Category Archives: pinyin

Banqiao street names

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Although Banqiao — spelled “Panchiao” in bastardized Wade-Giles and “Banciao” in Tongyong Pinyin — is one of Taiwan’s most populous cities, it doesn’t get much attention, overshadowed as it is by its neighbor Taipei.

To a certain degree that’s deserved: With a population of some 542,000 (which, if it were transplanted to the United States, would make it that nation’s 26th largest city), Banqiao really ought to have more of interest. But, still, it has been my home for about nine years and it isn’t completely awful. (How’s that for a recommendation?) And the city has been improving, especially with the development around the enormous new train station and the equally enormous Taipei County Government Hall. (David has a few additional photos of Banqiao. I’m amazed I have yet to run into him on the street, especially since foreigners tend to stick out here.)

Until a few years ago, street signs in Banqiao were relatively uniformly in MPS2 (often confused with the Yale romanization system), along with the usual assortment of mistakes and smatterings of other systems. Then signs in Tongyong Pinyin began to replace some but not all of those in MPS2. Last year’s elections, however, saw the DPP lose power in both Taipei County (Banqiao is the county’s largest city) and Banqiao itself. So a move toward Hanyu Pinyin can be expected — eventually. As far as I know, though, the city’s department of transportation, which is in charge of such signage, is still under the erroneous belief that the city must follow the central government’s guidelines and thus use Tongyong. Jilong (Keelung) is another example of a city under a pan-blue administration that thinks it has to use Tongyong.

For people’s reference, I have compiled a list of Banqiao street names in Chinese characters, Hanyu Pinyin (with tone marks), and the mix of romanization and English generally seen in Taiwan.

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Beijing’s reaction to Taiwan’s language-education moves

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China’s unofficial propaganda machine has come up with a predictable response to Taiwan’s recent approval of an official romanization for Hoklo/Taiwanese, calling it an attempt at wenhua Tai-Du (“cultural Taiwanese independence”). And Beijing doesn’t much care for earlier developments, either:

Lìngwài jù bàodào, zǎo zài 2002 nián Táiwān dāngjú “Jiàoyùbù” jiù zuòchū juéyì, Táiwān xuésheng cóng xiǎoxué sānniánjí kāishǐ tíqián shíshī xiāngtǔ yǔyán Mǐnnányǔ, Kèjiāyǔ de “yīnbiāo fúhào” xìtǒng jiāoxué, yǐ tú jìnyībù qiēduàn Táiwān yǔ zǔguó dàlù de wénhuà niǔdài. Rújīn yòu zài Táiwān gè zhōng-xiǎoxué tuīxíng “Táiwān Mǐnnányǔ Luómǎzì pīnyīn fāng’àn”, qǐtú yǐcǐ ruòhuà yǔ Pǔtōnghuà jiējìn de “Guóyǔ” zài Táiwān de dìwèi. Zhèizhǒng kèyì zài wénhuà shàng zhìzào Táiwān yǔ zǔguó dàlù de chāyì yǔ qūfēn, shì Táiwān dāngjú chìluǒluǒ de “wénhuà Tái-Dú” tǐxiàn.

(另据报道，早在2002年台湾当局“教育部”就做出决议，台湾学生从小学三年级开始提前实施乡土语言闽南语、客家语的“音标符号”系统教学，以图进一步切断台湾与祖国大陆的文化纽带。如今又在台湾各中小学推“台湾闽南语罗马字拼音方案”，企图以此弱化与普通话接近的“国语”在台湾的地位。这种刻意在文化上制造台湾与祖国大陆的差异与区分，是台当局赤裸裸的“文化台独”体现。)

Blah, blah, blah.

source: “Wénhuà Tái-Dú” — Mǐnnányǔ pīnyīn xìtǒng chūlú (［两岸纪行］“文化台独” 闽南语拼音系统出炉), October 17, 2006, ChinaTaiwan.org

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!

‘Oracle Bones’ a finalist for National Book Award

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cover of the book 'Oracle Bones'
Peter Hessler’s Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China’s Past and Present has just been named one of the five finalists for the National Book Award in the nonfiction category. In one section of the book Hessler talks with Zhou Youguang and others involved with China’s Pinyin movement.

