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	[?]	[?]

Tone marks on Taiwan store sign’s Pinyin

Posted on Monday, April 10, 2023 by Pinyin Info

An observant reader sent in this relatively rare example in Taiwan of the use of Hanyu Pinyin with tone marks on signage

The Pinyin and especially the tone marks are a little thin, so I’ll give a closeup view:

The sign, here in aesthetic Banqiao, of course, reads:

Dǐ jiā
㭽佳心靈美學館
Esthetic Nail Salon

(Dǐ jiā xīnlíng měixué guǎn)

The Pinyin is not just “esthetic,” because most people probably don’t know the character ‘㭽’. Although they could probably take an educated guess that 㭽 is pronounced dǐ because of the 氐, that’s not the same thing as knowing for sure. So the Pinyin comes in handy even for most literate Taiwanese — if they can see it.

What’s especially surprising is that the people at the store went with Pinyin instead of zhuyin fuhao: ㄉㄧㄐㄧㄚ.

Taiwan issues bopomofo postage stamps

Posted on Wednesday, March 22, 2023 by Pinyin Info

On Monday, March 20, Taiwan’s Chunghwa Post (Zhōnghuá Yóuzhèng / 中華郵政) issued new stamps commemorating Zhuyin Fuhao (aka bopomofo, bopo mofo, or bpmf).

This week’s release of NT$6 (about US$0.20) stamps covers the first ten letters of bopomofo: 「ㄅ、ㄆ、ㄇ、ㄈ、ㄉ、ㄊ、ㄋ、ㄌ、ㄍ、ㄎ」.

Zhuyin Fuhao	Hanyu Pinyin
ㄅ	b
ㄆ	p
ㄇ	m
ㄈ	f
ㄉ	d
ㄊ	t
ㄋ	n
ㄌ	l
ㄍ	g
ㄎ	k

On the stamps, each letter/symbol is paired with a place (e.g., ㄇ (M) is for 馬公 (Magong, the capital of Penghu).

I bought a nice sheet of the stamps earlier. Get ’em while they’re hot!

Sources:

Tè 733 — zhùyīn fúhào yóupiào (dì 1 jí) (特733 注音符號郵票(第1輯)). Announcement by Chunghwa Post, March 20, 2023.
Taiwan launches Bopomofo stamps. Taiwan News, March 22, 2023.

Languages, scripts, and signs: a walk around Taipei’s Shixin University

Posted on Thursday, January 7, 2016 by Pinyin Info

Recently I took some trails through the mountains in Taipei and ended up at Shih Hsin University (Shìxīn Dàxué / 世新大學). Near the school are some interesting signs. Rather than giving individual posts for each of these, I’m keeping the signs together in this one, as this is better testimony to the increasing and often playful diversity of languages and scripts in Taiwan.

Cǎo Chuàn

Here’s a restaurant whose name is given in Pinyin with tone marks! That’s quite a rarity here, though I suspect we’ll be seeing more of this in the future. The name in Chinese characters (草串) can be found, much smaller, on a separate sign below.

二哥の牛肉麵

Right by Cao Chuan is Èrgē de Niúròumiàn (Second Brother’s Beef Noodle Soup). Note the use of the Japanese の rather than Mandarin’s 的; this is quite common in Taiwan.

芭樂ㄟ店

This store has an ㄟ, which serves as a marker of the Taiwanese language. Here, ㄟ is the equivalent of 的 — and of の.

Bālè ei diàn

A’Woo Tea Bar

I couldn’t find a name in Chinese characters for this place. The name is probably onomatopoeia, as in “Werewolves of London — awoo!”

Taiwanese-English, English-Taiwanese dictionaries posted

Posted on Thursday, June 17, 2010 by Pinyin Info

Maryknoll Language Service Center has put online the complete texts of its Taiwanese-English and English-Taiwanese dictionaries. Better still, these have been released under a Creative Commons license. These are a terrific resource for anyone who’s interested in Hoklo.

Maryknoll deserves praise for this great work. Thanks are due, too, to Tailingua, which I know has been working behind the scenes to help make this happen.

