{"id":2287,"date":"2009-05-11T19:32:53","date_gmt":"2009-05-11T11:32:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/?p=2287"},"modified":"2015-12-15T15:13:26","modified_gmt":"2015-12-15T07:13:26","slug":"tainan-county-signage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/2009\/tainan-county-signage\/","title":{"rendered":"Tainan County signage"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently spent a few days in Tainan County and, as is my habit, paid special attention to the signage. <\/p>\n

Although the signage in the city<\/em> of Tainan is primarily — or perhaps now exclusively — in Tongyong Pinyin (which is now supposed to be changed to Hanyu Pinyin), the situation in the remainder of Tainan County is not so clear-cut. Basically, from what I saw most Tainan County towns do not<\/em> have street signs in Tongyong. Indeed, many of them don’t have street signs in any romanization system whatsoever. <\/p>\n

In some<\/em> small towns there are some<\/em> local signs in Tongyong. For example, the following three: <\/p>\n

\"jhongjheng\"<\/p>\n

That one’s OK, as Tongyong goes. But as for the next two address plates, is it really too much to ask that the people who make signs learn what a baseline is and what it’s for, that sizes of letters should not be altered on a whim, and that amateurish font faces are not<\/em> to be used?<\/p>\n

\"Jhongsiao<\/p>\n

\"Pingdeng<\/p>\n

(Note the “Pingdeng” spelling above. It’s relevant to the next example.)<\/p>\n

OK, so those were in Tongyong Pinyin. But two signs about one block from where the previous shot was taken reveal more of the picture of local signage in Tainan County. <\/p>\n

Tongyong most certainly is not the only romanization found in Tainan County.
\n\"described<\/p>\n

Together on one pole we have “JIA DUNG RD. \/ 佳東路” and “Piandeng St. \/ 平等街”. “Jiadung” is MPS2<\/a> for what in Hanyu Pinyin would be Jiādōng<\/span> (Jiadong), while “Piandeng” is a typo (presumably from Tongong, as this is a newer sign that doesn’t match the style used on other MPS2-era signs in the area) for what in Hanyu Pinyin would be Píngděng<\/span> (Pingdeng). It would be spelled Pingdeng<\/em> in Tongyong Pinyin as well, as can be seen above. <\/p>\n

And some signs have no romanization whatsoever and should have been put out of their misery a long time ago.
\n\"peeling_sign\"<\/p>\n

But all sorts of old things can occasionally be found on the streets of Tainan County.
\n\"photo<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently spent a few days in Tainan County and, as is my habit, paid special attention to the signage. Although the signage in the city of Tainan is primarily — or perhaps now exclusively — in Tongyong Pinyin (which … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,41,106,32,20,19,48,72,3,52,31],"tags":[627,628],"class_list":["post-2287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chinese","category-english","category-hanyu","category-mandarin","category-pinyin","category-romanization","category-signage","category-tainan","category-taiwan","category-tongyong","category-writing-systems","tag-mps2","tag-tainan-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2287"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6999,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2287\/revisions\/6999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}