星期三, 二月 08, 2006

wikipedia上的Peking

首先是德文版,Peking:

Peking (chin. 北京 Běijīng, W.-G. Pei-ching) ist die Hauptstadt der Volksrepublik China und hat eine über dreitausendjährige Geschichte. Der chinesische Name lässt sich mit Nördliche Hauptstadt übersetzen. Peking ist heute eine Regierungsunmittelbare Stadt, das heißt sie ist direkt der Zentralregierung unterstellt und damit Provinzen, Autonomen Gebieten und Sonderverwaltungszonen gleichgestellt.

英文版里对Peking的描述,是在"Beijing"条目中:

The traditional customary name for Beijing in English is Peking. The term originated with French missionaries four hundred years ago, and corresponds to an older pronunciation predating a subsequent sound change in Mandarin from [kʲ] to [tɕ]. ([tɕ] is represented in pinyin as j, as in Beijing.)

而右侧表格中对于Beijing 的Name的描述中有:


NameChinese characters: 北京

Pinyin: Běijīng
Wade-Giles: Pei-ching;
Postal System Pinyin: Peking


那么,Postal System Pinyin条目里又是怎么说的呢:


In the early twentieth century, China (starting with the dying Qing Empire) used Postal (Office) System Pinyin (Traditional Chinese:郵政式拼音 Pinyin: Yóuzhèngshì Pīnyīn) (unrelated to the modern Hanyu Pinyin), based on Wade-Giles (in particularly, Herbert Giles's A Chinese-English Dictionary) for postal purposes, especially for placenames on letters and stamps, and was not for universal usage. It uses some already common European names of Chinese places that override the Wade-Giles system, and incorporate some dialectal pronunciations.

The postal system was decided after the Imperial Postal Joint-Session Conference (帝國郵電聯席會議) in spring 1906 in Shanghai.

Main differences with Wade-Giles include:

  • Complete lack of diacritic and accent marks.
  • Chi, ch'i, and hsi (pinyin ji, qi, and xi) are represented as either tsi, tsi, and si or ki, ki, and hi depending on historic pronunciation, e.g.,
  • Except being the sole vowel in the syllable, the Wade-Giles u become w, e.g.,
  • Guangdong, Guangxi, and Fujian placenames are to be Romanized from the local dialects, such as Hakka, Cantonese, and Min (systems also obtained from Giles' A Chinese-English Dictionary).
  • Popular pre-existing (from 19th century of earlier) European names for place in China are to be retained, such as those of the treaty ports.
    • Canton (Kuang-chou, Guangzhou)

See also: Romanization



这样看来,很多问题就容易解释多了。Peking是大清帝国官方用过的邮政拼音系统,似乎没有太大的疑问。尽管网上关于“帝國郵電聯席會議”的资料实在不多,但是,对待历史问题必要的考据癖总是比无端臆测来得更加有用一点。

杂感

新语丝,一个向以清除学术腐败著称的网站,最近竟然无聊的展开了“屁坑”大讨论。小小北大,一个被太祖武皇帝誉为“池浅王八多”的地方 ,居然要一般知识分子三番五次的上纲上线!由此可见,新雨丝还是个小庙,就像卖当劳拒收信用卡揭露出它的小店本质一样。

可悲的是,法帖的人中,居然还有不学无术,屁股决定大脑,想当然的排外粪清,没有搞清楚汉语拼音的来龙去脉和历史沿革,就给别人扣帽子(参见《P大的事还是B大的事?》)。怎奈文革问题至今没有清算彻底,看到这样的文字,固然也无可厚非。

依我看,这样规模的吵架/炒作是不成气候的表现。到头来,Peking还是Peking,Tsinghua还是Tsinghua。若真要一纸公文发下来,smth岂不是要改成smqh? 何况还有Tsingtao啤酒……

Tsinghua,Peking,自然有他们的用法,汉语拼音这样炒了几百年的山药,现在翻出来,反倒使人感到几丝无聊(广告:无极=无聊x2)。到底是味道早已习惯,还是炒的手艺失传,抑或,山药受了污染呢?难道上个世纪的那些传说中的左派哲学家们反复讨论过的知识分子的良心,在中国,是用来研究这些P事的吗?

星期日, 二月 05, 2006

读xmatrix.c

开始阅读xscreensaver中著名的xmatrix
in xmatrix.c:
入口:screenhack(Display *dpy, Window window)
作用是初始化matrix(调用init_matrix(dyp,window))并开始循环。循环中,执行draw_matrix(),XSync()(此函数flushoutput buffer,直到所有结果返回)。

draw_matrix()中被注释掉了一部分,没看懂。除此之外,依次调用了feed_matrix, hack_matrix, redraw_cells, roll_state四个函数。