Category Archives: pinyin

photos of and around Xindian City Hall MRT station

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My friend David of David on Formosa kindly sent me lots of photos of the current signage at Xindian City Something-or-other Station. Here they are.

Note that some of the signage at the station itself gives the Tongyong Pinyin form (Sindian) as well as the Hanyu Pinyin form; but other signage does not. And the newest signs give Xindian City Office rather than Xindian City Hall.

MRT station main entrance, marked 'Xindian City Hall Station'

MRT station side entrance, marked 'Xindian (Sindian) City Hall Station'

Sign of things to come?
photo of station operation hours, with station name marked 'Xindian City Office Station'

sign on a pillar on the MRT platform reading 'Xindian City Hall'

closeup of a new map on a station wall, with the station called 'Xindian City Office'

map_detail

exit2

area_map

This closeup from the map above reveals that even city hall itself (not the MRT station) is labeled “City Hall.”

closeup from the photo above, as described

More than three years ago Taipei County Magistrate Zhōu Xīwěi (Chou Hsi-wei / 周錫瑋 / Zhou Xiwei) said that Taipei County should use the same romanization system as the city of Taipei (i.e., Hanyu Pinyin). But nothing has happened yet — not unlike his administration in general. So here we still see the Tongyong Pinyin form of “Sindian” rather than the Hanyu Pinyin form (now official at the national level) of “Xindian.”
photo of Xindian City Hall (the actual building, not the MRT station). It's labeled 'Sindian City Office'

Taipei County Police Bureau Sindian Precinct

You can’t fight city hall, er, office

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This follows up my previous post: new Taipei MRT stations and wordy names.

Although the MRT system resists fixing the mistakes in its station names — such as in wordy, unnatural English names or misuse of Hanyu Pinyin — that doesn’t mean it never changes a name. It does — and here I’m referring to things beyond the usual matter of romanization systems. In recent weeks a long-established MRT station name has been undergoing a quiet change. As this case reveals, however, it appears that the authorities have a rule that opposes change unless they want to take a perfectly good name and make it worse.

I recently complained about the needless and indeed counterproductive insertion of Taipei and Nangang into station names, such as in the case of adding “Taipei” to the English name of what in Mandarin is only “Nángǎng Zhǎnlǎnguǎn” (南港展覽館). But that’s not the only case of “Taipei” given in an English name that doesn’t have the city name included in Mandarin. Two more instances of this are “Taipei Zoo,” which in Mandarin is simply Dòngwùyuán (動物園), and “Taipei City Hall,” which in Mandarin is Shìzhèngfǔ (市政府).

First let’s examine the case of “Taipei Zoo.” The Mandarin name for this is simply the word for zoo: dòngwùyuán. So in English why not call this stop simply Zoo instead of Taipei Zoo? (There’s certainly no Xindian Zoo, Banqiao Zoo, Xinzhuang Zoo, Sanchong Zoo, etc., anywhere on the MRT system.)

There’s no clear answer. Although Hanziphiles love to proclaim “Just one Chinese character is enough,” the Mandarin language is most definitely not a monosyllabic one, especially when it comes to place names. (See, for example, Taipei street names and the monosyllabic myth.) So it’s possible that what’s happening here is the habits of Mandarin are being overwritten upon English.

Interestingly, in metropolitan Taipei most native Mandarin speakers, if they had to add a geographical distinction, would probably call this the Mùzhà Dòngwùyuán (木柵動物園) rather than the Táiběi Dòngwùyuán (台北動物園).

I’m more interested, however, in the case of “Taipei City Hall,” which in which in Mandarin is Shìzhèngfǔ (市政府) — again, no Táiběi. In this case adding “Taipei” makes sense because there really is another city hall stop on the MRT system: Xindian City Hall, which in Mandarin is Xīndiàn Shìgōngsuǒ (新店市公所).

Translated literally, shìzhèngfǔ is city government and shìgōngsuǒ is city administrative office. They have different names in Mandarin because of Taiwan’s somewhat convoluted governmental structure, a shìzhèngfǔ having somewhat greater autonomy than a shìgōngsuǒ. Nevertheless, in English both would usually be called simply city hall. Although New York City has hundreds of times more people than, say, Hays, Kansas (population 20,000), both places have a city hall … because usually that’s what cities have, regardless of their size or importance.

And for years the Taipei MRT has had a station named “Taipei City Hall” and another named “Xindian City Hall,” which is of course as it should be.

