Both my phrasebooks and my dictionary say that postcard is ming2xin4pian4, but they spell it differently. Which is correct: 明信片 or 名信片? I'm learning Mandarin Chinese.
I'm pretty sure... though there have been several instances of 'western' words being changed multiple times in Chinese... not sure if this is a case of it or not, but I do think that its the 'bright' rather than the 'name' character there.
明信片 - the contents of the message are in the open, hence, the "bright" letter card. (bright = obvious/easily seen). I believe this is the correct spelling. 名信片 - this spelling is likely influenced by 名片, and I believe you'll find this more in Taiwan. As for possible reasons, it might be because in Taiwanese, you call a business card "meishi" (from the Japanese), talk about meishis and 明信片 long enough, and you might get something like this. Personally, I prefer this spelling, because I've seen it more often.
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I'm pretty sure... though there have been several instances of 'western' words being changed multiple times in Chinese... not sure if this is a case of it or not, but I do think that its the 'bright' rather than the 'name' character there.
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名信片 - this spelling is likely influenced by 名片, and I believe you'll find this more in Taiwan. As for possible reasons, it might be because in Taiwanese, you call a business card "meishi" (from the Japanese), talk about meishis and 明信片 long enough, and you might get something like this. Personally, I prefer this spelling, because I've seen it more often.
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