Why Hong Kong place names don't follow Jyutping
荃灣 is Tsuen Wan and 杏花邨 is Heng Fa Chuen, though 荃 and 邨 sound the same. We converted 2,870 official Hong Kong na...
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How Zhuyin (bopomofo) maps to pinyin, and where a simple chart goes wrong
Zhuyin's 37 symbols line up with pinyin letters, so a chart gets you most of the way. But against every syllable in Taiw...
The Chinese words Singapore and Malaysia use that the mainland does not
In Singapore you shop at the 巴刹, live in a 组屋 and wear a 大衣 that is a suit, not an overcoat. Here are the everyday...
How many Chinese characters cover 90% of what you read
About a thousand characters make up 90% of written Chinese, but in film subtitles it is 717, and half of what is said on...
Converting one passage between mainland, Taiwan and Hong Kong punctuation
Taiwan centres its full stops and the mainland puts them bottom left, yet it is the same character. Here is one passage...
Why common Cantonese characters like 嘅 and 咗 could not be typed in Big5
Eleven of the most-used written Cantonese characters, including 嘅, 咗 and 喺, could not be typed in Big5, the tradition...
The idioms that end a game of 成语接龙
In 成语接龙, the idiom chain game, some idioms leave the next player nothing to say. Here are the dead ends and two-move...
How China, Taiwan and Unicode each choose between 峰 and 峯
峰 and 峯 are one word with one sound. Whether they count as one character depends on who is asking. Here is how the mai...
How to type a Chinese character in Wubi, worked by hand
In Wubi, 汉 is typed I C Y, and the Y is not part of the character. This guide works eight characters through the 1986 e...
Why a Chinese character that works in GBK can break in Big5
GB2312, GBK and Big5 write the same Chinese character with different bytes, and none of them can write every character....
Counting the sounds a Mandarin tongue twister is built to drill
Mandarin tongue twisters are built from pairs of sounds that some speakers pronounce the same. Counting those pairs in t...
Four governments publish stroke order and only one publishes the rules
Taiwan publishes seventeen numbered principles. The mainland publishes 8,105 per-character orders and no principles at a...
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