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The influence of simplified Chinese characters on the pronunciation of place names -- a case study of Yulin and Yunan

  • The Journal of Chinese Cultural Studies
  • 2019, (46), pp.289-298
  • DOI : 10.18212/cccs.2019..46.012
  • Publisher : The Society For Chinese Cultural Studies
  • Research Area : Humanities > Chinese Language and Literature > Chinese Literature > Chinese Culture
  • Received : October 16, 2019
  • Accepted : December 11, 2019
  • Published : November 30, 2019

LO, In Fat 1

1澳门大学

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The simplification movement of Chinese characters in the last century has a principle of "homophonic substitution", which is to combine some Chinese characters with the same pronunciation in mandarin to reduce the total number of characters in modern Chinese characters. Further, the same treatment was done on place names, replacing place names containing difficult characters with homophonic words in mandarin and fewer strokes in Chinese characters. For example, "ABC" is homophonic in mandarin. The simplified way of Chinese characters is to cancel the traditional "C" and let "B" accept all the meanings of "C". Finally, only "AB" is left in the simplified character. In this case "ABC" is "玉郁鬱[y51". Based on the above method, “C” county in Yunfu city, Guangdong province and “C” city in Guangxi province were changed into “A” county and “B” city. However, the policy makers did not consult the local people. The language in those two cities is the cantonese dialect of Chinese, and the three words "ABC" are pronounced totally differently in the cantonese dialect ([juk55 juk22 wat55]). In retrospect, it is not advisable to combine characters with unrelated meanings in order to reduce the total number of characters. Moreover, according to the principle of "name follows owner", if words (such as "ABC") are read in different places, they should not be combined reluctantly.

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