Category Archives: pinyin

if people keep using Pinyin input, China will die, says Wubi-input inventor

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Wang Yongmin (Wáng Yǒngmín, 王永民), the developer of the much hyped “Wubi” input method for Chinese characters, seems to get a bit more shrill each time he has a chance to make it into the papers. The Wubi Chinese character input method works by assembling characters based on the shapes of elements within characters.

Here’s something from a recent rant:

近日，五笔字型的发明者——王永民教授在中国科学院研究生院演讲时发表了这样的观点。

王永民认为，汉字的形是“身”，汉字的音是“衣”；“弃形留音”等于“舍身取衣”。拼音输入离开了对汉字造字元素的直接思考和运用，汉字必然将因此而形神俱灭，汉字本身所固有的文化遗传基因，将因此而丧失殆尽。

王永民认为，从文化意义上说，中华民族的伟大复兴也是汉字文化的伟大复兴，没有汉字，就没有中华民族。他指出，汉字和汉语拼音的主辅关系是早有定论的。

source: Wáng Yǒngmín: Pīnyīn shūrù shì Hànzì wénhuà de jué [fen]mù jī[qi] (王永民：拼音输入是汉字文化的掘墓机), Science Web, March 17, 2006

apostrophes in Hanyu Pinyin

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To help answer questions raised by earlier posts, I’ve added a page to my site on apostrophes in Hanyu Pinyin. It begins with the basics.

Here’s all you really need to know about when and where to place apostrophes when writing Mandarin Chinese in Hanyu Pinyin:

Put an apostrophe before any syllable that begins with a, e, or o, unless that syllable comes at the beginning of a word or immediately follows a hyphen or other dash.

Please note there is no “if there is ambiguity” in the rule above.

home of romanization pioneer Lu Zhuangzhang found

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The birthplace of Lu Zhuangzhang (盧戇章/卢戆章) (1854-1928), a pioneering writing reformer, has recently been identified in Xiamen, China.

Locals said they knew the house was Lu Zhuangzhang’s ancestral home but didn’t know he was famous for his romanization work.

Lu was “the first Chinese to propose a system of spelling for Sinitic languages,” Victor H. Mair notes in his essay Sound and Meaning in the History of Characters: Views of China’s Earliest Script Reformers, which contains additional information about Lu.

Lu was from Fujian and, as a boy, he grew up in Amoy (Xiamen) where romanized writing of the local language was used widely after it was introduced by Christian missionaries. (A romanized Chinese translation of the Bible had already been made in 1852.) At age 21, Lu moved to Singapore where he studied English. After he returned to Amoy four years later, he assisted an English missionary in compiling a Chinese-English dictionary.

Lu’s Yimu liaoran chujie (First Steps in Being Able to Understand at a Glance), published in Amoy in 1892, was the first book written by a Chinese which presented a potentially workable system of spelling for a Sinitic language. His script was based on the Roman alphabet with some modifications. Among other improvements over the sinographs was linking up syllables into words and separating them with spaces. Lu’s system was designed specifically for the Amoy topolect, but he claimed that his system of spelling could also be adapted for the other languages of China. Although he believed that all of the local languages should be written out with phonetic scripts, Lu advocated that the speech of Nanjing be adopted as the standard for the whole nation, as it was when Matteo Ricci had come to China three centuries earlier. Altogether, Lu worked for 40 years to bring an efficient system of spelling to China. He is now viewed by Chinese language workers as the father of script reform.

Local authorities hope to protect the home as a cultural monument.

Tóng’ān fāxiàn Lú Zhuàngzhāng gùjū

Wǒguó “yǔwén xiàndàihuà” de xiānqū, xiàndài Hànyǔ pīnyīn de fāmíng zhě Lú Zhuàngzhāng, qí gùjū jìnrì zài Xiàmén Tóng’ān bèi fāxiàn, wénwù bǎohù zhuānjiā hūyù bǎohù gāi gùjū.

Lú Zhuàngzhāng de gùjū zài Xiàmén Tóng’ān gǔ zhuāng cūn, shì yī zhuàng yǒu bǎi-yú nián lìshǐ de Mǐnnán hóngzhuān gǔ mínjū, Lú Zhuàngzhāng jiù chūshēng zài zhèlǐ.

