一、台北市路牌；二、漢語拼音
Tom Smith
對英語系人士而言，最準的是耶魯拼音．問題是除了耶魯大學外沒
人用．
"OιO" 寫道：
>
> 不是澆冷水，只是陳述現實。要在台灣推行漢語拼音，我覺得不樂觀
> 。整個台灣社會瀰漫著一股「去中國化」的態度，而漢語拼音在台灣
> 一向被等同於「中國拼音」，所以難被接受。另外，一般人不會需要
> 用拉丁字母拼寫國語，所以對一般人來說，反正是給外國人看的，自
> 己不會用到，什麼拼音都一樣，一致就好。而一般人眼中的外國人又
> 多是「講英語的人」，所以他們會用英語的發音來看各種拼音方案拼
> 得「準不準」。用這種心態來看，漢語拼音當然是最糟的；誰會念那
> 些 X、C、Q、Z、ZH 呀！
>
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Giuseppe Macliovelli
"OιO" 寫道：
> 不是澆冷水，只是陳述現實。要在台灣推行漢語拼音，我覺得不樂觀
> 。整個台灣社會瀰漫著一股「去中國化」的態度，而漢語拼音在台灣
> 一向被等同於「中國拼音」，所以難被接受。另外，一般人不會需要
> 用拉丁字母拼寫國語，所以對一般人來說，反正是給外國人看的，自
> 己不會用到，什麼拼音都一樣，一致就好。而一般人眼中的外國人又
> 多是「講英語的人」，所以他們會用英語的發音來看各種拼音方案拼
> 得「準不準」。用這種心態來看，漢語拼音當然是最糟的；誰會念那
> 些 X、C、Q、Z、ZH 呀！
這真是切中要點!
Giuseppe Macliovelli
Tom Smith 寫道：
> 渶語拼音最糟？Peking 會比Beijing準？
Qingdao會比Tsingtao好嗎? Qinghua會比Tsinghua好嗎? 沒搞錯吧！
> 對英語系人士而言，最準的是耶魯拼音．問題是除了耶魯大學外沒
> 人用．
我認為這是正確的。但Wade-Giles也是英語人士所設計，最重要的是它的
歷史悠久。早年的美國通商中國，還有傳教和漢學都使用Wade-Giles法。Yale
system是二十世紀中才為美國軍人設計的。比漢語拼音早不了幾年。
S嶵astien-J廨獽e W K Hew
北平 Peking
廣州 Canton
廣東 Kwangtung
潮州 Teochew
汕頭 Swatow
香港 Hong Kong
九龍 Kowloon
澳門 Macau
福州 Foochow
福建 Fukien
廈門 Amoy
南京 Nanking
西藏 Tibet
拉薩 Lhasa
旅順 Port Arthur
大連 Dairen
蒙古 Mongolia
西安 Sian
青島 Tsingtao
四川 Szechwan
臺北 Taipei
浙江 Chekiang
吉林 Kirin
河北 Hopeh
哈爾濱 Harbin
張家口 Kalgan
Sebastien
Giuseppe Macliovelli <wuzu...@ms33.hinet.net> wrote in message
> "OιO" 寫道：
>
> > 不是澆冷水，只是陳述現實。要在台灣推行漢語拼音，我覺得不樂觀
> > 。整個台灣社會瀰漫著一股「去中國化」的態度，而漢語拼音在台灣
> > 一向被等同於「中國拼音」，所以難被接受。另外，一般人不會需要
> > 用拉丁字母拼寫國語，所以對一般人來說，反正是給外國人看的，自
> > 己不會用到，什麼拼音都一樣，一致就好。而一般人眼中的外國人又
> > 多是「講英語的人」，所以他們會用英語的發音來看各種拼音方案拼
> > 得「準不準」。用這種心態來看，漢語拼音當然是最糟的；誰會念那
> > 些 X、C、Q、Z、ZH 呀！
>
> 這真是切中要點!
>
Giuseppe Macliovelli
> 無論哪一個拼音方案最準, 許多中國城市地區已有了普遍接受的英文名，績習難改。
正面說就是沿用成習，又習之已久的用法。
> 北平 Peking
> 廣州 Canton
> 廣東 Kwangtung
> 潮州 Teochew
> 汕頭 Swatow
> 香港 Hong Kong
> 九龍 Kowloon
> 澳門 Macau
> 福州 Foochow
> 福建 Fukien
還有Hokkien?
