Microsoft, Dzongkha, and “dialects”

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Dzongkha, the national language of Bhutan, has been relegated to the status of a dialect of Tibetan in Microsoft products. Rather than being labelled “Dzongkha” or “Bhutan-Dzongkha,” it is identified as “Tibetan – Bhutan” in the recently released beta version of Windows Vista. This is apparently an official Microsoft policy, likely aimed at appeasing China.

Microsoft has barred the use of the Bhutanese government’s official term for the Bhutanese language, Dzongkha, in any of its products, citing that the term had affiliations with the Dalai Lama. In an internal memorandum, Microsoft employees were told not to use the term Dzongkha in any Microsoft software, language lists or promotional materials since “Doing so implies affiliation with the Dalai Lama, which is not acceptable to the government of China. In this instance, replace “Dzongkha” with ‘Tibetan – Bhutan’.”

The Kingdom of Bhutan is situated in the Himalayas between India and Tibet. The state religion is the Drukpa Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism and Dzongkha is the official language. Dzongkha has a linguistic relationship to modern Tibetan in a similar way to that between Spanish and Italian.

The use of the word Dzongkha was graded by Microsoft as a ‘ship-stopper’, which means that a product may not be produced in any form until the problem is resolved. Microsoft has four levels of error severity, ship-stopper being the most severe.

Likely uses of the term may have been in Language Lists for Microsoft products, particularly the upcoming release of the next version of the Microsoft Windows operating system, Windows Vista. (Source: Microsoft Sensitive to Chinese Pressure on Bhutan Tibet Link, Tibet News. )

I didn’t know anything about Dzongkha, so I did some searching and found this:

Dzongkha is the modern Bhutanese vernacular language derived from Old Tibetan through many centuries of separate evolution on Bhutanese soil. Modern Dzongkha differs from Classical Tibetan as much as modern French does from Classical Latin. Only a few decades ago, the first attempts were undertaken to write in the vernacular in Bhutan, and the strong liturgical tradition in Bhutan has maintained the use of Classical Tibetan as the literary language to the present day. (source)

If this is accurate, the situation sounds familiar: A literary language (Classical Chinese in China, Classical Tibetan in Bhutan, Latin in Europe) continued to be used long after it was no longer spoken by the masses because over time the language had evolved in different ways in different places, becoming new languages (Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka, etc., in China; Dzongkha and Tibetan in Bhutan and Tibet; French, Spanish, Italian, etc. in Europe). But because people in different locales primarily used the same literary language rather than writing in their own [modern] languages, their mutually unintelligible languages were mislabeled “dialects.”

But even if everyone in Europe were to switch to writing in Latin or even Italian, that wouldn’t make French, Spanish, Portuguese, etc., “dialects.” Similarly, the use of Modern Standard Mandarin in China as the written language doesn’t mean that Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka, Taiwanese, etc., aren’t all separate languages.

And, lest I pass over the issue of romanization, Dzongkha is written in the Tibetan script and also has an official romanization system, “Roman Dzongkha,” which makes use of all the letters of the Roman alphabet other than F, V, Q, and X. Its three diacritic marks are the apostrophe, the circumflex accent, and the diaeresis. Bhutan, however, is not expected to replace Bhutanese orthography with Roman Dzongkha.

And for Suzanne, here’s a Dzongkha keyboard.

additional source: Dzongkha: out of Windows?, Kuensel, Monday, September 26, 2005.

‘Seoul’ in Chinese characters

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Last year I noted that South Korea had decided to call upon China to use different Chinese characters to refer to “Seoul”. Judging by a Xinhua article, it looks like China has finally agreed. Taiwan had already approved the change.

So 汉城 (“Hànchéng” in Mandarin) is out, and 首尔 (“Shǒu’ěr” in Mandarin) is in. I’ve seen the spelling “Shouer” in several stories. The proper Pinyin spelling, however, is “Shou’er.” The apostrophe is not optional.

In traditional Chinese characters, 汉城 is written 漢城 and 首尔 is written 首爾.

