Taipei - what's the juice?

[bhchao]

Actually Taipei women (born in Taiwan) tend to be less upfront or bluntly straightforward than their mainland counterparts.

The women who were born on the mainland whom I encountered in L.A., tend to be more "麤" in their communication styles than most I encountered from Taiwan.

By the way, this reminds me of a discussion I had with a waitress from Chongqing at restaurant in Rowland Heights. We sometimes discuss Chinese history during non-peak times. One time we started talking about women in China. She mentioned that Fujian women are one of the ugliest in China. I asked her, "What about women from Dalian?" She said, "They are very attractive." Finally I asked her, "What about Sichuan women?" She replied, "你看我就知道了"

Anyways I like straightforward directness and frankness. Some regions are better than others in making this pleasant to the ear.

[skylee]

Is the character "麤" commonly used in say, the US or Taiwan?

[cdn_in_bj]

Is the character "麤" commonly used in say, the US or Taiwan?

It is used in speech, although I don't know if it's written that way.

[skylee]

Wouldn't it be simply "粗"?

Unless it means "超遠/遙遠", the character "麤" is "「粗」之異體" or the same as "粗". Take a look -> http://140.111.1.40/yitib/frb/frb06230.htm

[Lu]

It's fine for someone who know a lot of languages, like Portuguese or Russian. How many Chinese you know who know both? How many westerners you know who know both? I am not talking about linguists or language students. We are not all linguists! In the modern China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore where pinyin would be used, Chinese know of English and English pronunciations and not the others.

Hence the misconception that pinyin is based on English. Which it is not, as you now know. Pinyin is loosely based on European languages, but in the end a system on its own. To learn how to pronounce pinyin q or c, it's not necessary to know Albanese or Polish or be a linguist, you can just learn how they are pronounced in pinyin.

If not for the foreigners, then for whom?

For the Chinese themselves, I presume. On one hand this was to make standardizing the language easier, and there were even plans to do away with characters altogether and replace it with pinyin.

(...) Why do Chinese need pinyin to learn Mandarin?

Perhaps because a lot of Chinese didn't speak Mandarin but a dialect, and had to learn the correct pronounciation. Pinyin came in helpful for that.

My knowledge of this has its limits, if you want to know more I suggest you find some books or articles about why and how pinyin was put together. That might also clarify why bopomofo was replaced by pinyin.

I am not talking about pronunciation here. I am talking about the design of pinyin, which is a modern design

Letters were chosen for sounds of Mandarin. Regardless of the letters, they were still to be pronounced in Mandarin.

and Mandarin's standard pronunciations had not changed during the period of designing this pinyin system.

Yes it has, that is, it has changed since pinyin was designed. The pronounciation of yuan is an example, and one that I actually heard on a recording of whatshisnameagain Zhao, who was a famous linguist at the time.

Like the pronunciations related to "un" sounds in various forms. They are not consistent, and that drives me crazy.

What skylee said. If you know the rules, it actually makes a lot of sense. But don't expect to be able to read it remotely correctly if you don't know the rules.

Lastly, my last post was intended purely informatively, and not a further attempt of picking at you, so no need to get angry. As I recall you grew up in Taiwan, so you probably won't have much knowledge of any romanization system. Taiwanese don't learn them in school, and would have little reason to learn them afterwards as they already have characters and bopomofo. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, but it does exhasperate me sometimes when people here have no idea whatsoever how to correctly spell Chinese sounds.

Edit: Another misconception seems to be that if Taiwan's capital is spelled Taipei, it must be pronounced 台配. This is not the case, the city is pronounced Taibei, no matter if it's written Taibei, Taipei, Taipeh or something else. It is apparently that same misconception that makes people (including someone living on the actual street) pronounce the 和平 in 和平東路 'hoping', like in 'I'm hoping for good weather'.

[adrianlondon]

Many languages have similar problems with place names, with the UK being a good example.

I doubt any foreigners would correctly pronounce the place "Leicester" until they'd been told it was "Lester".

[skylee]

And "Salisbury" as well.

[fireball9261]

Dear Lu,

Since you have not read my complete post about "If not for the foreigners, then for whom?". I will post it again for your information:

Chinese had the older style of 反切 (fan3 qie4) and the newer standard of 注音符號 (zhu4 yin fu2 hao4) for Chinese to learn Mandarin. Most of the symbols in 注音符號 are Chinese original radicals and have pronunciations that Chinese could recognize. It also used the principles of 反切 (fan3 qie4) to help spelling out the Mandarin pronunciation. The work was done and perfected in mainland China and before the Chinese Communist took over. Why do Chinese need pinyin to learn Mandarin? Therefore, I concluded it was for the foreigners. There are also other political reasons that I would not get into at this forum. For your information, Chinese had already come up with our own pronunciation system, and that is 注音符號 (zhu4 yin fu2 hao4).

If you still have not understood this posting, then I will spell it out for you, Chinese do not need the current pinyin system to standardized speaking pronunciation because 注音符號 (zhu4 yin fu2 hao4) was designed for this reason and was used for this reason.

[adrianlondon]

I thought most Chinese didn't know 注音符號?

[fireball9261]

It was in mainland China and taught to older mainland Chinese. The communist government decided to change it to pinyin system for reasons I wouldn't mention here. The system for western styled of pinyin (not necessarily the current system) and 注音符號 has always been a debating point among serious linguists and Chinese language scholars. The debates were never truly settled in the scholarly arena. However, there are also politics involved, so all scholarly debates are pointless in front of governmental power.

Now, due to the might of economic power (of Taiwan), the last time I went to China, I saw Chinese dictionaries with 注音符號 included in it among my grand-niece's study guides. I am not sure whether it was always in the mainland Chinese dictionaries or this is a recent phenomena?

[Lu]

Fireball, that I did not quote it does not mean I did not read it, and I felt that I addressed the issue you mention as good as I could when I said

'My knowledge of this has its limits, if you want to know more I suggest you find some books or articles about why and how pinyin was put together. That might also clarify why bopomofo was replaced by pinyin.'

(On a side note, I guess that a problem with fanqie would be that to know the pronounciation of one new character, you'd have to know the pronounciation of two others. Pinyin or bopomofo allow a child to read a book with some new characters, fanqie does not. Fanqie would also be useless in setting a standard pronounciation: if someone reads one character according to fangyan pronounciation, that's unlikely to change if the two characters explaining the correct pronounciation are also read in fangyan.)

Whether it was necessary at the time to develop pinyin is a question that can be argued about, but whatever the outcome of that debate, it's unlikely to change the fact that Hanyu Pinyin, and not bopomofo or fanqie, is now the leading system in large parts of the world, including China itself. I also do believe that if one learns pinyin, one finds that it is actually quite well thought out, not overly difficult, and not overly inconsistent.