Mathematical parking
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Sign on the campus of Zhōngguó kēxué jìshù dàxué 中国科学技术大学 (University of Science and Technology of China) telling people how to park:
tíng hǎo chēliàng de hánglièshì
停好车辆的行列式*
("park your vehicles well according to rows and columns")
*matrix determinant
zuò hǎo xiūyǎng de wéijīfēn
做好修养的微积分*
("cultivate yourself well to gradually accumulate points [i.e., merit]")
*calculus
Parking according to one's profession.
Selected readings
- "'AP (lambda) calculus' in the comics" (10/9/13)
- "The Derivational Fallacy" (10/20/08)
- "Don't worry, study linguistics" (7/26/09)
- "Linguists who count" (5/28/09)
AntC said,
May 13, 2023 @ 11:28 pm
Is there such a thing as tesselated herringbone parking? (second photo, one form of 'angle parking') How to say that?
Jerry Packard said,
May 14, 2023 @ 6:01 am
Mathematicians making clever puns!
JOHN S ROHSENOW said,
May 14, 2023 @ 3:55 pm
Is it possible that "weijifen" ('merit points"?) has something to do with China's "social credit system"? See: China Social Credit System Explained – How It Works [2023]
https://nhglobalpartners.com/china-social-credit-system-explained/
hatsu! said,
May 14, 2023 @ 8:49 pm
apparently this uni's located in a PRC province with some Wu speakers (Anhui) so I'll try to romanize this using Wiktionary's Wu romanization:
停好车辆(T:車輛)的*行列式
3din 2hau 1tsho 3lian 4tiq* 3hhan/3hhin 5liq 4seq
————————
做好修养(T:修**養)的*微积分(T:微積分)
2tsu 2hau 1ieu 3hhian 4tiq* 3mi/3vi 4jiq 1fen
(*note: to be more in line with colloquial Wu usage this particle'd have to be 個 (which can be pronounced as 5geq/5hheq/4eq/2ku from what I found out on Wiktionary; **I couldn't find a Wu pronunciation for this character unfortunately so I went with the one for 悠 – a character with similar phonetics in Old Chinese according to my research)
John F. Carr said,
May 19, 2023 @ 3:39 pm
hatsu! – I know a daughter of USTC professors, who grew up on campus. She only learned standard Mandarin. It is the language of the enclave. For all its geopgraphic proximity Wu might as well be Cantonese.
Makes me wonder how many people in China only know standard Mandarin.