While it is important to keep in mind that the etymologies of words/names and the etymologies of Chinese characters used to write them are not at all the same thing, it can be hard to overlook the characters. Thus, the desire for a different Chinese name isn’t mere caprice on the part of South Korea. The 漢 in 漢城 is used to refer to the Han people (i.e. “Chinese”). This is the same “Han” as in Hanzi (漢字 / Chinese characters) and Hanyu Pinyin (漢語拼音). The 城 means “city” (as in 城市 chéngshì). 城 is also used for “wall,” as in the walls that used to surround most Chinese cities (Xi’an’s wall is almost the only one left), and as in chángchéng (长城 / the Great Wall). (I’m not sure which meaning came first, so I don’t know which way that metonomy flows, as it were.) So using Hancheng for Seoul could be seen as labelling it a Chinese city.

And then there’s the fact that “Hancheng” doesn’t sound a thing like “Seoul.” The Chinese languages take a variety of approaches to rendering foreign place names.

The Xinhua article says “Hancheng” came from the fact that Seoul originated as a walled city on Korea’s Han River. Interestingly, the Chinese “Han” also originally referred to a river (a different one, in China). Later, Han was the name of a dynasty (206 B.C.E. to 220 C.E.). Then it became associated with the most populous ethnic group in China and the language.

source of China’s announcement: Zhōngguó jìnrì jiāng kāishǐ qǐyòng Hànchéng shì Zhōngwén xīn yìmíng “Shǒu’ěr”, Xinhua, October 23, 2005:

Zhōngguó jìnrì jiāng kāishǐ qǐyòng Hànchéng shì Zhōngwén xīn yìmíng “Shǒu’ěr”
Xīnhuá wǎng Běijīng 10 yuè 23 rì diàn (jìzhě tán jīngjīng) jìzhě 23 rì cóng yǒuguān bùmén huòxī, Zhōngguó jìnrì jiāng kāishǐ qǐyòng Hánguó shǒudū Hànchéng shì de Zhōngwén xīn yìmíng “Shǒu’ěr”.
Hànchéng shì jīnnián 1 yuè xuānbù, jiāng gāi shì Zhōngwén yìmíng gǎiwéi “Shǒu’ěr”, Hán fāng xīwàng zài Zhōngguó yě shǐyòng zhè yīxīn yìmíng.
Cǐjiān zhuānjiā rènwéi, Hánguó shǒudū shǐyòng Zhōngwén yìmíng “Shǒu’ěr”, fúhé guójì guànlì, yě fúhé Zhōngguó yǒuguān wàiguó dìmíng fānyì shǐyòng guīdìng.
Shǒu’ěr lìshǐ yōujiǔ, gǔshí yīn wèiyú Hàn Jiāng zhī běi, démíng “Hànyáng”. 14 Shìjìmò Cháoxiǎn wángcháo dìngdū Hànyáng hòu, gǎimíng wéi “Hànchéng”.
Jìndài Cháoxiǎn Bàndǎo shòu Rìběn zhímín tǒngzhì qījiān, Hànchéng gǎichēng “Jīngchéng”.
1945 nián Cháoxiǎn Bàndǎo guāngfù hòu, gēngmíng wéi Cháoxiǎnyǔ gùyǒu cí, Luómǎ zìmǔ biāojì wéi “Seoul”, yǔyì wéi “shǒudū”.

writing Taiwanese: language, script, and myths

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I’ve been fortunate to be able to add to this site a major essay on Taiwan’s language situation, etymology, and scripts: “How to Forget Your Mother Tongue and Remember Your National Language,” by Victor H. Mair, a professor of Chinese language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania.

Here is the abstract:

The concept of guoyu (“national language”) is deeply embedded in the consciousness of everyone who has grown up in Taiwan during the past half century. Lately, however, people have begun to speak of their muyu (“mother tongue”) as being worthy of inculcation. Guoyu, of course, refers to Modern Standard Mandarin (MSM), which in China is called putonghua (“common speech”). Mandarin is not native to Taiwan, yet it is the national language of Taiwan’s citizens and is the sole official written language. In contrast, the citizens of Taiwan are discouraged from writing their native languages (viz., Taiwanese, Hakka, and various aboriginal languages) and it is only recently that it has been possible to teach them in the schools. This paper will examine the complicated processes whereby the citizens of Taiwan are transformed from speakers of their mother tongues to speakers and writers of the national language. This transformation does not rely purely on educational activities carried out in the schools, but involves political, social, and cultural factors as well. The transformation of Cantonese and Shanghainese speakers into Mandarin speakers and writers will also be examined for comparative purposes.

