Category Archives: Chinese characters

Essay in Hanyu Pinyin

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Although I have a few texts here on Pinyin Info written in Pinyin, most of them aren’t long and are usually conversions from texts written in Chinese characters. So it is with very great pleasure that I announce the Internet release of an extensive and important essay by Zhang Liqing (張立青,张立青) that was written in Pinyin originally: Hànzì Bù Tèbié Biǎoyì.

Here is the opening:

Dàduōshù huì Hànzì de rén rènwéi Hànzì shì biǎoyì wénzì. Jiù shì shuō Hànzì gēn biéde wénzì bù yīyàng, bùbì yīkào fāyīn huòzhě biéde yǔyán tiáojiàn; yī ge rén zhǐyào xuéhuì le hěn duō Hànzì, kànjian Hànzì xiě de dōngxi jiù zhīdao shì shénme yìsi.

Zhè dàduōshù rén yòu kàndào liǎng jiàn shìqing. Dì-yī, Hànzì zài Zhōngguó liánxù yòng le sānqiān duō nián, bìngqiě dào xiànzài hái zài yòng. Dì-èr, Hànzì zài Dōng-Yà jǐ ge guójiā liúchuán le hěn cháng yī duàn shíjiān. Yúshì, tāmen yǒu tuīxiǎng chū liǎng ge jiélùn. Yī ge shuō Hànzì chāoyuè shíjiān; lìngwài yī ge shuō Hànzì chāoyuè kōngjiān. Guībìng qǐlai jiù shì Hànzì biǎoyì, kěyǐ chāoyuè shí-kōng. Zuìhòu gèng jìnyībù, bǎ Hànyǔ yě lājìnlái, shuō Hànzì zuì shìhé Hànyǔ.

Shàngmiàn de kànfǎ hé jiélùn “gēn shēn dì gù”, dànshì bùxìng dōu hěn piànmiàn, bù fúhé zhēnzhèng qíngkuàng. Wèishénme ne? Hěn jiǎndān….

Nothing would make me happier than for Mandarin teachers the world over to distribute this work to their students, for it’s much more than an exercise in Pinyin; it’s an essay with important points to make about the nature of Chinese characters. (And, yes, O teachers of the world, the copyright terms do allow you to reprint this.)

This essay appeared originally in 1991, in the Sino-Platonic Papers release of Schriftfestschrift: Essays on Writing and Language in Honor of John DeFrancis on His Eightieth Birthday, so some of you may have seen it already. But the full Schriftfestschrift is a whopping 15 MB, while this essay is a more manageable 759 KB PDF.

This special release of this article is in honor of the seventieth birthday this month of Zhang, some of whose work appears here at Pinyin Info. So, after reading Hanzi bu tebie biaoyi, I recommend that you turn to her translations of Lü Shuxiang (first seen here on this site!) and Zhou Youguang:

Those readings are also available in the original Mandarin:

In addition to being a writer, educator, and translator, Zhang is an associate editor of the excellent ABC Chinese-English Comprehensive Dictionary, which is by far my favorite Mandarin-English dictionary.

Happy birthday, Liqing!

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:

Taipei street names

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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.

tone marks on signage: a debate

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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.

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:

more claims on eliminating illiteracy in China

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Carnival rube: Hey honey, let’s see how good this guy is. What would I win?

Navin (Steve Martin’s character): Uh, anything in this general area right in here. Anything below the stereo and on this side of the bicentennial glasses. Anything between the ashtrays and the thimble. Anything in this three inches right in here in this area. That includes the Chiclets, but not the erasers.

—from The Jerk

It’s easy for people to be declared winners when the barriers for winning are set low enough and everyone is going to be declared a winner no matter what. Here’s what Xinhua reported on Saturday: “The Chinese government plans to eliminate all illiteracy among people aged between 15 and 24 by 2010.” As long as Chinese characters are the sole accepted script for the vast majority of people in China, the chances for this plan to really succeed are zero. But I’m certain it will be declared a great success anyway.

Remarkably, Xinhua included something in the article that rings true and hints at the prospects for any real success:

“The central government only appropriates eight million yuan (about one million US dollars) each year to tackle illiteracy, which means each illiterate person only has seven cents (less than one US cent) a year,” according to another MOE official who declined to be named. “And the increasing number of migrant workers has made education a tough task for the government,” he said.

Less than one US cent won’t buy even so much as one Chiclet, much less a whole pack. And it damn sure won’t be enough to boost literacy in any significant way.

That’s also basing things on the number of illiterate people in China as 114 million, which is far, far too low. But even if we accept both that claim and the BS claim by an official of the Ministry of Education who would identify himself that “China has maintained an illiteracy ratio of around 4 percent among the youth and the middle aged,” that doesn’t leave much money.

In 2010, China’s 15-24 age group will total some 190 million people. If 4 percent of those are counted as illiterate, then 7.6 million people would receive a total of 8 million yuan per year. So, even if China decided to axe all literacy programs for people over the age of 24 (which it won’t do) and commits all its alloted resources to the 15-24 age group, the funding would barely top US$1 per person per year to learn the modern world’s most difficult script. Then consider the fact that illiteracy is highest in China’s countryside — a vast area with inadequate infrastructure.

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Tibet to eliminate illiteracy by 2010, says Xinhua

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Of course, I don’t believe a word of this. But I’m putting it up here for reference.

Southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region intends to reduce its illiteracy rate to less than five percent in 2007 and to less than three percent in 2010, a senior regional education official announced on Friday.

The ongoing campaign to eliminate illiteracy in the region mainly targets people aged 15 to 50, the official said. Last year 15 percent of that group were illiterate, down from 39 percent in 2000, he added.

According to the regional education authorities, literacy in the region means knowing 30 Tibetan letters by heart and being able to read a phonetic transcript of the Tibetan or being able to read and write 1,500 Chinese characters.

And another article on a related topic:

Wǒguó shǎoshù mínzú wénmáng bànwénmáng lǜ 10 nián xiàjiàng 16 ge bǎifēndiǎn

Guójiā Mín-wěi Jiàoyùsī jīchǔ jiàoyù chù chùzhǎng zhōu lì rìqián biǎoshì, jìn shí niánlái, mínzú dìqū de sǎománg gōngzuò chéngjì xiǎnzhù. Zhōu lì shì zài Xīníng zhàokāi de 2006 niándù Zhōngxībù sǎománg gōngzuò huìbào huì shàng zuò shàngshù biǎoshì de. Gēnjù 1990 nián de rénkǒu pǔchá tǒngjì zīliào, shǎoshù mínzú 15 suì jí 15 suì yǐshàng wénmáng bànwénmáng rénkǒu bǐlì shì 30.83%, dàoliǎo 2000 nián, zhèige bǐlì yǐjing xiàjiàng dào 14.54%, qízhōng Xīzàng, Qīnghǎi, Yúnnán, Guìzhōu, Gānsù, Níngxià děng liù shěngqū wénmáng lǜ xiàjiàng de fúdù gāoyú quánguó píngjūn fúdù de 14.55%. Zhōu lì shuō, shǎoshù mínzú 15 suì jí 15 suì yǐshàng wénmáng bànwénmáng rénkǒu bǐlì zài shí niánjiān xiàjiàng 16 ge bǎifēndiǎn, yǔguó jiā de zhīchí yǔ mínzú dìqū zìshēn de nǔlì fēnbukāi.

They forgot to add that all the children of the world will join hands and sing songs of joy and peace….

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carvings said to be in oldest script ever discovered in Western Hemisphere

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drawing of the writing discussed in this blog entryThe 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.

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