Unfortunately, however, Taiwan’s bureaucracy does not agree. The RDEC, keeper of the government’s bilingual stylebook for organizations, says that a shìgōngsuǒ is a city office, not a city hall, which is perhaps what has prompted the authorities with the MRT to change the perfectly good English name of “Xindian City Hall Station” to the distinctly worse “Xindian City Office Station.”

Basically, if there’s a discrepancy between how something is usually said in English and how some government official in Taiwan thinks it’s supposed to be said in English, real English loses. The same applies to Pinyin, whose clear and simple rules continue to be ignored here.

Both names — Xindian City Hall and Xindian City Office — can currently be seen on signage in the MRT system. The system maps next to MRT car doors have Xindian City Hall (see image at the left below). But the new long strips above the MRT doors (right) have Xindian City Office.

I expect Xindian City Hall to disappear soon.

Can anyone tell me what’s currently on that station itself?

xindian_city_hall xindian_city_office

photo of the front of Xindian City Hall, across the street from the MRT station. The sign reads 'Sindian City Office'

new Taipei MRT stations and wordy names

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detail of a map of the Taipei MRT system, showing 'Nangang Software Park' and 'Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center' on the brown line, connected by bus to 'Nangang' on the blue lineTaipei will soon open a dozen new stations on its mass-transit system, the MRT. Most of the stations will be in the relatively newly developed district of Neihu, with a couple in the Nangang district. It’s the latter two stations I want to focus on:

  • Nangang Software Park
  • Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center

Basically, these names suck.

The most obvious problem is that they both are unnecessarily long, which is not a negligible consideration for not only signage but also the MRT’s announcement system, which is in four languages: Mandarin, Hoklo, Hakka, and English. (It takes a while to get through all of those.)

Also, “Nangang Software Park” (Nángǎng Ruǎntǐ Yuánqū 南港軟體園區)? There is no other software park around the MRT system. Just “Software Park” would work better as a name for the station. Accurate, but also short, simple, and distinctive — just what such a name should be.

BTW, this software park is the source of the name for Taipei’s still-not-corrected Park Street signs.

Worse still is “Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center”. First, calling it even “Nangang Exhibition Center” would be bad enough for the same reason that “Nangang Software Park” is unnecessarily wordy: there’s no “exhibition center” anywhere else on the system.

But “Taipei Nangang”? Ugh. That may work in Mandarin, but it’s lousy English. It follows the same unnaturally inverted pattern and redundancy that gave us “Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport,” or, as I like to call it, Chinglish International Airport. (But I do like it better than “Revere the Dictator Chiang Kai-shek International Airport.”)

Here’s a photo of the exhibition building itself (not the MRT station — though those are the MRT tracks behind the barrier in the foreground).

taipei_nangang_exhibition_center

So “Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center” probably is the official name of the complex. But that really doesn’t matter because (1) the MRT station certainly does not have to have the exact same name and (2) the name is just plain stupid.

Above, I mentioned that names for MRT stations should be “accurate, but also short, simple, and distinctive.” Sticking “Taipei Nangang” in front of “Exhibition Center” makes the name clumsy and less distinctive, especially since the two MRT stations closest to “Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center” are called “Nangang” and “Nangang Software Park”.

Nangang, Nangang, Nangang — yeah, we get it: They’re in Nangang.

Perhaps the MRT would like to change other names to be similarly useful. For example, instead of “Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall” we could have “Taipei Zhongzheng Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall;” and in place of, say, “Xindian City Hall” we could have “Taipei County Xindian Xindian City Hall.” (More about the Xindian City Hall station in another post.)

But perhaps those names aren’t nearly informative enough. According to the MRT’s way of thinking, people might still be confused about the location. How about, say, “Planet Earth Northern Hemisphere Asia East Asia Taiwan Taipei Zhongzheng Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall” and “Planet Earth Northern Hemisphere Asia East Asia Taiwan Taipei County Xindian Xindian City Hall,” etc.?

I’m happy to report that even the MRT seems to have some reservations about ridiculously long names — at least when those names are in Mandarin. Note the photo of part of the route map (top right of this post). The Mandarin name for “Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center” is Nángǎng Zhǎnlǎnguǎn (南港展覽館), not Táiběi Nángǎng Zhǎnlǎnguǎn (台北南港展覽館). (I didn’t crop any characters from the left of the station name.) So why is “Taipei” in the English version but not in the Mandarin one? Does the city government believe that foreigners are so stupid that they fail to comprehend that the Taipei MRT system is indeed in the Taipei metropolitan area? If so, then maybe they should be giving consideration to my idea of putting at least “Planet Earth Northern Hemisphere Asia East Asia Taiwan Taipei” in front of all the names in the city of Taipei. This could come in in several versions:

  • “Planet Earth Northern Hemisphere Asia East Asia Taiwan, Republic of China, Taipei” — for pan-blue traditionalists
  • “Planet Earth Northern Hemisphere Asia East Asia Taiwan, which is really a country and not a part of China, Taipei” — for the pan-green crowd, and
  • “Planet Earth Northern Hemisphere Asia East Asia China Chinese Taipei Taipei” — for the unificationists and those who like to “q?n Zh?ngguó“

Then administrations could have fun changing from one system to another, depending on who was in power.

