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Big Pinyin on Chengdu Storefronts
Fan Yiying and Gu Peng have posted a story at Sixth Tone that is both surprising and not surprising at all: State Media Criticizes Chengdu Shop Signs in Romanized Chinese. The main points I’d like to...
View ArticlePinyin, US trademark law, and myths about Chinese characters
芝麻 vs. ZHIMA The Mandarin word for “sesame” is zhīma (written “芝麻” in Chinese characters). That’s all the Mandarin anyone will need to know for this post. But if any of you non-Mandarin speakers are...
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Turkey, Türkiye, and Chinese characters
Victor Mair’s recent post at Language Log on Transcription vs. transliteration vs. translation in cartography brought to mind last year’s Turkey/Türkiye situation, which I meant to write about at the...
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OMG, another rabbit pun!
Another pun for the Year of the Rabbit Back to Schoo!! [sic] 兔然開學 OMG This is notable mainly for writing the word “tūrán” (“suddenly”) as “兔然” rather than properly as “突然”. The key is that “兔” is the...
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OMG, it’s nougat
My post about a month ago on another pun for the Year of the Rabbit was in part an excuse for me to note how common “OMG” (oh my God) has become in Taiwan. Indeed, it should be considered not just...
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Taipei MRT’s new in-car signage sucks
For the past few months, one can occasionally spot trains along the Taipei MRT’s blue line (aka the Ban-Nan line, for the Banqiao–Nangang line of the subway system) sporting a new style of above-door...
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If you ever find yourself stuck on how to pronounce English
It’s times like this I especially miss John DeFrancis. How he would have loved this! It’s partially an example of what he dubbed “Singlish” — not Singapore English but Sino-English, the tortured...
View ArticleThe most common given names in Taiwan, by decade
Some names have waxed and waned in popularity in Taiwan over the past century or so. This post gives tables of the top-three names for each decade (as calculated by the ROC calendar). In this post, I...
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Reagan candy
From watching a brief documentary piece on TV about how jelly beans are made, I learned a new Taiwan-specific Mandarin term: Léigēn táng (雷根糖). Leigen is a Mandarinization of the name of Ronald...
View ArticleMost common baby names in China, 2020
What were the most common names for newborn babies in China in 2020? Please note that some names appear more than once (Yichen three times in the top 10 for boys, and Yinuo and Yutong twice in the top...
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Mi casa es su kasha
I occasionally snap photos of instances of Chinese characters being used to write English (e.g., dog, butterfly, crunchy, oh my god). Here’s something that at least in Taiwan is far more rare: Chinese...
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OEC is D-licious
Recently, on my way to Wulai (just south of Taipei), I spotted an interesting sign. Normally, the combination of “interesting sign” and “Wulai” means something in a language of one of Taiwan’s...
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‘My Bunun name is …’
A candidate for the Indigenous constituency in Taiwan’s Legislature has, in protest over government policies mandating the use of Chinese characters, changed her name to “李我要單列族名我的布農族名字是Savungaz...
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San Francisco politicians and what constitutes a Chinese name
San Francisco will begin its own enforcement of a 2019 bill that places restrictions on the use of self-submitted Chinese names (i.e., names as written in Chinese characters), requiring that...
View ArticleChinese characters no longer required for Taiwan Aborigine names
Last week Taiwan’s legislature passed an amendment stating that members of Taiwan’s tribes will no longer be forced to adopt names written in Chinese characters. Instead, their names can be presented...
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