Matt of No-sword has two recent posts (<gue> to fabulas and I just can’t stop talking about old Portugo-Japanese texts online) on translations into Japanese of several books related to Aesop. These books are from the late sixteenth century and are the work of Portuguese Jesuits. And they’re in R?maji.
Here’s a link to the fable of the horse and the ass. For more links, see Matt’s posts.
A recently published dictionary of Taishan — Táishān fāngyīn zìdiǎn (台山方音字典), edited by Dèng Jūn (邓钧) and Lín Róngyào (林荣耀) — has been selling relatively well, according to news reports. But I haven’t been able to find out much more, such as if the book is available for purchase online.
Wǒ de mùbēi shàng
qǐng wèiwǒ kèxià Luómǎ pīnyīn de chuántǒng míngzi
zài yòng Hànzì jiāzhù yìyīn
wǒ yào wǒ de zǐsūn xúnzhe jiāzú de chuántǒng mìngmíng fāngshì
ràng zhèxiē zǔxiān de míngzi liúchuán xiàqù我的墓碑上
請為我刻下羅馬拼音的傳統名字
再用漢字加註譯音
我要我的子孫循著家族的傳統命名方式
讓這些祖先的名字流傳下去
Rough translation:
On my tombstone
please carve my traditional name using romanization
then use a Chinese character phonetic transcription
I want my descendants to follow the family’s traditional name system
Let these ancestors’ name pass down through the generations
from Mùbēi shàng de míngzi (墓碑上的名字), by Kaing Lipay, a member of one of Taiwan’s indigenous peoples.
see also Q?ng zài w? de mùb?i kèshang chuánt?ng míngzi (??????????????????), CNA, June 10, 2006
Chih-Hao Tsai has a good post (in Mandarin) on the English and romanization in Kaohsiung’s signage: Gāoxióng Shì de Yīngwén lùbiāo — kǎoyàn nǐ de yǎnlì. He notes especially how the text in Latin letters is too small. The post also links to some of his other many writings on the topic.
I’ve had related conversations with officials in the Banqiao City Government and Taipei County Government. Upon hearing my complaints that new signs’ English and romanization are ridiculously small, the officials invariably answer me with something like, “It can’t be too small because we’re following the rules.”
Meanwhile, cities around Taiwan continue to waste taxpayer money putting up signs that don’t help.
Matt at No-sword talks about the uses of the letter W in Japan:
Many English initialisms are used in Japan, like CM for “commercial [movie]”, but W is a special letter: it can represent meaning all by itself. This is because it is generally pronounced “double” instead of “double-u”, so it’s handy for referring to things that are doubled.
Read the whole piece: Let the pretending to be injured begin.
New on Pinyin Info is the nearly complete text of Reform of the Chinese Written Language, a booklet from the PRC that dates back to 1958. Most of the essays, however, contain misconceptions about Chinese characters, romanization, and the nature of script reform, so this work is placed here on this site not as a recommended reading but as a historical reference. So, with that in mind, here are the essays:
Some people have the idea that because during the Cultural Revolution the Red Guards went about destroying much of China’s cultural heritage, they must have attacked Chinese characters and supported Pinyin. This idea is wrong. During that terrible time Pinyin was attacked, like so much else that was good in China.
With the fortieth anniversary of the beginning of the Cultural Revolution upon us, this might be a good time to bring out this selection from The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, by John DeFrancis:
In view of the fact that separate alphabetic treatment for the regionalects has been a virtually tabooed subject since 1949, it comes as a surprise that among the revelations following the downfall of the Gang of Four is an account by Prof. Huang Diancheng of Amoy University of the adaptation of Pinyin to the Southern Min speech of Amoy and its use in the production of anti-illiteracy textbooks and other activities. Huang reports that during the Cultural Revolution people possessing materials in Min alphabetic writing were denounced as “foreign lackeys” and were forced to take the material out to the street, kneel down alongside them, set them afire, and reduce them to ashes. Elsewhere repression of Pinyin in any form was undertaken by xenophobic Red Guards, themselves staunch supporters of character simplification, who tore down street signs written in Pinyin as evidence of subservience to foreigners.
The Nazi-like book-burning episode and other acts against the use of Pinyin are fitting testimony of the repression exercised against activities concerned with fundamental issues in Chinese writing reform. In these actions the positive idea that China should stand on its own feet without demeaning reliance on foreign aid was expressed in its most xenophobic form as a sort of anti-intellectual blood-and-soil nativism that constitutes a danger, still present, of a Chinese-style fascism. The young student storm troopers who sought to humble the old-time intellectuals, far from following Lu Xun in embracing the one system of writing that would have done the most to equalize things between illiterates and all those who had received an education, supported instead the lesser reform of character simplification that might enhance their own position relative to the older generation.
Aborigine politicians should use their original names, not Han Chinese names, or explain to their constituents why they don’t, the head of an aboriginal group called the Vine Cultural Association stated on Tuesday.
All eight of Taiwan’s legislators holding the seats reserved for Aborigines — Chen Ying, Liao Kuo-tung, Lin Cheng-er, Yang Jen-fu, Kao Chin Su-mei, Kung Wen-chi, Lin Chung-te, Tseng Hua-te — currently officially use “Chinese” names rather than Aborigine ones.
The head of Taiwan’s Council of Indigenous Peoples, however, does use his original name: Walis Pelin.
I’m waiting for someone to get on TV and talk about how few legislators who are Hoklo use Taiwanese rather than Mandarin forms for the romanizations of their names. (I could probably count them all on one hand, even though Taiwan has some 225 legislators.) Same thing for legislators who are Hakka but who don’t use the Hakka forms of their names in romanization.
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