Archive for Spelling
March 27, 2023 @ 11:54 pm· Filed by Victor Mair under Bilingualism, Errors, Grammar, Spelling
From Taiwan News (3/25/23), by Keoni Everington:
"Taiwanese 'Hello Kitty' English-Chinese dictionary has 70 'egregious errors'
Publisher ACME Cultural Enterprise Co has admitted errors but not recalled dictionaries"

Cover of dictionary, example of misspelling. (Eryk Smith photo)
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February 2, 2023 @ 1:56 pm· Filed by Victor Mair under Language and culture, Language and religion, Lost in translation, Spelling
From the Facebook account of Mei Han:
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January 6, 2023 @ 9:49 am· Filed by Victor Mair under Alphabets, Romanization, Slang, Spelling, Swear words
Dave Thomas recently watched a Chinese movie with a liberal sprinkling (more than fifty instances) of alphabet letters substituting for Chinese characters in the closed captions. The title of the movie is "Yǒng bù huítóu 永不回頭" ("Never Back Off" [official English title]; "Never Look Back"). Here's a small selection of the partially alphabetized expressions:
bié B wǒ 别B我 | B = bī 逼 || "don't force / push me"
nǐ shì gè chòuBzi 你是个臭B子 | B = bī 屄 || "you are a stinky / smelly cunt"
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December 11, 2022 @ 8:04 am· Filed by Victor Mair under Pronunciation, Spelling
I started to ponder this problem because, over in the comments section of "The value and validity of translation for learning classical languages" (12/9/22) where we are having an energetic discussion about how to pronounce "www", Philip Taylor averred, "I pronounce it as 'World-wide web' (i.e., three syllables)".
That took me a bit aback. Made me stop and think.
It must mean that Philip, and most people, I suppose, think they pronounce "world" as though it had one syllable. Fair enough. That's what all dictionaries and online resources I've consulted hold: "world" has only one syllable.
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July 28, 2022 @ 12:28 pm· Filed by Victor Mair under Pronunciation, Spelling
From Mark Swofford in Taiwan:
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July 27, 2022 @ 11:05 pm· Filed by Victor Mair under Alphabets, Language and ethnicity, Multilingualism, Phonetics and phonology, Signs, Spelling
Photographs by Mark Swofford from Fuxing District of Taoyuan City:
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June 4, 2022 @ 12:55 pm· Filed by Victor Mair under Contests, Spelling
This report can be relatively perfunctory, because the results are almost always a foregone conclusion. After a hiatus because of the pandemic lockdowns and then an incredible shocker last year (see "Selected readings" below), there are basically no surprises… though the format has evolved.
The new thing this time was a "spell-off" that kicked in if no winner came out after a certain number of rounds. It was hard to bring the previous bees to a conclusive end because the participants were so consummately well prepared — there was an 8-way tie in 2019. I like the new format because, not only does it eliminate overly long proceedings and multiple ties, it also adds an element of extra drama and speed to the finale. The unsurprising thing this year was that 11 out of 13 finalists looked to be of Indian origin. (source)
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March 3, 2022 @ 9:54 am· Filed by Victor Mair under Names, Phonetics and phonology, Spelling, Topolects, Toponymy, Variation
In studying the history of the Chinese Imperial examination system, I came upon an individual named Stafford Northcote (1818-1887), 1st Earl of Iddesleigh, who was instrumental in devising the British civil service. Naturally, I tried to pronounce the name of the village he was from, but couldn't quite wrap my head and tongue around it. So I decided I'd better do a bit of research on the history of Iddesleigh to see what topolectal gems lay hidden in that perplexing concatenation of six consonants and four vowels.
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March 1, 2022 @ 6:01 pm· Filed by Victor Mair under Language and politics, Language and the military, Names, Orthography, Spelling
[This is a guest post by Nathan Hopson]
Like many around the world, I have been deeply saddened by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. I have been watching news from around the world, including Japan. In addition to the actual war itself, and to the sometimes inane (studio talking-head) coverage of the war as some kind of horse race, I have been disturbed by the Japanese media’s failure to update the orthography of Ukrainian cities such as the capital, Kyiv.
Not a single domestic news outlet I am aware of―including the public broadcaster, NHK―has dropped the Soviet-era Russian name “Kiev” (キエフ) to replace it with Kyiv. CNN’s Japanese site, for instance, has similarly failed to revise its choice of katakana.
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February 22, 2022 @ 7:13 am· Filed by Victor Mair under Pronunciation, Spelling
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January 6, 2022 @ 10:01 am· Filed by Victor Mair under Alphabets, Spelling
From Agni Gopireddy (the title is as they gave it):
If one likes the idea, one may be able to use it for pinyin advocacy. The reason for this idea is mainly to make pinyin take up less space, which would mitigate one of the disadvantages it has relative to Chinese characters. Here are some mockups of how such an idea would look:
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December 21, 2021 @ 10:41 pm· Filed by Victor Mair under Alphabets, Romanization, Spelling, Topolects
Tweet from Alan DAI:
[Click on the photograph to see the complete Twitter thread, which has additional illustrations of printed Latinxua texts.]
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September 3, 2021 @ 1:09 pm· Filed by Victor Mair under Spelling
I'm sitting in an Ethiopian restaurant eating lunch. I overhear the following conversation among the owner of the restaurant, a workman who had come in to fix something, and a helpful American sitting nearby.
OWNER: How much?
WORKMAN: That will be five niney.
[VHM: Of course, the two Ethiopians could speak Amharic to each other, but the owner was getting ready to write a check, so they had to get the amount right in English.]
OWNER: Five nineteen or five ninety?
WORKMAN: Five niney. Five nine 0.
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