I’ve finally put online here on this site my list of Taipei street names in Chinese characters and Hanyu Pinyin. The list includes versions both with and without tone marks, as well as in pure Hanyu Pinyin and the mix of Pinyin and English that is generally found here in Taiwan.
I’d like to say some more about this, but I just don’t have the time now.
Check out the “dueling laowai” debate over whether to use tone marks on street signs in Taiwan. This is a series of pieces written by Mark of Doubting to Shuo and Prince Roy of Prince Roy’s Realm. Unfortunately, some of the comments have gone off into the land of myths and shadows, and I just don’t have the time or the energy to deal with all of that now. But the basics of the tone-mark debate are well worth reading.
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.
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As most readers of this site know, Taiwan has approached romanization and signage with a sloppiness that sometimes beggars belief. Although the situation has improved somewhat this decade, many errors remain. And even where there are not errors, people still must often contend with a variety of romanization systems.
Thus, my list of Taiwan place names may come in handy.
I made the list more than a year ago but put it on another website and never drew much attention to it. Now I’ve moved it here to Pinyin Info, where it may do more good.
The list, which is arranged by county and then by city, gives Chinese characters, Hanyu Pinyin (both with and without tone marks), Tongyong Pinyin (ugh!), and a commonly seen older form (usually bastardized Wade-Giles).
I have not bothered to include MPS2, because it is seen more on street signs than on maps. And, anyway, it’s on its way out. I strongly recommend using Hanyu Pinyin.
Although this post might seem like a cheap shot, errors such in found in this official brochure distributed in MRT stations, among other places, by the Taipei City Police Department are at least as much the rule as the exception, even though it would take very little effort to prevent such mistakes.
The main reason I haven’t been posting much lately is that for several weeks I’ve been extremely busy showing various groups of VIPs around Taipei. As the viewing floor near the top of Taipei 101, the world’s tallest building, is one of the standard stops along the tour, I usually take advantage of the bird’s-eye-view to point out some of the architectural features of the city. A few of these features are related to Chinese characters / Japanese kanji.
Japan controlled Taiwan from 1895 until 1945. The design of some significant buildings from this time reflects the desire of the Japanese authorities to put Japan’s stamp on Taiwan — in more ways than one. The buildings that now house Taiwan’s Presidential Office and the Executive Yuan (Cabinet) are from that era. Both are built in the shape of a Chinese character / kanji used in writing the name of Japan: 日. This is not a coincidence. (Before anyone asks: I haven’t seen any buildings, though, built in the shape of 本, the other character used in writing the name of Japan.)
Here are some screenshots from Google Earth, which gives satellite photos of much of the globe.
Below is Taiwan’s presidential building:
And here is the Cabinet building, with north rotated 90 degrees clockwise:
The buildings on all but what is here the left side are additions that date from after the Japanese were forced out of Taiwan. (BTW, my old office in the Government Information Office is just below the bottom right corner of the 日.)
After the Japanese authorities were evicted from Taiwan and the island was controlled by the Chinese KMT, Taipei built a new city hall, and in so doing made an architectural statement of its own. Taipei City Hall, which is at the far end of a long road that leads to the Presidential Office, is built in the shape of two characters for the number 10, placed side by side: 十十
Thus, this is 10 10, which stands for October 10, which refers to the starting date of the revolution that overthrew the Qing dynasty in 1910, leading to the establishment of the Republic of China. (Officially speaking, Taiwan remains the Republic of China and October 10 remains its “National Day.”)
(click photo to enlarge)
If you’d like to use Google Earth to view these for yourself, enter the following coordinates:
Also, the pond behind the former Japanese Governor-General’s house, now the modestly named Taipei Guest House, is supposed to be, with a little help from some decorative rocks, in the shape of the character for “heart”:
心
But I haven’t found any photographs or maps that show this clearly.
Can anyone comment on the architecture of Japanese-era governmental buildings in Korea?
David has posted on the inconsistent use of Tongyong Pinyin in the Taipei-area MRT system. I’ve already put a comment there, so I’ll not duplicate everything here.
I spend a lot of time complaining about signage, and my experiences in trying to get some errors in the MRT system corrected have, predictably, been frustrasting. But there is something I do really like: the font for the MRT signage. (See the photos with David’s post.) Does anyone recognize it?
For those of you not in Taiwan, the MRT is the Metropolitan Rapid Transit system for the Taipei area. Most of the system takes the form of a subway. One line, however, is elevated, as is a section of a different line (which also runs on ground level for several miles).
The Taipei City Government has released the results of a Mandarin proficiency exam administered to 31,145 sixth-grade students.
According to the results, more than 40 percent of those tested are unable to use so-called radicals (bùshǒu, 部首) to find Chinese characters in dictionaries. This, of course, comes as no great surprise to me. Ah, for the wisdom of the alphabetical arrangement of the ABC Chinese-English Comprehensive Dictionary!
Furthermore, the Taipei Times reports that the person in charge of the testing, Datong Elementary School Principal Chen Qin-yin, said that although most students received good grades, the essay test revealed weaknesses in writing ability, including a limited use of adjectives.
Reading that sort of thing sets off all sorts of alarms in my head. First, adjectives are the junk food of writing. Even worse, though, I suspect that Chen is talking not about any ol’ adjectives but rather stock phrases either in or reminiscent of Literary Sinitic (Classical Chinese). Larding a text with clichés is the sort of thing that passes for good writing here. And if, for example, students don’t throw in a zhi in the place of a de often enough their grades will suffer.
The language reforms springing from the May 4 movement have been tremendously important. But more than eighty years later the job still isn’t finished!
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