From the English Amoy Dictionary (英語閩南語字典):
screenshot from the English-Taiwanese dictionary

And from the Taiwanese-English Dictionary (台語英語字典):
screenshot from the dictionary

source: Maryknoll dictionaries now free to download, Tailingua, June 17, 2010

Ma administration still undecided on how to teach Taiwanese

Posted on Friday, September 5, 2008 by Pinyin Info

Under the new administration of President Ma Ying-jeou, Taiwan’s Ministry of Education has worked out its plan for teaching pretty much everything … except for Hoklo (the language better known in these parts as “Taiwanese”). There have been a lot of arguments. How early to start teaching the language? How much should be taught? Use romanization? Use zhuyin? May teachers use any kind of soap or only special kinds when washing out the mouths of students speaking the language? (OK, they don’t do that last one anymore.)

So the ministry has decided to appoint a new committee to review such questions. Decisions on these issues are expected in six months or so.

My guess would be that the ministry is going to pack the new committee with conservatives who will see to it that romanization is avoided or at least belittled, that little of the language will actually be taught, and that students will not be tested seriously on the subject. But I’ll be happy if I’m wrong.

sources:

Jiǔ nián yīguàn kè gāng wēitiáo — dúquē Mǐnnányǔ kè gāng bùfen (九年一貫課綱微調獨缺閩南語課綱部分), CNA, August 27, 2008
Jiǔ nián yīguàn kè gāng wēitiáo — dú lòu Mǐnnányǔ (九年一貫課綱微調獨漏閩南語), Liberty Times, August 28, 2008

Mandarin newspaper with Pinyin

Posted on Monday, May 26, 2008 by Pinyin Info

Victor Mair’s latest post at Language Log introduces a new U.S.-based newspaper, the Huayu Xuebao (Mandarin Learning Newspaper, 華語學報), which is similar to Taiwan’s Guoyu Ribao (Mandarin Daily News), the main difference being the former uses Hanyu Pinyin while the latter uses zhuyin fuhao (bopo mofo).

Well, actually the Huayu Xuebao doesn’t use proper Pinyin (see recent remarks). But I’m so happy to see this long-needed paper that I’ll hold my tongue for now.

Unfortunately, the paper doesn’t have its Web site ready yet — not that the long-established Guoyu Ribao is much better at that, at least when it comes to texts as they appear in the newspaper. So, for more information about the Huayu Xuebao, write learningnewspaper [AT] yahoo.com or phone +1-201-288-9188 (New Jersey).

There’s also a sample issue.

source: How to learn to read Chinese, Language Log, May 25, 2008

video of Pinyin’s ‘father,’ Zhou Youguang, in English

Posted on Thursday, February 21, 2008 by Pinyin Info

Roddy of Chinese Forums, Signese, Dreams of White Tiles, and even more sites, found a new video (4 min. 40 sec.) of Zhou Youguang speaking, in English, to a reporter from the Guardian.

I was kind of surprised to see this featured on the Guardian’s front page under the ‘Father of Pinyin’ title – I’d wager 9/10ths upwards of the Guardian’s readership doesn’t know what pinyin is. Somewhat unforgivably they’ve managed to spell the guy’s name wrong and not bothered to add tones to the pinyin used in the video, and the interview is pretty weak – basically it’s ‘here’s a nice old Chinese guy talking for a few minutes’ but there’s really very little of depth. They’ve also opted to add subtitles to what sounds to me like perfectly comprehensible English.

But enough negativity, if you want to get a look at the guy who rescued you from bopomofo, have a look.

As happy as I am about the video, I’m going to add a bit more negativity. Failure to get the word parsing correct is also a major error: not “pin yin zhi fu” but “Pīnyīn zhī fù.” Actually, even that isn’t so good, because Pinyin is meant for modern baihua, not the style of Literary Sinitic and its many short forms. Thus, “Pīnyīn de fùqin” would be better.

The accompanying article is amazingly sloppy in parts.

Although the article manages to spell Zhou Youguang’s name correctly, it consistently refers to him not by his family name but by his given name, “Youguang.” It’s almost inconceivable that any reporter in China could (repeatedly) make such an elementary mistake; so perhaps this is the fault of an overzealous copy editor.

I’m not going to sort out and list what’s correct and what’s incorrect in the rest of the article, other than mention one point at the end.

Confusingly, Taiwan uses several different romanisation methods — including a variant of pinyin, tongyong pinyin — and zuiyin.

Zuiyin? Of course what is meant is zhuyin (zhùyīn/註音/注音), which is spelled correctly earlier in the article. Zuiyin (zuìyīn/罪因) is a noun meaning “cause of a crime.”