> 廈門 Amoy
> 南京 Nanking
> 西藏 Tibet
> 拉薩 Lhasa
> 旅順 Port Arthur
> 大連 Dairen
> 蒙古 Mongolia
> 西安 Sian
> 青島 Tsingtao
> 四川 Szechwan
> 臺北 Taipei
基隆 Keelung
臺灣 Formosa
> 浙江 Chekiang
> 吉林 Kirin
> 河北 Hopeh
> 哈爾濱 Harbin
> 張家口 Kalgan
就是嘛!
Mike Wright
>
> 無論哪一個拼音方案最準, 許多中國城市地區已有了普遍接受的英文名，績習難改。
A quick Web search for a few typical examples gave the following
number of hits (all rounded down to the next hundred, except for Nan-ching):
Tsingtao 600 (lots of beer hits for Tsingtao)
Qingdao 3,200
Amoy 700
Xiamen 3,600
Szechwan 1,500 (lots of restaurant hits for Szechwan)
Sichuan 7,100
Teochew 300
Chaozhou 500
Nan-ching 50
Nanking 3,200
Nanjing 13,800
Hokkien 600 (most often refers to the language, not to the province)
Fukien 600
Fujian 5,200
Peking 22,300 (1,200 of these were for "Peking duck", 200 for
"Peking Restaurant")
Peiping 200
Beijing 114,800
Swatow 100
Shantou 1,400
Canton 74,500
Guangzhou 13,000 (finally, the traditional name seems to have won out)
Of the Canton hits, 12,500 for Canton, NY; 15,900 for Canton, OH;
9,500 for Canton, CT, 7,500 were associated with "Switzerland", where
a canton is a political subdivision. 9,500 were associated with
"France".
Only 8,200 were associated with "China", 400 with "Chine", and 75 with
"Cina". There were fewer than 400 hits for "Canton City". So, it's a
bit tricky to analyze, and I don't plan to actually read all 74,500
Web pages. Maybe the traditional Chinese name didn't beat the new one
after all.
Sorry, but I think you're living in the past--and I don't think even
Chiang Kai-shek would go for Port Arthur (which, by the way, is where
Janice Joplin grew up).
The Web is not the world, but it does show some current trends. The
old names are on the way out. For the most part, only oldish people
and academics even know them, and most of us (the oldish ones, that
is) aren't particularly attached to them.
It's much like the 9,100 hits for "Ceylon" vs. 133,800 for "Sri
Lanka". Even latecomer "Myanmar" matches the old standard "Burma" with
42,800 hits. People adapt to changes. They don't normally pin their
hopes and dreams on the spellings of place names.
> 北平 Peking
> 廣州 Canton
> 廣東 Kwangtung
> 潮州 Teochew
> 汕頭 Swatow
> 香港 Hong Kong
> 九龍 Kowloon
> 澳門 Macau
> 福州 Foochow
> 福建 Fukien
> 廈門 Amoy
> 南京 Nanking
> 西藏 Tibet
> 拉薩 Lhasa
> 旅順 Port Arthur
> 大連 Dairen
> 蒙古 Mongolia
> 西安 Sian
> 青島 Tsingtao
> 四川 Szechwan
> 臺北 Taipei
> 浙江 Chekiang
> 吉林 Kirin
> 河北 Hopeh
> 哈爾濱 Harbin
> 張家口 Kalgan
>
> Sebastien
>
> Giuseppe Macliovelli <wuzu...@ms33.hinet.net> wrote in message
> > "OιO" 寫道：
> >
> > > 不是澆冷水，只是陳述現實。要在台灣推行漢語拼音，我覺得不樂觀
> > > 。整個台灣社會瀰漫著一股「去中國化」的態度，而漢語拼音在台灣
> > > 一向被等同於「中國拼音」，所以難被接受。另外，一般人不會需要
> > > 用拉丁字母拼寫國語，所以對一般人來說，反正是給外國人看的，自
> > > 己不會用到，什麼拼音都一樣，一致就好。而一般人眼中的外國人又
> > > 多是「講英語的人」，所以他們會用英語的發音來看各種拼音方案拼
> > > 得「準不準」。用這種心態來看，漢語拼音當然是最糟的；誰會念那
> > > 些 X、C、Q、Z、ZH 呀！
> >
> > 這真是切中要點!
