“国语”在台湾的地位。这种刻意在文化上制造台湾与祖国大陆的差异与区分，是台当局赤裸裸的“文化台独”体现。)

Blah, blah, blah.

source: “Wénhuà Tái-Dú” — Mǐnnányǔ pīnyīn xìtǒng chūlú (［两岸纪行］“文化台独” 闽南语拼音系统出炉), October 17, 2006, ChinaTaiwan.org

PRC gov’t project has primary name in English, not Mandarin

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This one had me confused at first. When I saw the photo I was expecting this to be another story about a typo. Here, after all, is a sign with 泰达 on both sides, which is “Taida,” not “Teda,” in Pinyin. And I’ve grown so used to seeing Pinyin described as “English” that at first at didn’t realize what was meant. But there’s something else going on here, something much more interesting:
street sign with TEDA AVENUE on one side and TAIDA AVENUE on the other; but the Hanzi are the same on both sides

泰达大街两侧的路牌上，“泰达”的英文标识出现了“TEDA”和“TAIDA”两种写法，前者是“泰达”的英文拼法，后者则是“泰达”二字的汉语拼音。从开发区地名办了解到，泰达大街正式的英文写法为“TEDAAVENUE”，而“TAIDA”的写法是不正确的。

But this still isn’t very clear. I did some digging and found that the street name refers to the nearby Tianjin Economic-technological Development Area (TEDA), the Mandarin name for which is Tiānjīn Jīngjì Jìshù Kāifāqū (天津经济技术开发区).

In other words, this street really does have a name originating in English: TEDA. The Chinese characters for the street name, 泰达 (Tàidá), are secondary. They have nothing to do with the Mandarin name of the park; rather, they are an awkward transliteration of TEDA, the acronym of the English name.

This practice extends beyond the name of the street into references to the name of the industrial park itself. “泰达” is all over the park’s official Web site, which, significantly, is at www.TEDA.gov.cn. Thus, English trumped Mandarin in naming a PRC-government-sponsored industrial park in a Mandarin-speaking region of China, despite PRC regulations against just this sort of situation.

So the original story in Hanzi becomes a little clearer if put into Pinyin:

TEDA Dàjiē liǎngcè de lùpái shàng, “Tàidá” de Yīngwén biāozhì chūxiàn le “TEDA” hé “Taida” liǎng zhǒng xiěfǎ, qiánzhě shì “泰达” de Yīngwén pīnfǎ, hòuzhě zéshì “Tàidá” èr zì de Hànyǔ Pīnyīn. Cóng kāifāqū dìmíng bàn liǎojiě dào, TEDA Dàjiē zhèngshì de Yīngwén xiěfǎ wéi “TEDA Avenue”, ér “TAIDA” de xiěfǎ shì bu zhèngquè de.

This, by the way, is also an example of how capitalizing everything on street signs can sometimes lead to confusion.

resources:

early British article on Chinese characters

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Matt at No-sword tells of the welcome news that many back issues of the journals of the Royal Society are now online. What makes this particularly interesting is that the Royal Society has been publishing these since at least 1665.

So I dug around and found “Some Observations, and Conjectures concerning the Chinese Characters,” which dates from the late 1600s. It was published in an issue of Philosophical Transactions that contains not one but two articles by Edmond Halley. Wow.

The article on Chinese characters, however, is in many places opaque — not that that’s really a big surprise considering this was written more than 300 years ago. The author is intrigued by the notion of a universal artificial language. He concludes, “Now as by such a Language the Character might be made Effable without Musical Tones or Difficult Aspirations, so had we Dictionarys of the Signification of the Characters, we might as soon learn the Chinese Character, as we can Latine, or any other Language to be learnt by Book, and not by Speaking.”

This appears to be an early example of several myths about Chinese characters, such as the ideographic myth, which was first debunked in the West about 150 years later by Peter DuPonceau.

The author also tells of what he believes is the “true design” of the Yi Ching (Yìj?ng ??):

both the Chinese and European Commentators assert it to be a Conjuring Book, or a Book to tell Fortunes by, and to be made use of by the Chinese for that purpose; whereas by the small Specimen I have seen of it, I conceive it to contain the whole Ground, Rule or Grammer, of their Character, Language and Philosophy, and that by the understanding of it, the Foundation and Rule of their Language and Character, may be without much difficulty Deciphered and Understood.

I don’t think that particular line of thought got very far.

The article concludes with an illustration that mainly features numbers in Chinese characters. What makes this particularly interesting, at least for me, is the addition of romanization. I have rotated the image counter-clockwise to make it easier to read the romanization. Note especially the use of the letter x. (Click the image to see it slightly enlarged.)

click for slightly larger image, mostly of numbers in Chinese characters and romanization

sources and further readings: