Category Archives: Chinese characters

crossword puzzles in Taiwanese

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logo of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan newletter, 1926

At the display for the Taiwan Church Press at the Taipei International Book Exhibition I came across a number of interesting works. The press has issued a 70-volume set of the collected newsletters of the Presbyterian Church of Taiwan. (University and research libraries, take note! So far no sets — NT$150,000 (US$4,600) each — have been sold to America or Europe.) The Presbyterian Church has long been an advocate of the rights of the people of Taiwan to speak Taiwanese without oppression, write in Taiwanese (including in romanization), and enjoy other political and human rights.

The newsletter, which dates back well into the nineteenth century, was written in romanized Taiwanese until 1969, when the KMT forced a change to Mandarin in Chinese characters. While flipping through a volume of the newsletters from the 1920s, I was startled to see that crossword puzzles in Taiwanese were a regular feature. (Click the thumbnail for a larger image.)

click for fullsize image of crossword puzzle in Taiwanese

It’s one thing to have read of the novels, poems, religious material, and technical manuals written in Taiwanese, it’s another to see something so human and familiar leap out from the page. This really helped bring home for me how much has been lost, especially in terms of opportunities, because of the suppression of romanized Taiwanese, first by the Japanese and then by the KMT.

Interestingly, if you look at the answers below, you’ll see that each of the boxes is meant to be filled in with not an individual letter but with syllabic units.

completed crossword puzzle in Taiwanese, from 1926

I’ve tried my hand at creating some crosswords in Mandarin using Hanyu Pinyin, but in individual-letter, not syllabic style. This is a little tricky. In English, all letters of the alphabet can appear at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of a word. That’s not so in Mandarin as written in Pinyin. The letters i and u, for example, never come at the beginning of a word. And no word ends with anything other than a, e, i, o, u, g, n, or r. (I’ll finish some of those crosswords one of these days, Gus!)

It would be easier to make a crossword puzzle using bastardized Wade-Giles because that has fewer letters but also more finals. But of course not as many people would be interested in solving it, me included.

For even more on the issue of the romanization of Taiwanese, see the Taiwan section of De-Sinification.

Wang Xuan, innovator in Chinese-character technology, dies at 69

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Wáng Xuǎn (王选), an important figure in technology related to the printing of Chinese characters with computers, has died at the age of 69.

In 2001 he was awarded the Supreme Scientific and Technological Award, China’s highest award for achievement in the field of science.

sources:

Chinese orphanages and children’s names

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I was amazed and appalled to discover today that a widespread practice for naming abandoned children in China has been to assign the family name after the name of the city of the orphanage. For example, many such children from Guangzhou have been assigned the family name of Guang and those from Shenzhen have been called Shen.

China doesn’t have the same range of surnames of Western countries (more about that some other time), so uncommon names stick out even more there than in the West. Giving children family names like Guang and Shen is not altogether unlike branding their foreheads and ID cards with the word “orphan.”

As if that weren’t bad enough, the given names assigned to children have been largely pro forma as well, with elements of even those often based on geography. Thus, children in the Guangzhou orphanage have often had names of places within the city incorporated into their names, such as “Tian,” “Bai,” and “Li,” with those representing the city’s Tianhe, Baiyun, and Liwan districts, respectively.

Naming someone Li after the Liwan District (荔灣區) is pretty much the same as calling that person “Lychee.”

The non-geographical elements in given names have often been Yong (as in 勇敢, brave), Hong (紅/红, red — often associated with communism), Qiang (強/强, strong), Wen (文, literacy, culture), Ping (as in 浮萍, duckweed), or Cui (翠, emerald green).

Taken as a whole, these names tend to mark children as having been residents of an orphanage and, as my source article states, “are not good for their psychology when they try to interact with the outside world, the orphanage has found.”

No kidding. Just how many decades did it take to figure that out?

Fortunately, the practice has changed, at least in Guangzhou:

Starting this year, Guangzhou’s orphanage has stopped giving its wards the surname “Guang” to prevent them from being identified as orphans.

All children adopted by the orphanage are being given the surname “Li” this year, the Guangzhou-based Southern Metropolis Daily said yesterday. “Wang” will be used next year, followed by other Chinese surnames listed in the “Baijiaxing,” a book of 100 common surnames. Staff members of the orphanage said they would also try to think of unique names for each child, rather than middle names representing the location of orphanage, and a randomly picked given name.

The children can also pick their own name later if they do not like the name given by the institute, the head of the orphanage said.

I wonder how many Westerners who have adopted children from China have innocently continued to use such pro forma names, thinking that they must have been given especially and uniquely to their child.

source: Guang dropped as surname for orphans, Shenzhen Daily, February 13, 2006

make traditional Chinese characters part of world cultural heritage: Taipei mayor

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Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (???) has urged the UN to declare traditional Chinese characters a world cultural heritage, fearing they are fading into oblivion. At a meeting with Taiwanese in Geneva, Ma said the adoption by China of simplified characters has rendered them less and less recognizable in the Chinese-speaking world. Ma said he was barred from applying to the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization to preserve the traditional characters because Taiwan is not a UN member.

I think “fading into oblivion” is a bit strong.

source: Ma lauds traditional script, Taipei Times, February 11, 2006

Shanghai students to focus more on Pinyin at first

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Some 20 percent fewer characters will have to be learned during a child’s first two years of school in Shanghai, with more attention being devoted to Pinyin. I’d be happier if this were everywhere, including areas where the native language is Mandarin, but this is good news nonetheless.

Shanghai primary school students will be required to learn 20 percent fewer Chinese characters but spend more time on pinyin in their first two school years, the Shanghai Education Commission said yesterday.

The reform is meant to ease the study burden by making language learning less of a chore.

Starting in the spring semester which beings next week, first-year students will be required to recognize 364 Chinese characters compared with the previous 460.

Altogether 205 characters will be canceled in first two school years out of the former 1,000-plus.

“Despite the city’s education reform, studies we’ve performed in the past months still suggested that young pupils were over-burdened with character recognition and writing tasks. And that reduces a child’s interest in learning,” said Qu Jun, the education commission’s vice director.

Most of the characters eliminated from the requirement list were considered complicated. The canceled contents might be left for extracurricular self-study or postponed to be taught later, authorities said.

It wouldn’t be much help if students have to learn those characters during the same years anyway, just outside of school. Postponing the memorizing of them is the only way for this to make any real difference.

But commission officials said that they haven’t worked out any punishments yet for those who violate the rule.

Also, teachers are being required to spend more time on pinyin — a system that translates Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet — during the first two years of school.

The final paragraph above has a serious error. Pinyin is not “a system that translates Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet.” This sort of thinking is behind a lot of the confusion related to the nature of Chinese characters, the sinitic languages, and Pinyin. The distinction is important: Pinyin is for the Mandarin language, not for Chinese characters.

source: Primary students learn less Chinese characters, Shanghai Daily (via Xinhua), February 10, 2006

Taiwan’s Aborigines urged to officially adopt original names

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Taiwan’s Cabinet-level Council of Indigenous Peoples is encouraging the members of the island’s twelve tribes to officially adopt their original, non-Sinified names. (Good for the Council of Indigenous Peoples. It’s about time.)

These names will be recorded using the Roman alphabet.

Earlier this evening, however, I heard a television report that many local officials were unaware that this name change was legal, much less encouraged. This doesn’t surprise me in the least. I’ve run into more than my share of officials who, because they misunderstand the laws it’s their job to deal with, make life difficult for those who want to get things done. (I”m hoping that renewing my residency will go more smoothly next month than it has in the past.)

Here’s a look at parts of Taiwan’s Full Name Registration Law:

Chapter 1 Local Legislation Authority

Section 1 Republic of China (ROC) nationals may have only one name, and said full name should be the official name stated in the census records.

So why must Aborigines who file to officially use their original, non-Sinified names have not only their names in romanization but also in Chinese characters (and thus are likely Sinified and therefore different than their original name)?

Taiwan indigenous peoples should be registered under their customary full names. Indigenous peoples registered under a Han’s full name should apply for restitution of traditional full name; those who have restituted their traditional full name should apply for the restitution of their Chinese full name; however an individual is entitled to a single restitution application.

Huh? (It’s late, so I’m not going to bother checking the Mandarin-language original to see if that’s any clearer.)

Section 2 The full name registered in the census record should be written in words found in the Ministry of Education Mandarin dictionary or Tzu-Yuan (origin of Chinese phrase or expression), Tzu-Hai (Chinese words collection), Kanghsi and other general dictionary; however, an exemption to paragraph 1 is the registered traditional full name of indigenous peoples which should be written using the Romanization system.
Full names that are not written with words found in any of the aforementioned general dictionaries shall not be registered.