> >
--
Mike Wright
http://www.CoastalFog.net
__________________________________________________
Seldom does any linguist ever agree with any other
linguist about anything. -- Greg Lee
Sébastien-Jérôme W K Hew
shows very different result to those you obtained:
Canton(China) 53%, Guangzhou 8%, Canton(elsewhere) 39%
limited to China, Canton 86%, Guangzhou 14%
Peking 41%, Beijing 59%
Amoy 60%, Xiamen 40%
Nanking 76%, Nanjing 24%
Port Arthur 83%, Lushun 17% (Port Arthur limited to China)
Dairen 80%, Dalian 20% (Dalian restricted to China)
In the BNC, Peking is the only one of those searched for which the Hanyu
Pinyin name outnumbers the traditional English name. Indeed, Canton occurred
far more than Guangzhou, and I would venture to suggest than English
speakers are more familiar with the former than the latter.
Whilst I am not suggesting that the British National Corpus is truly
representative of usage as a whole, and the results I presented should be
taken without question, it nevertheless gives some indication of the
relative usage of the HYPN and the traditional names. The web at large might
not be very representative of usage as well.
I, for one, always use the traditional name, as it looks and feels so much
more familiar than the HYPN names, which look foreign and exotic. From my
friends and acquaintances, I get the impression that they use the
traditional names in preference to the HYPN too, except for Peking, the
distribution for which is roughly equal. For instance, all those I asked
were familiar with Canton, although most did not know Guangzhou. As for
Amoy, only two of those I asked knew either names, and both of them knew
both Amoy and Xiamen, although they said they preferred the former.
Also, you omitted certain places from your searches of the web (as did I,
but both of us know perfectly well what the result will be), e.g., Hong
Kong, Tibet, Kowloon, Taipei, Mongolia, etc., which almost never occur in
their HYPN form in the western world.
At any rate, I just wanted to show that the web-search may not be as
representative as you might have thought. Just as you concede that the web
does not represent the world, so I too concede that the BNC doesn't
represent the world. However, I thought I might just bring to light some
results that differ vastly to yours.
Regards,
Sebastien.
----------------------------------------
Mike Wright <dar...@CoastalFog.net> wrote in message
Giuseppe Macliovelli
Mike Wright 寫道：
> S嶵astien-J廨獽e W K Hew wrote:
> >
> > 無論哪一個拼音方案最準, 許多中國城市地區已有了普遍接受的英文名，績習難改。
>
> A quick Web search for a few typical examples gave the following
> number of hits (all rounded down to the next hundred, except for Nan-ching):
>
> Tsingtao 600 (lots of beer hits for Tsingtao)
> Qingdao 3,200
>
> Amoy 700
> Xiamen 3,600
>
> Szechwan 1,500 (lots of restaurant hits for Szechwan)
Because that is real life!:-)
> Sichuan 7,100
I speak Szechwan and Mandarin, and Sichuan is more 西泉 to me.
> Teochew 300
> Chaozhou 500
Go to Southeast Asia and ask the Teochew or Teochow descendents there if
they are Teochew/Teochow or Chaozhou.
I am seriously sure that he would certainly not go for "Jiang JiehShi".
> The Web is not the world, but it does show some current trends. The
> old names are on the way out. For the most part, only oldish people
> and academics even know them, and most of us (the oldish ones, that
> is) aren't particularly attached to them.
>
> It's much like the 9,100 hits for "Ceylon" vs. 133,800 for "Sri
> Lanka". Even latecomer "Myanmar" matches the old standard "Burma" with
> 42,800 hits. People adapt to changes. They don't normally pin their
> hopes and dreams on the spellings of place names.
