[Multilingual Monday[ Transliteration Woes

[aadroma]

So let me be clear: I love non-Latin scripts. One of the joys I have in language study is learning to decode new scripts The "syllable building" of Korean, the root system of Arabic and Hebrew, the focus on meaning with Chinese characters -- they all fascinate me, and a bit of the personality and logic of a language can (usually!) be seen in its

Comments

Route 66 in Japaneese - wow.

[geargail]

My goodness - could you imagine seeing through the eyes of someone in the 1940's (( This was not a good time, in the U.S.)) The Geocatching thing was probably the most interesting find, ever. The idea of just writing a simple road trip in Kanji / Manga Style

I'm certain I've mentioned this before

[caestus]

I used to like transliterating my given name into Chinese for the amusement of my grade school aged students. B[u]RenDan, you can guess the characters. Hint: use the "-dan" terminal that is rudest.

[muckefuck]

Bopomofo (or, to give its proper name, Zhuyin Fuhao) is only used by the Taiwanese. And I've never seen it used on its own, only as rubi text. When the Taiwanese need to transcribe something for which there are no characters...well, let's just say that the results can be interesting.

[pne]

I've never seen [bopomofo] used on its own

I think I've heard of grade school readers written completely or partially in bopomofo.

But that's a rather restricted genre of "literature".

[muckefuck]

Incidentally, 窩夫 may be the only Chinese word I've ever seen that's pronounced identically--right down to the tone!--in both Cantonese and Mandarin.

[philbutrin]

i ran into a in interesting transliteration lately. i've downloaded a bunch of free japanese apps for my ipod, and in stumbling through one description, i ran across アップリ for "app". i was expecting アップ, and was wondering why they transliterated "appli" instead.

then i discovered that アップ is used for "up", as in レベルがアップする -- which i assume means "to level up" or "to go up a level". so i guess アップリ is a compromise due to the fact that ア has to do double duty as a "u" sound and an "a" sound.