Category Archives: pinyin

Taiwanese skit competition

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My mother in law will be a judge tomorrow in the Taipei County junior high school Taiwanese play contest, so my wife and I went over to the site of the competition today to pick up some material for her that hadn’t arrived through the mail yet. The stage was occupied today by groups from the county’s elementary schools, so we stayed to watch some of the 10-minute skits. A few things stood out, beyond the usual charming amateurism of youngsters in school plays.

All of the skits featured adults as well as children — actual adults, not just kids playing a role. Perhaps this is a cultural difference, because I can’t imagine that grownups would be included in children’s plays in America.

All of the skits also featured rural themes and/or the elderly. While there’s nothing wrong with this, I would have been much happier to see some skits in Taiwanese about astronauts, CEOs, scientists, glamorous movie stars, or even rap music stars. If Taiwanese speakers see their language as just of the past, or just of the countryside, it’s going to die.

I had a look at the script for one of the plays. It was almost entirely in Chinese characters, with a few words written in romanization and a sprinkling of zhuyin fuhao. Most unfortunate.

English in Guangzhou

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English names may be introduced in every public place in the growing southern city of Guangzhou.

The Guangzhou Language Committee said the city government has asked relevant departments and organizations to introduce English names for city streets, scenic spots, parks, residential areas, bus stops, metro stations, piers, museums and even public toilets.

The municipal government is striving to turn the city into an international metropolis.

Currently, most of the city’s public places have only pinyin or local Cantonese style names that confuse most foreigners.

At the same time, the language committee will soon launch a city-wide campaign to check English usage in the city.

The committee plans to set up a task force to help inspect all public places to further promote and standardize the use of English names.

The public venues that have no English names will be asked to provide one while those with inappropriate names or bad translations will be required to come up with a better alternative, an official from the committee said.

Cantonese style expressions widely used in the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions will no longer be considered English names.

New police cars are already being converted, with the pinyin of the Chinese word for police, “Jing Cha,” substituted by the word “police” on both sides of the car.

The first group of new patrol wagons were put into service in Guangzhou late last week.

By September 2006, all the patrol wagons in service will be replaced by the new 2004 versions, or re-painted in the new style that includes white, blue and yellow colours, said the official yesterday.

Meanwhile all the grass-roots police offices and sub-stations will also be required to put up signs that include their English names in front of the their gates before the end of the year to provide better service, the official added.

An English police hotline has also opened to serve the English-speaking people in Guangzhou.

From the China Daily.

Shanghai to rename streets, eliminating duplicates

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The city government will rename 339 streets across Shanghai to remove confusion caused by duplicate names….

Officials said the government hopes all repeated names will be changed by the end of next year.

Liu Bo, deputy director of the city’s place naming office, said yesterday that the task of renaming streets was far from easy, as door plates have to be replaced, ID cards updated, and related government documents replaced.

The city has many duplicate road names because suburban districts were allowed to choose the name of streets until 1999, according to the place naming office….

The bureau has launched a Website in pinyin and Chinese characters to help visitors pinpoint roads with the same name.

Usually an east-west street is named with a city name while a south-north street is named with a provincial name.

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