>
Mike Wright
>
> Mike Wright 寫道：
>
> > S嶵astien-J廨獽e W K Hew wrote:
> > >
> > > 無論哪一個拼音方案最準, 許多中國城市地區已有了普遍接受的英文名，績習難改。
> >
> > A quick Web search for a few typical examples gave the following
> > number of hits (all rounded down to the next hundred, except for Nan-ching):
> >
> > Tsingtao 600 (lots of beer hits for Tsingtao)
> > Qingdao 3,200
> >
> > Amoy 700
> > Xiamen 3,600
> >
> > Szechwan 1,500 (lots of restaurant hits for Szechwan)
>
> Because that is real life!:-)
But it means that we are often dealing with fossilized names that
refer to a style of cooking, not to a real province full of real people.
> > Sichuan 7,100
>
> I speak Szechwan and Mandarin, and Sichuan is more 西泉 to me.
So, that only means that you are not comfortable with HYPY. What you
wrote would be Xiquan. Since vast numbers of people have no problem
learning this, including foreigners who are just beginning to learn
Mandarin, it just means that you need more practice. If you hate it so
much that you can't bear to learn it, then that is an emotional
problem for you, not a problem with the basic nature of HYPY.
> > Teochew 300
> > Chaozhou 500
>
> Go to Southeast Asia and ask the Teochew or Teochow descendents there if
> they are Teochew/Teochow or Chaozhou.
[...]
Sure, but it's because that's the name of the city in the dialect of
the city. Ask them to say it in Mandarin. People in Penang, whose
ancestors came from Yongchun, will say that they are from Eng-chhun,
but I doubt that you will see that on any map, because the town is not
important enough for Westerners to have learned the name previously.
But the modern trend is to render placenames in Mandarin for
international use. And the most common way of transcribing those names
is HYPY. I sincerely doubt that this trend will ever be reversed.
Mike Wright
>
> shows very different result to those you obtained:
>
> Canton(China) 53%, Guangzhou 8%, Canton(elsewhere) 39%
> limited to China, Canton 86%, Guangzhou 14%
> Peking 41%, Beijing 59%
> Amoy 60%, Xiamen 40%
> Nanking 76%, Nanjing 24%
> Port Arthur 83%, Lushun 17% (Port Arthur limited to China)
> Dairen 80%, Dalian 20% (Dalian restricted to China)
>
> In the BNC, Peking is the only one of those searched for which the Hanyu
> Pinyin name outnumbers the traditional English name. Indeed, Canton occurred
> far more than Guangzhou, and I would venture to suggest than English
> speakers are more familiar with the former than the latter.
>
> Whilst I am not suggesting that the British National Corpus is truly
> representative of usage as a whole, and the results I presented should be
> taken without question, it nevertheless gives some indication of the
> relative usage of the HYPN and the traditional names. The web at large might
> not be very representative of usage as well.
Well, the BNC is actually a much smaller sample, I believe. Here's a
description of it from http://info.ox.ac.uk/bnc/what/index.html: "The
corpus comprises 4,124 texts, of which 863 are transcribed from spoken
conversations or monologues." That's not a lot of sources. If "Canton"
is used 20,000 times in a single large work by a single writer, and if
"Guangzhou" is used one time in each of 2,000 different works, that
doesn't mean that "Canton" is ten times as popular as "Guangzhou".
I'm assuming that in most cases, a Web hit--using HotBot--represents a
source that is not shown again. That is, if "Canton" is mentioned ten
times on a Web page, that Web page is shown only once in the listing,
not ten times. Now that doesn't mean that a single Web site created by
a single individual might not have hundreds of pages, each of which
would show up in a Web search.
Furthermore, it's not clear how old any of the materials in the BNC
are. The Web page also says, "The Corpus is designed to represent as
wide a range of modern British English as possible. The written part
(90%) includes, for example, extracts from regional and national
newspapers, specialist periodicals and journals for all ages and
interests, academic books and popular fiction, published and
unpublished letters and memoranda, school and university essays, among
many other kinds of text."
Finally, it says nothing about US and other non-British usage. I
assume that "British" in this case also excludes Canada, Australia,
and New Zealand. It certainly says nothing about non-English-speaking
areas. I think that the Web is a more general international source.
> I, for one, always use the traditional name, as it looks and feels so much
> more familiar than the HYPN names, which look foreign and exotic.
Growing up as a non-Chinese in the US, I always found all Chinese
place names exotic. After learning Mandarin, only the odd conventional
spellings, such as "Teochew", "Whampoa", and "Amoy" seemed exotic.