There’s more to say about this topic (e.g., how the names of stations such as Taipei Zoo, Taipei City Hall, and Xindian City Hall Office do or don’t fit into this pattern). But I’ve already written enough for one post.

And in case anyone is wondering: Yes, I have brought my concerns to the attention of the officials of the MRT. They don’t care. Does anyone have contacts in the media or with politicians?

photo of an entrance to the 'Nangang Software Park Station'

common newbie errors in Pinyin: YAN

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Today’s post is something for those who are relatively new to Pinyin and Mandarin. It covers something I’ve received more than one query about.

Hanyu Pinyin is quite simple. But it still has a few points — beyond the usual caveats about x, q, c, and zh — that sometimes trip up introductory students of Mandarin. One of the most common of these is the syllable yan.

Lots of Mandarin learners tend to pronounce this as if it were yang — but with an n on the end instead of an ng. But it’s properly pronounced much like the English pronunciation of the name of the Japanese currency: yen. Thus, yen for yan is a common misspelling.

Yet yan is a perfectly regular spelling within the Pinyin system. What’s more: Pinyin doesn’t have anything spelled yen.

Remember that when an i comes at the beginning of a syllable, it is written y (or yi, if there is no vowel immediately following). Thus,

yan = ian

I stress this because relatively few people get any of the following related syllables wrong:

  • bian (as in former Taiwan president Chen Shui-bian)
  • pian (as in pianyi / cheap)
  • mian (as in chaomian / fried noodles)
  • dian (as in dianhua / telephone)
  • tian (as in tianqi / weather)
  • nian (as in nian / year)
  • lian (as in buyao lian / shameless)
  • jian (as in zaijian / good-bye)
  • qian (as in qian / money)
  • xian (as in xiansheng / mister)

Now try reading these:

  • yanjing / eye
  • yanjing / glasses
  • chouyan / smoke (verb)
  • yuyan / language
  • yanse / color
  • keyan / scientific research

    • It’s easy!

    further reading:
    combinations of initials and finals in Hanyu Pinyin/span

    Tian’anmen, not Tiananmen

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    I’m certainly not expecting the Western media to start writing Tiān’ānmén (天安門/天安门) with tone marks. But its it’s not like the apostrophe is an obscure glyph to be found only in specialist typefaces that dig deep into Unicode, the sort of thing that might require an English form separate from the Pinyin one.

    Microsoft Word certainly isn’t helping matters, as it flags the correct form (Tian’anmen) as a misspelling but does not flag the apostrophe-less form (Tiananmen).

    screenshot from Microsoft Word, showing that 'Tian'anmen', unlike 'Tiananmen', is marked as misspelled

    Indeed, if you ask the program to help you with the supposedly misspelled “Tian’anmen”, it suggests “Tiananmen”.

    screen shot of Microsoft Word's spell checker suggesting 'Tiananmen' as a replacement for 'Tian'anmen'

    So my guess would be that the “Tiananmen” form is the result of a combination of (1) the Cupertino effect, (2) laziness, and (3) people thinking that Tian’anmen “looks funny”.

    Ugh.

    And as long as I’m on this, it’s not Tian An Men, TianAnMen, Tienanmen, Tianan men, etc., either.

    But, no, I don’t expect this will do much good; and if I ever work myself into a case of apostrophe rage it will probably be for other names.

    —

    further reading:

    weiird typos

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    The Qíngtiāngāng part of Yangming Shan National Park (Yángmíng Shān Guójiā Gōngyuán / 陽明山國家公園), to the north of Taipei, is distinguished by grasslands high in the mountains — the sort of open, natural place that, though not spectacular, might still make someone used to living in crowded northern Taiwan want to do the Julie-Andrews-hills-are-alive twirl. But, as usual, I’m only going to show you some signs. Here goes.

    wooden directional signs reading '擎天崗遊客服務站 Ciingtiangang Visitor Center / 許顏橋 Siyuiannciiao / 上磺溪停車場 Parking-Lot Shanghuangsiyi'

    wooden directional sign reading '金包里大路城門 The Gate Of Jiinbaolyi Road'

    wooden directional signs reading '風櫃口 FenggueiKou' and '竹篙山 Mt.Jhwugao'

    Ciingtiangang, Siyuiannciiao, Jiinbaolyi. Normally the presence of doubled vowels indicates the use of Gwoyeu Romatzyh (e.g., rice-flour noodles as miifeen rather than Hanyu Pinyin’s mǐfěn). But these signs are most definitely not in Gwoyeu Romatzyh. They’re just really screwed-up Tongyong Pinyin.