The other nonfiction finalists are:

  • Taylor Branch, At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68 (Simon & Schuster)
  • Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone (Alfred A. Knopf)
  • Timothy Egan, The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl (Houghton Mifflin)
  • Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (Alfred A. Knopf)

panel from American Born Chinese. The boy's teacher says 'He and his family recently moved to our neighborhood all the way from China.' He says 'San Francisco.' She corrects herself: 'San Francisco.'
Also of likely interest to many readers of Pinyin News is a finalist in the category of Young People’s Literature, American Born Chinese, by Gene Yang. (The National Book Award’s site gives an incorrect title: America Born Chinese.) This is a graphic novel about a Chinese-American boy who moves from San Francisco’s Chinatown to suburbia, where he is just one of two Asian children in the school.

further reading:

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.

Chinglish International Airport?

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In what many view as a long-overdue move, Taiwan’s government has removed the name of Chiang Kai-shek, the island’s one-time dictator, from the title of the country’s main international airport. What has been reported as the new English name, however, is a bit strained in that the country’s name precedes the county/city name.

  English Pinyin Hanzi
old Chiang Kai-shek International Airport Zhōngzhèng Guójì
Jīchǎng		 中正國際機場
new Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport Táiwān Táoyuán Guójì
Jīchǎng		 台灣桃園國際機場

In Mandarin, there’s nothing tremendously odd about using “Taiwan Taoyuan.” In English, however, it’s a completely different story.

exact phrase romanization no. of results in Google
Taoyuan Taiwan   241,000
Taiwan Taoyuan   42,400
 
臺灣桃園 Taiwan Taoyuan 43,200
台灣桃園 Taiwan Taoyuan 220,000
total for 臺灣桃園
and 台灣桃園		 263,200
 
桃園臺灣 Taoyuan Taiwan 5,720
桃園台灣 Taoyuan Taiwan 461
total
for 桃園臺灣 and 桃園台灣		 6,181

Almost all of the examples in English of “Taiwan Taoyuan” have punctuation (stronger than a comma, that is) or new lines separating the words, so running the two names together in that order is less common than the Google result implies, as most English speakers know intuitively.

“Taiwan Taoyuan,” when used in English, reminds me of nothing so much as the annoying term “Chinese Taipei” (Zhonghua Taibei / 中華台北). This name represents the international kissing of Beijing’s ass diplomatic solution worked out so Taiwan’s teams can participate in international sporting events without China throwing too much of a hissyfit. (We we still get some of those anyway, of course.)

Since using anything along the lines of “Chinese Taipei” would be anathema to the present administration in Taiwan, what’s going on with the new name for the airport? The logical name would probably be simply “Taoyuan International Airport,” the airport being in Taoyuan County rather than Taipei County. But outside of Taiwan, who has ever heard of Taoyuan? (That’s probably just as well for Taiwan, because much of Taoyuan is downright ugly.) And, anyway, I think that those deciding on the new name regarded adding “Taiwan” and taking out “Chiang Kai-shek” as the top priorities.

Of course, it could be worse. Some in the KMT have called for the name to be changed to “Taiwan Taoyuan Chiang Kai-shek International Airport.” Ugh.

However, the code letters for the airport, TPE and RCTP, will not be changed. These are both rooted in the Wade-Giles romanization system, under which we have Taipei (properly T’ai-pei) rather than Taibei.

Fortunately for all concerned, both “Taoyuan” and “Taiwan” are examples of names spelled the same in most romanization systems. So, at least in this case, the current administration’s attachment to the Tongyong Pinyin romanization system won’t lead to further international embarrassment.

I spoke earlier today with someone at the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, who informed me that although the Mandarin name of the airport was now officially Táiwān Táoyuán Guójì Jīchǎng, the English name has yet to be set by the Ministry of Education. So it’s possible the English name could change.

Anyone want to play Name That Airport? I’m more than half serious. The authorities here no doubt need some help with this. (Even though Taoyuan is one of the ugliest places in Taiwan, let’s keep this nice.)

Oh, in case anyone’s puzzled that “Chiang Kai-shek” and “Zhōngzhèng” don’t look much like each other or even have the same number of syllables, the reason is that Zhōngzhèng is a sort of assumed name, not the name by which he was known to his family, which in Mandarin is Ji?ng Jièshí (???). For more on this see the names section of the Wikipedia article on Chiang Kai-shek. (Me linking to a Wikipedia article? There’s a first time for everything, I guess.)

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