Alphabetic "Mr." and "Mrs. / Ms." in Chinese

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Post by @ProfundumPhoto@toot.community
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Before this phenomenon was called to my attention by .Gábor Ugray, I had never seen or heard of it before, so I had to do a bit of research to figure it out.

My conclusion is that 'r stands for "Mr." and that 's stands for "Mrs. / Ms.".  This site was helpful.

As for the sign, it says:

Bǎnmiàn chūzū

版面出租

"Space for rent"

One more step for the alphabetization and Englishization of Sinitic.

 

Selected readings

[Thanks to Zhaofei Chen and Jing Hu]



4 Comments

  1. ohwilleke said,

    December 16, 2024 @ 5:14 pm

    Too bad. I was rooting for the pirate theory.

  2. Jonathan Smith said,

    December 16, 2024 @ 6:27 pm

    This phenomenon was mused about (wrongly) on LL years ago, resolved around here

  3. Mark S. said,

    December 18, 2024 @ 9:14 am

    I've just posted a companion photo of an example in Banqiao, Taiwan of 's.

  4. David Marjanović said,

    December 18, 2024 @ 11:47 am

    One more step for the alphabetization and Englishization of Sinitic.

    Actually, Prof. Mair, I think this is another of your favorite topics: disyllabic characters. 'r is now a character for the disyllabic word xiānshēng

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