    Sign Tongyong Pinyin Hanyu Pinyin Gwoyeu Romatzyh
    Ciingtiangang Cingtiangang Qíngtiāngāng Chyngtiangang
    Siyuiannciiao Syuyan ciao Xǔyán qiáo Sheuyan chyau
    Shanghuangsiyi Shanghuangsi tingchechang Shànghuángxī tíngchēchǎng Shanqhwangshi
    The Gate Of Jiinbaolyi Road Jinbaoli dalu chengmen Jīnbāolǐ dàlù chéngmén Jinbaulii dahluh cherngmen
    FenggueiKou Fongguei Kou Fēngguì kǒu Fengguey koou
    Mt.Jhwugao Jhugao Shan Zhúgāo Shān Jwugau Shan

    Two of Tongyong Pinyin’s most distinctive features are the use of jh– for what in Hanyu Pinyin is zh– and the use of fong rather than the feng found in Hanyu Pinyin, MPS2, Wade-Giles, Yale, and Gwoyeu Romatzyh. But whoever produced these signs couldn’t get even those right, as shown by Jhwugao and FenggueiKou.

    A few misc. notes:

    • FenggueiKou: Die, InTerCaPiTaLiZaTion, die! Or in this case perhaps I should write IntercapitalizaTion.
    • It’s supposed to be “km”, not “Km”.
    • Even the signs that got “km” correct left out the necessary space before it.
    • The Gate Of Jiinbaolyi Road: An initial “The” is almost never needed on such signs; indeed, its presence is counterproductive. And the capitalized “Of” is amateurish.
    • Parking-Lot Shanghuangsiyi: Oh, that’s just too depressing.
    • Ciingtiangang Visitor Center: Leaving out that extra i would help the missing s fit in, as would abbreviating “center” or simply leaving out Qingtiangang altogether. It’s not like there are any other visitors’ centers around there to confuse people. But since the English-speaking world is filled with places marked “visitor center”, it’s probably not worth having mentioned.
    • Siyuiannciiao: I’m puzzled that ciao/qiao wasn’t translated as bridge (and written with a space before it). Is there not actually a bridge there?
    • Mt.Jhwugao: Again, are spaces really all that difficult?
    • I could probably talk about the orthography of a few of the names (e.g., Jinbao Li vs. Jinbaoli, Shanghuang Xi vs. Shanghuangxi, Fenggui Kou vs. Fengguikou); but that’s something well beyond the common awfulness of these signs. And it might also require some research, such as finding the answer to “Is there really a stream [xī] at Shanghuangxi/Shanghuang Xi?”)

    The government’s list of Pinyin and English terms related to Yangming Shan National Park, Yángmíng Shān Guójiā Gōngyuán xiāngguān míngcí, doesn’t give any of those incorrect forms. (Anyway, the list, which is in Tongyong Pinyin, is now outdated because of the switch — at least on paper — to Hanyu Pinyin.) And I can’t think of any good reason for the doubled i’s, the interposed y’s, or the other errors. Apparently, these signs are just plain-ol’ awful.

    So I don’t have anything particularly interesting to note about the linguistics of this. But I do have a point other than that some typos are weiird weird enough that I can’t help but mention them. Rather, it’s worth noting that just because over the past few years many signs — but not nearly as many people believe — went up in tòng yòng, er, Tōngyòng Pinyin, this doesn’t mean the signs were done properly and wouldn’t require replacement even if Taiwan weren’t switching to Hanyu Pinyin.

    Wiki for collaborative Pinyin projects

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    I have long wanted to expand the range of materials available in and about Pinyin. Possibilities for projects include:

    • Hanyu Pinyin subtitles for movies and videos
    • Hanyu Pinyin versions of Mandarin plays (for example, Cháguǎn, by Lǎo Shě)
    • translations into Mandarin (Hanzi and/or Pinyin) of parts of this site

    I can do a lot of the work — in fact, as is my habit, I’ve begun all sorts of such projects but haven’t finished them — but can’t do all of it myself. So I’ve been mulling the idea of setting up a Pinyin-related wiki here on Pinyin.info or perhaps on a spinoff site I set up, which would allow you, o reader, to get involved (a little or a lot, depending on your desire and amount of free time).