Yale, HYPY, and Wade-Giles all seemed normal.
I doubt that any American who is unfamiliar with China would find
"Nanjing" more exotic than "Nanking", nor "Dalian" any stranger than "Dairen".
A really good test would be to ask randomly selected friends who don't
really know anything about China to name 30 Chinese cities or
provinces. I doubt that most will get beyond about ten. I just tried
it on my boss, who is pretty well-read and keeps up with current
affairs. I asked him to name all the Chinese cities and provinces that
he could. It took a few minutes, and some prompting from me to get the following:
Canton (cuisine)
Szechwan (cuisine--couldn't spell it, but his pronunciation wasn't too outrageous)
Hunan (cuisine)
Kowloon ( "Isn't there a 'Kow-ling' or something like that?")
Hong Kong
Shanghai
Beijing
Tibet
When I tried some more from our list, he said that he would have
recognized "Taipei" if he seen it written. Of course, his
pronunciations were what you'd expect. Also, of the ones he named, he
didn't seem real clear on which are provinces and which are cities,
with the exception of Beijing and TIbet. He did know that "Peking" is
another name for "Beijing", though he thought that it was spelled "Peeking".
I doubt that he is particularly unusual among Americans. Will the
average inhabitant of the UK, Canada, France, or Germany do much
better. I would expect more of college-educated Australians, but
perhaps I'm just dreaming.
> From my
> friends and acquaintances, I get the impression that they use the
> traditional names in preference to the HYPN too, except for Peking, the
> distribution for which is roughly equal. For instance, all those I asked
> were familiar with Canton, although most did not know Guangzhou. As for
> Amoy, only two of those I asked knew either names, and both of them knew
> both Amoy and Xiamen, although they said they preferred the former.
I'm certain that "Canton" is much more widely known to the general
American public than "Guangzhou". "Cantonese" is still commonly used
to refer both to the language and to the cuisine.
> Also, you omitted certain places from your searches of the web (as did I,
> but both of us know perfectly well what the result will be), e.g., Hong
> Kong, Tibet, Kowloon, Taipei, Mongolia, etc., which almost never occur in
> their HYPN form in the western world.
(You left out Macao, by the way.)
There are a couple of reasons for that. One is that official
pinyinization only applies to PRC placenames. This lets out Taipei
and, until recently, Hong Kong and Kowloon.
The other is that many people do not consider the Mandarin names of
Tibet and Mongolia to be the "real names", and most undoubtedly have
no idea what the actual Tibetan and Mongolian names are for those countries.
How likely an older form is to hang on depends in part on how well
known it is outside of China. In cases like "Amoy" vs. "Xiamen", the
general public in countries outside the area is probably not even
aware that such a place exists. Ask your friends about "Chin-chew", or
go to Texas or Louisiana and ask people where Port Arthur is--then try Australia.
> At any rate, I just wanted to show that the web-search may not be as
> representative as you might have thought. Just as you concede that the web
> does not represent the world, so I too concede that the BNC doesn't
> represent the world. However, I thought I might just bring to light some
> results that differ vastly to yours.
I appreciate it.
> ----------------------------------------
>
> Mike Wright <dar...@CoastalFog.net> wrote in message
>
> A quick Web search for a few typical examples gave the following
> number of hits (all rounded down to the next hundred, except for Nan-ching):
>
> Tsingtao 600 (lots of beer hits for Tsingtao)
> Qingdao 3,200
>
> Amoy 700
> Xiamen 3,600
>
> Szechwan 1,500 (lots of restaurant hits for Szechwan)
> Sichuan 7,100
>
> Teochew 300
> Chaozhou 500
>
> The Web is not the world, but it does show some current trends. The
> old names are on the way out. For the most part, only oldish people
> and academics even know them, and most of us (the oldish ones, that
> is) aren't particularly attached to them.
>
> It's much like the 9,100 hits for "Ceylon" vs. 133,800 for "Sri
> Lanka". Even latecomer "Myanmar" matches the old standard "Burma" with
> 42,800 hits. People adapt to changes. They don't normally pin their
> hopes and dreams on the spellings of place names.
--