This, however, hardly does justice to the scope of the essay.

I strongly recommend reading this. Again, here is the link to the full essay.

emblem books

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Before Champollion deciphered the Rosetta stone and unlocked the secrets of hieroglyphic writing, many wrongly believed that Egyptian hieroglyphs represented an ideographic form of writing. Indeed, the very word “ideographic” comes to us via Champollion. “It is ironic that the scholar who demonstrated the falsity of the old belief in Egyptian as symbolic and nonphonetic should have helped to popularize terms that powerfully reinforced the popular misconception of both the Egyptian and Chinese systems of writing,” DeFrancis notes in his discussion of the ideographic myth.

During the Renaissance, notions of ideographic writing helped spawn the creation of emblem books, which in their most common form were volumes of allegorical illustrations accompanied by a motto, a short explanatory caption, and often a brief poem, too. (The English department of the Memorial University of Newfoundland has an example of an emblem book online.)

The fact that these images require extensive knowledge particular to certain cultures to read — and even then not with any guarantee of correctness — should have been enough to clue people in that the notion of ideographic reading was bunk. But myths die hard.

The library of the University of Illinois has more than 600 emblem books. A recent article in that school’s campus paper gives some information on emblem books and the ideas behind them:

Interestingly, the impetus for emblem books was a misunderstanding of Egyptian hieroglyphs by Renaissance Italy humanists. “They thought that hieroglyphs were a secret language … that they were ideograms that could more accurately relate hidden mysteries about human life and nature,” Mara Wade, University professor of German, said.

The Renaissance scholars created a form where the full meaning depended on an intricate interplay between text and image, both had to be understood in order to understand the meaning of the emblem. All elements drew on complex academic themes that demanded a high degree of knowledge for their creation. “It’s the key way the Renaissance views itself, in that you can have universal truths within a short exposition of picture and text. … It’s alien to how we gain knowledge these days,” Elizabeth Black, a graduate student who works with emblems, said.

The idea of emblems spread throughout Europe, with publications in every major language, including German, Italian, French, Latin, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and English. The emblem books are a hybrid not just of text and image, but also languages, with many containing text in both the vernacular language and Latin.

“It was the first time you could mass-produce images,” Wade said. Even in America, emblem books attained popularity, where Benjamin Franklin printed an emblem book in 1776.

What is interesting about the emblems is that they do not present simple images, repeating what is written in the text, as in an illustrated novel. Rather, they display “a picture of something commonplace in a new or unusual setting,” Wade said. For example, to convey the title “the way of the world” an emblem from 1617 displays a crayfish with a globe on his back. In order to understand the emblem, one must know that crayfish scuttle backwards. In other words, the point of the image is the moral message one step forward, two steps back.

The ambiguous nature of emblems has invited interpretation for centuries. Subsequent editions of emblem books were sometimes accompanied with “reams of commentaries helping to enlighten, expand or completely re-order the emblems,” Black said….

Emblem books waned in popularity around 1800 when the notion of “text-image puzzles,” as Wade characterizes emblems, became no longer attractive. Nonetheless, Wade said he sees a certain connection between emblems and modern marketing logos, such as the Nike swoosh.

“A lot of the earliest emblems were designs for printers’ marks,” Wade said. In the University’s Main Library reference room, the stained glass windows contain printers’ marks that can be interpreted both as types of emblems and types of modern advertising logos.

For more information, see the University of Illinois Library’s Open Emblem Portal.

source: Emblem books: First multimedia experience, Daily Illini, Friday, October 14, 2005.

For more on how people before our time saw such matters, see Peter DuPonceau, very much a man of the Age of Enlightenment, who criticized the ideographic myth.

another Taiwan tribe, another language?

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The Sakizaya people of Taiwan’s Hualian County want to be officially recognized as a tribe and registered their application with the government’s Council of Indigenous Peoples on Thursday, according to an article in the Taipei Times. Among their claims in support of their application is that they have a separate language from that of the Amis, a tribe they have lived among since the nineteenth century. A few examples of words are given in the final paragraph.

“According to how we handled this kind of application before, historians will analyze their [Sakizaya people] language, history and the locations where they are residing now, before we approve their application,” said Walis Pelin (瓦歷斯貝林), council chairman.