    I’m thinking that texts could be worked on with the aid of Wenlin, since even contributors without the full version of that enormously useful program could use its free demo to select disambiguation choices in cases of word-parsing ambiguities or characters with multiple pronunciations.

    For example, if one were using Wenlin to convert the following into Pinyin,

    我在朦胧中,眼前展开一片海边碧绿的沙地来,上面深蓝的天空中挂着一轮金黄的圆月。我想:希望本是无所谓有,无所谓无的。这正如地上的路;其实地上本没有路,走的人多了,也便成了路。

    one would first need to choose between potentially ambiguous word boundaries

    |我 | 在 | 朦胧 | 中,眼前 | 展开 | 一 | 片 | 海边 | 【◎Fix:◎碧绿 | 的;◎碧 | 绿的】 | 沙地 | 来,上面 | 深蓝 | 的 | 【◎Fix:◎天空 | 中;◎天 | 空中】 | 挂着 | 一 | 轮 | 金黄 | 的 | 圆月。我 | 想:希望 | 本 | 是 | 无所谓 | 有,无所谓 | 无 | 的。这 | 正如 | 【◎Fix:◎地上 | 的;◎地 | 上的】 | 路;其实 | 地上 | 本 | 没有 | 路,走 | 的 | 人 | 多 | 了,也 | 便 | 成了 | 路。

    and then take care of items with multiple pronunciations

    Wǒ zài ménglóng 【◎Fix:◎zhōng;◎zhòng】, yǎnqián zhǎnkāi yī 【◎Fix:◎piàn;◎piān】 hǎibiān bìlǜ de shādì lái, shàngmian shēnlán de tiānkōng 【◎Fix:◎zhōng;◎zhòng】 guàzhe yī lún jīnhuáng de yuányuè. Wǒ xiǎng: xīwàng běn shì wúsuǒwèi yǒu, wúsuǒwèi 【◎Fix:◎wú;◎mó】 de. Zhè zhèngrú 【◎Fix:◎dìshang;◎dìshàng】 de lù; qíshí 【◎Fix:◎dìshang;◎dìshàng】 běn méiyǒu lù, zǒu de rén duō 【◎Fix:◎le;◎liǎo;◎liāo;◎liào;◎liáo】, yě 【◎Fix:◎biàn;◎pián】 chéngle lù.

    I’d prefer to keep things generally on the right side of copyright laws but am also hopeful that those may not be too onerous in the case of Pinyin versions and that Taiwan’s laws may put the situation more in our favor than might be the case elsewhere. Information about the legal situation would be greatly appreciated.

    So, is anyone interested in helping out? Have advice? Success/horror stories about wiki projects? Suggestions for additional material?

    Tainan County signage

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    I recently spent a few days in Tainan County and, as is my habit, paid special attention to the signage.

    Although the signage in the city of Tainan is primarily — or perhaps now exclusively — in Tongyong Pinyin (which is now supposed to be changed to Hanyu Pinyin), the situation in the remainder of Tainan County is not so clear-cut. Basically, from what I saw most Tainan County towns do not have street signs in Tongyong. Indeed, many of them don’t have street signs in any romanization system whatsoever.

    In some small towns there are some local signs in Tongyong. For example, the following three:

    jhongjheng

    That one’s OK, as Tongyong goes. But as for the next two address plates, is it really too much to ask that the people who make signs learn what a baseline is and what it’s for, that sizes of letters should not be altered on a whim, and that amateurish font faces are not to be used?

    Jhongsiao Rd.

    Pingdeng St.

    (Note the “Pingdeng” spelling above. It’s relevant to the next example.)

    OK, so those were in Tongyong Pinyin. But two signs about one block from where the previous shot was taken reveal more of the picture of local signage in Tainan County.

    Tongyong most certainly is not the only romanization found in Tainan County.
    described below

    Together on one pole we have “JIA DUNG RD. / 佳東路” and “Piandeng St. / 平等街”. “Jiadung” is MPS2 for what in Hanyu Pinyin would be Jiādōng (Jiadong), while “Piandeng” is a typo (presumably from Tongong, as this is a newer sign that doesn’t match the style used on other MPS2-era signs in the area) for what in Hanyu Pinyin would be Píngděng (Pingdeng). It would be spelled Pingdeng in Tongyong Pinyin as well, as can be seen above.

    And some signs have no romanization whatsoever and should have been put out of their misery a long time ago.
    peeling_sign

    But all sorts of old things can occasionally be found on the streets of Tainan County.
    photo of man riding in a cart pulled down a Tainan County city street by a cow