{"id":4057,"date":"2011-02-09T19:09:45","date_gmt":"2011-02-09T11:09:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/?p=4057"},"modified":"2011-02-09T15:12:03","modified_gmt":"2011-02-09T07:12:03","slug":"banqiao-the-xinbei-ways","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/2011\/banqiao-the-xinbei-ways\/","title":{"rendered":"Banqiao &#8212; the Xinbei ways"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Xinbei, formerly known as Taipei County and now officially bearing the atrocious English name of &#8220;New Taipei City,&#8221; has made available an <a href=\"http:\/\/map.tpc.gov.tw\/en\/\">online map of its territory<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>Interestingly, the map is available not just in Mandarin with traditional Chinese characters and English with Hanyu Pinyin (<em>most<\/em> of the time &#8212; but more on that soon) but also in Mandarin with <em>simplified<\/em> Chinese characters. A Japanese interface is also available.<\/p>\n<p>The interface for all versions opens to a map centered on Xinbei City Hall. What struck me upon seeing this for the first time was that, <em>in just one small section, Banqiao is spelled four different ways<\/em>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Banqiao (Hanyu Pinyin)<\/li>\n<li>Panchiao (bastardized Wade-Giles)<\/li>\n<li>Ban-Chiau (MPS2, with an added hyphen)<\/li>\n<li>Banciao (Tongyong Pinyin)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Click the map to see an enlargement.<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/news_photos\/2011\/02\/xinbei_banqiao_map.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/news_photos\/2011\/02\/xinbei_banqiao_map_slice.gif\" alt=\"click for larger version\" title=\"xinbei_banqiao_map_slice\" width=\"505\" height=\"145\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-4061\" srcset=\"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/news_photos\/2011\/02\/xinbei_banqiao_map_slice.gif 505w, https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/news_photos\/2011\/02\/xinbei_banqiao_map_slice-300x86.gif 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 505px) 100vw, 505px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I want to stress that these are not typos. These are the result of an inattention to detail that is all too common here. <\/p>\n<p>The spelling for the <span style=\"text-decoration: line-through;\">city<\/span>, er, district is also wrong in the interface, with Tongyong used. Since Banqiao is the seat of the Xinbei City Government and has more than half a million inhabitants,<span style=\"position: relative; top: -.3em;\">*<\/span>, it&#8217;s not exactly so obscure that spelling its name correctly should be much of a challenge. Tongyong and other systems also crop up in some other names outside the interface. <\/p>\n<p>It should be admitted, however, that the Xinbei map&#8217;s romanization is <em>still<\/em> better overall than the <a href=\"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/2009\/google-maps-switches-to-hanyu-pinyin-for-taiwan-sloppily\/\">error-filled mess issued by GooGle<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p><span style=\"position: relative; top: -.3em;\">*<\/span>: including me<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Xinbei, formerly known as Taipei County and now officially bearing the atrocious English name of &#8220;New Taipei City,&#8221; has made available an online map of its territory. Interestingly, the map is available not just in Mandarin with traditional Chinese characters &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/2011\/banqiao-the-xinbei-ways\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/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":[110,12,15,113,41,29,28,32,20,24,3,52],"tags":[689],"class_list":["post-4057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-banqiao","category-chinese","category-chinese-characters","category-computers","category-english","category-japanese","category-languages","category-mandarin","category-pinyin","category-taipei","category-taiwan","category-tongyong","tag-xinbei"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4057","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=4057"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4057\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4080,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4057\/revisions\/4080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}