Street Name Plates and Bus-stop Signs in BeiJing

by Zhang JuLi

This is not an independent article, but only provides a set of raw data to a relevant one listed in my home page. To facilitate the comparison, proposed modifications are also offered. The modification is quite simple: when writing PinYin without tone mark for a term consisting of two or more syllables, the first letter of each syllable is written in uppercase, while the other letters in lowercase. This will help the reader to locate the syllable boundaries, which is extremely important for reading writing of the tonal Chinese language.

It is worth noting again that neither the current nor modified PinYin are writing systems. They only indicate the sounds of the Chinese characters (HanZi) . So far there is no independent alphabetic writing for Chinese. The modified spellings carry the concept that syllable demarcation in the Chinese writing must be automatic and effortless. They will help the PinYin for easy reading. To date, this concept is totally ignored in current PinYin, which causes indifference and even aversions to the PinYin among native speakers of Chinese. Huge amounts of manpower, time, and construction materials have been wasted for the PinYin on those counter-efficient plates and signs. And the waste has been lasting too long. Reform is of utmost urgency.