According to the council, Sakizaya tribe chief Hsu Cheng-wan (徐成丸) led a group of 100 Sakizaya people from Hualien county early yesterday morning and arrived at the council in the afternoon to deliver their application in person….

According to Hsu, currently, the “Sakizaya” people are classified as a part of the Amis tribe. But, the Sakizaya language and Amis language are two totally different languages, and both have individual historical backgrounds as well.

In 1878, when Taiwan was under the rule of the Qing Dynasty, Sakizaya people were slaughtered by Qing troops, so most Sakizaya people tried to escape from the Qing soldiers’ pursuit by changing their names and they have hidden themselves among the Amis tribe ever since. Up until today, most Sakizaya people can speak Amis language fluently, since the two tribes have been merged for more than a century.

I would hope that many people can still speak Amis fluently. But the sad fact is that many of the languages of Taiwan’s tribes are dying out.

After the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government recovered Taiwan from the Japanese in 1945, the Sakizaya have never been “independent,” and have always been regarded as a part of the Amis since there were more Amis people than Sakizaya people.

“But, we are still so different in many ways, in terms of language, culture, ways of living, etc.,” Hsu said. “Taiwan’s indigenous tribes are all unique minorities in this country, but we are all the original residents of the island. Every tribe is special and so are we.”

“For instance, we call clothes zigut but Amis people call them zui. We call a cow an but Amis people call it lalaba.”

source: Tribe wants official recognition, Taipei Times, Friday, October 14, 2005

‘I very want your deceitful surface’

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A newspaper in China ran the following humor piece: Qiānwàn bié luàn yòng pīnyīn shūrùfǎ! Fǒuzé… (“For heaven’s sake don’t sloppily use Pinyin input! Otherwise…” / 千万别乱用拼音输入法！否则……).

The piece takes the form of an imagined text-message conversation between two people identified as “GG” (gēge 哥哥) and “MM” (mèimei 妹妹), i.e. a boy and a girl (probably both around high school age).

The joke here is that the couple are being sloppy in how they’re using pinyin to input Chinese characters, occasionally resulting in incorrect characters being displayed.

GG：你嚎！
MM：你嚎！你在哪里？
GG：我在忘八里。你呢？
MM：我也在忘八里。
GG：你是哪里人？
MM：我是鬼州人。你呢？
GG：我是山洞人。
MM：你似男似女？
GG：我当然是难生了。你肯定是女生吧？
MM：是啊。
GG：你霉不霉？
MM：还行吧，人家都说我是大霉女。你衰不衰？
GG：还好啊，很多人都说我是大衰哥。
MM：真的呀？咱们多怜惜好不好？
GG：好呀，你的瘦鸡多少号？
MM：咱别用瘦鸡，瘦鸡多贵呀，你有球球吗？
GG：有啊。
MM：你球球多少号呀？
GG：＊＊＊＊＊＊＊，你真可爱，我很想同你奸面。
MM：慢慢来啊，虽然隔得远，也有鸡会啦。

Since this particular text is meant to be weird, I think the product of an online translator captures the spirit well:

GG: You are howling!
MM: You are howling! Where are you at?
GG: I in [expletive deleted] in. You?
MM: I also in [expletive deleted] in.
GG: Where person are you?
MM: I am the clever state person. You?
GG: I am the cave person.
MM: You resemble male resemble the female?
GG: I certainly was difficult to live. You definitely are the female student?
MM: Yes.
GG: Your mildew?
MM: Also good, others all said I am the big mildew female. Do you fade?
GG: Fortunately, very many people all said I am greatly fade the elder brother.
MM: Really? Are we take pity on good?
GG: Good, your thin chicken how many numbers?
MM: We with the thin chicken, the thin chicken be inexpensive, you have the ball ball?
GG: Has.
MM: Your ball ball how many numbers?
GG: [number] You are really lovable, I very want with your deceitful surface.
MM: Slowly comes, although separates far, also has the chicken to meet.

Readers in China will probably laugh and get the message that, yeah, you have to be careful with pinyin. Otherwise you could end up writing altogether the wrong thing.

But let’s have a look at the dialog when presented in pinyin. The text is clear, even with almost all of the tone marks omitted.

