ADVENTURES IN ASIA WITH LADYB AND GONGGONG

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ADVENTURES IN ASIA WITH LADYB AND GONGGONG

Story #10: 12 November 2024, Puli Town, Nantou County, Taiwan Province, China

Photos: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/15E9Y5patE/

Photo 1 above: LadyB and Gonggong reading traditional Chinese characters. YOWZER!

Photo 2 above: the non-Latin transliteration system, Zhuyin Fuhao, that Taiwan uses instead of Pinyin. Looks like Greek to us!

Dear Mila,

LadyB and I are wrapping our heads around Taiwan Province’s different way of writing Chinese. Mainland China, Singapore and 99% of people learning Chinese overseas use simplified characters and its Latin letter transliteration system called Pinyin. Taiwan and many overseas Chinese communities (San Francisco, Paris, etc.) continue to use the prewar traditional characters and the Wade-Giles Latin letter transliteration system.

About 3,500 of the most commonly used characters are simplified outside Taiwan. This difference can only be a few brush strokes, but some are very different. Here is an example,

English meaning: cluster

Mainland Chinese义丛 = 8 brush strokes

Taiwanese Chinese義叢  = 30 brush strokes

Both are pronounced: yìcóng, and this is the Mainland Pinyin transliteration. But, Taiwan still uses prewar Wade-Giles transliteration, which is written as “i ts’ung”. Not the same thing.

Yet, both Taiwan and Mainland China speak the same language, called Mandarin, so that part is not a problem.

Speaking, reading and writing Mainland Chinese is a HUGE advantage, but we are having to learn the traditional forms of all the simplified characters. Using the must-have Asian WhatsApp, called Line (it’s Japanese) we type simplified characters to our Taiwanese friends, and they respond with traditional characters. If we cannot decipher them, we copy and paste their messages into a translator on our phones, to get the simplified Mainland version of the same texts. Whew!

We loaded the Taiwanese keyboard onto our phones and computers, but they don’t use Pinyin (a-z). They use a prewar hieroglyphic script called “Zhuyin Fuhao”, which looks a lot like Japanese! This makes sense, because Taiwan was colonized by Japan, 1895-1945, and their writing system was adopted in 1913.

To complicate matters more, signage everywhere uses the Wade-Giles Latin letter system, to complement the Chinese. It is 90% different than Mainland Chinese Pinyin and we don’t know it. Thus, we spend time writing traditional characters on our phones to get the Mainland simplified equivalents. Whew again!

Patience and perseverance build character. In any case, LadyB never stops smiling. She’s an inspiration to us all!

Love, Grandfather Gonggong