Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site bunny.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!genrad!panda!talcott!harvard!bunny!mkw0 From: mkw0@bunny.UUCP (Maurice Wong) Newsgroups: net.nlang Subject: Re: Worst of the Bay Message-ID: <164@bunny.UUCP> Date: Fri, 16-Aug-85 09:45:51 EDT Article-I.D.: bunny.164 Posted: Fri Aug 16 09:45:51 1985 Date-Received: Wed, 21-Aug-85 06:09:23 EDT References: <450@olivee.UUCP> <132@cadsys.UUCP> <805@ptsfa.UUCP> Organization: GTE Laboratories, Waltham, MA Lines: 43 > In article <132@cadsys.UUCP> bbaker@cadsys.UUCP (William Baker) writes: > >> Well, once again I've stumbled onto another incredibly BAD > >> eating establishment. What's amazing is that it has just... > >> > >> Its name - Tai Pan (Inc.) > > > >Ironically, a tai-pan is the chinese word for the master of a whorehouse > >or a public toilet. It's amazing the things you pick up from > >reading too many James Clavell novels... > > Not necessarily. Many different Chinese syllables get transliterated > the same way in English if only for the fact that distinguishing > tones are not indicated in the transliteration. > -- > +--------------+-------------------------------+ > | Rob Bernardo | Pacific Bell | > +--------------+ 2600 Camino Ramon, Room 4E700 | > | 415-823-2417 | San Ramon, California 94583 | > +--------------+-------------------------------+---------+ > | ihnp4!ptsfa!rob | > | {nsc,ucbvax,decwrl,amd,fortune,zehntel}!dual!ptsfa!rob | > +--------------------------------------------------------+ Right! When tones are missing, it's anybody's guess what the original Chinese characters are. To make things worst, we don't know if the transliteration is from Cantonese or Mandarin, or even some other dialects. As if that's not confusing enough, many transliterations are done without any distinction between 'b' and 'p', 'd' and 't', 'g' and 'k' (actually an unaspirated/aspirated distinction in Chinese, not the same as the voice/voiceless distinction in English), so that 'tai pan' might actually be any of the following: tai pan, dai pan, dai ban, tai ban Now add on top of that the tonal distinctions that are not shown--4 in Mandarin, 6 in Cantonese, the possibilities are numerous, even after eliminating specific tone and syllable cominations that don't exist, and eliminating characters that are not usually used as proper names. -- Maurice Wong ARPA or CSnet : wong%gte-labs.csnet@csnet-relay UUCP: ...harvard!bunny!mkw0