GG: Ni hao!
MM: Ni hao! Ni zai nali?
GG: Wo zai wǎngba li. Ni ne?
MM: Wo ye zai wǎngba li.
GG: Ni shi nali ren?
MM: Wo shi Guizhou ren. Ni ne?
GG: Wo shi Shandong ren.
MM: Ni shi nan shi nu?
GG: Wo dangran shi nansheng le. Ni kending shi nusheng ba?
MM: Shi’a.
GG: Ni mei bu mei?
MM: Hai xing ba, renjia dou shuo wo shi da meinu. Ni shuai bu shuai?
GG: Hai hao a. Hen duo ren dou shuo wo shi da shuaige.
MM: Zhen de ya? Zanmen duo liánxí, haobuhao?
GG: Hao ya. Ni de shouji duoshao hao?
MM: Zan bie yong shouji; shouji duo gui ya. Ni you qiuqiu ma?
GG: You a.
MM: Ni qiuqiu duoshao hao ya?
GG: [number]. Ni zhen ke’ai. Wo henxiang tong ni jianmian.
MM: Manman lai a, suiran ge de yuan, yeyou jihui la.

There’s no homophone problem here. That’s because Pinyin doesn’t really have one, despite frequent claims to the contrary.

A few words and expressions in the dialog strike me as odd: the use of wǎngba rather than wǎngka, for instance. And I’ve never heard of a “qiuqiu.” But that can probably be ascribed to differences between Mandarin in China and Taiwan, and to the fact that I’m not a young Mandarin speaker up on all the latest slang.

Here’s a rough English translation of what the couple was really saying:

GG: Hi!
MM: Hi! Where are you?
GG: I’m in an Internet café. How about you?
MM: I’m also in an Internet café.
GG: Where are you from?
MM: I’m from Guizhou. And you?
GG: I’m from Shandong.
MM: Are you a boy or a girl?
GG: I’m a guy, of course. You’re definitely a girl, right?
MM: Yes.
GG: Are you beautiful or not?
MM: Not bad. People all say I’m a real beauty. Are you handsome or not?
GG: I’m OK. Lots of people say I’m a really handsome guy.
MM: Really? Let’s keep in touch, OK?
GG: OK. What’s your cellphone number?
MM: I don’t use a cellphone; they’re expensive. Do you have a qiuqiu?
GG: Yes.
MM: What’s your qiuqiu number?
GG: [gives number]. You’re really cute. I’m eager to meet you.
MM: Don’t hurry. [This is a polite expression, not a brush-off.] Although we’re far apart, we’ll still have the opportunity to meet.

A side note: the Mandarin Chinese word for “opportunity” in the last line is jihui. Note that the word for “opportunity” is jihui, not just ji, which means something altogether different. So the next time someone tries to tell you that the Chinese word for “crisis” consists of “danger” plus “opportunity,” you can explain to them that, no, it doesn’t. For more on this, see “Crisis” Does Not Equal “Danger” Plus “Opportunity”.

Using Hakka in Taiwan’s legislature

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After the head of Taiwan’s Cabinet-level Council of Hakka Affairs gave a report in Hakka last week in the Legislature, KMT Legislator Zhū Fèngzhī (朱鳳芝) complained, saying this was a “self-abasing action” showing a “lack of confidence,” according to a report in the Taipei Times. This led to harsh words from representatives and organizations from the Hakka community.

According to Peter Lo (羅能平), the secretary-general of the Taiwanese Hakka Association of the World, Chu’s comment indicated that many Taiwanese politicians do not respect different ethnic groups and minorities.

“Chu’s comment was disrespectful and degrading to the Hakka people, and we want her to give an open apology to our people,” Lo said.

Yang Chang-chen (楊長鎮), director of the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Department of Ethnic Affairs, spoke of the discrimination he had received as a schoolboy for speaking Hakka, adding that Mandarin should not be imposed on everybody.

Yang said the opposition paid lip service to diversity, but in reality practiced “fake” diversity and imposed a “cultural quarantine,” in which Hakka rights were suppressed.

The department is pushing to establish a language equality law, and has encouraged Aboriginal legislators to give their official reports in their mother languages.

Former DPP chairman Lin Yi-hsiung (林義雄) said that the Legislative Yuan had “no class,” and that politicians were causing racial segregation and discrimination in Taiwan.

This isn’t the first time in recent years that conservative legislators have complained about the use in the Legislature of languages other than Mandarin.