That’s normal.

The Ministry of the Interior is renewing national ID cards from January 1 to December 31, 2006. This hadn’t been done in years.

Lin Chiang-yi, a council official and an Amis tribe member, said his council was asking the Ministry of the Interior to set up a “one-stop window” in counties with large aboriginal populations where people could officially change their Chinese name back to their aboriginal name.

Although a 1995 act allowed aboriginals to substitute their Chinese name with an aboriginal one, only 1,000 aboriginals have adopted their own name so far, Lin continued.

The official said his council was working to persuade several aboriginal communities to make the change en masse, with the purpose of increasing the number of aboriginals who go by their aboriginal name to 10,000.

With a population of 426,000 representing 12 different tribes, aboriginals account for nearly 2 percent of the country’s population.

source: Aboriginals encouraged to adopt indigenous names, CNA, January 31, 2006

URLs, Chinese characters, and the Roman alphabet

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In Will China Build a Separate Internet? John Yunker, citing Naseem Javed’s When Will The Internet Be Divided Among Nations?, states, “Naseem does raise a very important point — for Chinese speakers, the Internet is far from user-friendly. The major obstacle is the URL, which is still limited to ASCII (Latin) characters.”

I don’t see where Naseem Javed made that particular point — but no matter. I just want to note that URLs in ASCII do not present an obstacle to Internet users in China. After all, the Roman alphabet (specifically, Pinyin) is what most people use to enter Chinese characters on computers in the first place. And even those in China who don’t use Pinyin to input Chinese characters are perfectly capable of using their, yes, QWERTY keyboards to type the ASCII in URLs, the Roman alphabet having been taught for decades to every schoolchild in China (at least to those now literate enough to use the Internet in the first place).

On the other hand, having to enter Chinese-character URLs would be an obstacle to most of the world’s population.

Those looking to argue that ASCII URLs could be an obstacle would do better to look to Russia, Greece, or Saudi Arabia.

The folks at ICANN and IETF are working to upgrade the DNS to Unicode, but this will take time. There is a workaround in use that allows Web users to input Chinese characters as a URL which is then transformed into ASCII characters behind the scenes (known as “Punycode”) but I’m not sure how widely used this system currently is.

IE7 is supposed to have good support for Punycode. Now if only IE would finally get CSS right….

Here’s an example of Punycode: 拼音 is xn--muuy29i, according to an open-source Punycode converter. Thus, http://拼音.pinyin.info and http://xn--muuy29i.pinyin.info should both lead to the same page. And I would hope that the address bar in the browser would read http://拼音.pinyin.info instead of the xn--muuy29i ASCII version.

If you add a comment on how well the Punycode tests work for you, please mention your computer’s operating system and browser. (I’m using Win2K and Opera 8.51, and both http://拼音.pinyin.info and http://xn--muuy29i.pinyin.info work fine.)

MRI study: literate vs. illiterate subjects

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For those who are interested in such things, here’s a new MRI study related to reading Chinese characters: Cognitive processing in Chinese literate and illiterate subjects: An fMRI study (also available in PDF).

Abstract:

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) were used to map brain activation during language tasks. While previous studies have compared performance between alphabetic literate and illiterate subjects, there have been no such data in Chinese-speaking individuals. In this study, we used fMRI to examine the effects of education on neural activation associated with silent word recognition and silent picture-naming tasks in 24 healthy right-handed Chinese subjects (12 illiterates and 12 literates). There were 30 single Chinese characters in the silent word recognition task and 30 meaningful road-signs in the silent picture-naming task. When we compared literate and illiterate subjects, we observed education-related differences in activation patterns in the left inferior/middle frontal gyrus and both sides of the superior temporal gyrus for the silent word recognition task and in the bilateral inferior/middle frontal gyrus and left limbic cingulated gyrus for the silent picture-naming task. These results indicate that the patterns of neural activation associated with language tasks are strongly influenced by education. Education appears to have enhanced cognitive processing efficiency in language tasks.

(emphasis added)

I have a lot of objections to some of the language in the article, such as describing the subjects as “pictographic-language speakers.” And I wish the article had indicated whether any of the literate subjects were also literate in a language with an alphabetic script. Be that as it may, some may well find this of interest.

source: Human Brain Mapping, vol. 27, issue 2, pp. 144-152