Cūnmín gàosu jìzhě, tāmen zhīdao zhè shì Lú Zhuàngzhāng jiā de “gǔ cuò”, dànshì bùzhīdào tā shì “yǔwén xiàndàihuà de xiānqū”, yějiù méi rén qù kèyì bǎohù zhè “gǔ cuò”, yīnwèi yīzhí dōu yǒurén jūzhù, hái méi wánquán bèi huǐhuài.

Huòxī Lú Zhuàngzhāng gùjū yīrán bǎocún zài Tóng’ān, Xiàmén Shì wénhuàjú wénwù chù chùzhǎng Chén Zhìmíng biǎoshì, zhēngqǔ ràng Tóng’ān qū wén guǎn bàn jiāng qí dìngwéi qū jí wénwù bǎohù dānwèi.

Jù liǎojiě, Lú Zhuàngzhāng shēngyú Qīngcháo xián fēng sì nián (1854 nián), shì Xiàmén Tóng’ānrén. Zài chuàngzhì pīnyīn fāng’àn, tuīguǎng jīng zhāng guānhuà (jí Pǔtōnghuà), tuīxíng báihuà kǒuyǔ, cǎiyòng héngpái héngxiě, tíchàng xīnshì biāodiǎn, shǐyòng jiǎntǐ súzì děng fāngmiàn, Lú Zhuàngzhāng zài guónèi kāile xiānhé.

source: Tóng’ān fāxiàn Lú Zhuàngzhāng gùjū, Dōngnán Kuàibào, February 15, 2006

KMT chairman reiterates support for Hanyu Pinyin

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Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou, who also serves as chairman of the Kuomintang, recently gave an interview (video) with the BBC’s Mandarin service. He also took questions from callers. One dealt with the issue of romanization.

Ma, who will almost certainly be the KMT’s presidential candidate in 2008 and will likely win if the DPP doesn’t get its act together, again backed Hanyu Pinyin for Taiwan.

I haven’t yet watched the entire piece, which lasts an hour, so I’ll use a newspaper report of this:

Duìyú pīnyīn wèntí, Mǎ Yīngjiǔ biǎoshì, Hànyǔ Pīnyīn suī bù wánměi, dànshì quánshìjiè shǐyònglǜ dá bǎi fēnzhī 80 zhì 90, rúguǒ Táiwān jiānchí Tōngyòng Pīnyīn, wúfǎ yǔ guójì jiēguǐ, zhōngjiāng shòudào shānghài.
(On the question of romanization, Ma said that although Hanyu Pinyin isn’t perfect its international use rate is 80 or 90 percent. If Taiwan persists in using Tongyong Pinyin, Taiwan won’t be able to participate in international links and will finally suffer for it.)

Ma, who also serves as mayor of Taipei, initiated the change of the capital city’s romanization system to Hanyu Pinyin, a move widely applauded by Taiwan’s foreign community.

If anyone watches the whole video, I’d appreciate hearing just when in the broadcast Ma made his remarks on this.

sources:

certifying Mandarin teachers in Taiwan

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Taiwan’s Ministry of Education hopes to introduce a certification system for teachers of Mandarin as a foreign language. David has already stated what I would:

It would be interesting to know whether knowledge of Hanyu Pinyin and simplified characters is necessary to obtain certification. It does seem like a good idea, but unless the standards for certification are set at a high level then it won’t achieve much.

sources:

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

Taipei street names and tone marks

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Here’s another in my series on official signage in the Taipei area.

Taipei has more than 630 different street names. Although none of these are homophonous, five pairs of names should have tone marks added to the Hanyu Pinyin so that the names will be easily distinguished from one another.

But whoever makes the signs should be especially careful because the only official signage with tone marks I’ve seen in the Taipei area has been ugly and inept. (But those signs were in Taipei County, not Taipei City.)

Chinese characters Pinyin and English mix
景華街 Jǐnghuá St.
景化街 Jǐnghuà St.
同安街 Tóng’ān St.
通安街 Tōng’ān St.
萬慶街 Wànqìng St.
萬青街 Wànqīng St.
五常街 Wǔcháng St.
武昌街 Wǔchāng St.
向陽路 Xiàngyáng Rd.
襄陽路 Xiāngyáng Rd.

Note the use of an apostrophe in “Tong’an.” For more on this, see ‘Hot-Milk Road’ and other street-name errors.

For a related entry, see Taipei street names and the monosyllabic myth.