This is extremely cool to see in the wild. I’ve seen it mentioned on Wikipedia in the “transcriptions” section for certain terms, I always assumed it was some academic writing system, like a version of International Phonetic Alphabet for Chinese languages, lol. Boy was I wrong, how cool.
7 Likes
Some designs I liked:
The 口 is allowed to be smaller because the 出 is more important to see from afar.
The 茶 has tea leaves, and the second character apparently means “town” and features Taipei 101 (the beautiful skyscraper that used to be the tallest in the world). This is a restaurant at a tea plantation that overlooks the city and the tower.
6 Likes
Bopomofo is really cool! It also has relatively few characters, so you will see it on keyboards (not just mobile phones):
The image is from Apple’s website.
Thanks for sharing your photos!
6 Likes
i spent 2 weeks in taiwan about a month ago and i had a great time with the characters. i actually rushed a WK level because it reminded me of the new car effect: i suddenly started seeing new characters i learned everywhere
i was traveling with my wife and her mother, who are taiwanese, and they were decently amused by my game of “what does this mean?” and “how do you read this?” a lot of those interactions helped me remember stuff.
i also found that when we went to night markets, my wife would try to read all the flavors and options to me, and once i realized i could usually find “原味” on the menus, i would always point at it. surprisingly useful!
the day i got to 郵 in level 26, i looked up from my phone and immediately saw this lol
8 Likes
“Original taste”? What does it mean?
2 Likes
haha yeah, that’s it! it was usually just the flavor that was the original/recommended. useful if there was a stall that was known for a specific thing but had a ton of configuration options
4 Likes
It’s also contained with a 春. 
But yeah, 郷 is used to mean “town” or “hometown” in Japanese as well.
Well, the roller shutter is down, sooo… 
4 Likes
Wow, this is even more ingenious.
3 Likes
Well, it’s not the euphemism in Chinese that it is in Japanese.
4 Likes
There are even bopomofo souvenirs. I found these at the heritage railway station of Taichung (originally called Taichu - the Japanese reading of 台中 - in the Japanese colonial times)
4 Likes
Speaking of which, the name of the 2nd or 3rd largest city of Taiwan, Kaohsiung, has a really weird history. The original name was Takao or Takau and it came from one of the aboriginal Austronesian languages. The Chinese spelling was 打狗 to match the pronunciation. Then the Japanese won Taiwan as a colony, and rather than “beating a dog”, assigned a different spelling to the city name - 高雄 after Takao in Kyoto. When the Japanese lost the colony, instead of restoring the original name, the Chinese/Taiwanese decided to take the Japanese name and pronounce it in Chinese, which led to 高雄 - Kaohsiung (Gāoxióng in Pinyin, but I haven’t seen the Pinyin spelling used even once).
As a tourist, I would much rather tell people I’m in Takao rather than in unpronounceable Kaohsiung 
7 Likes
It seems like it’s a hotel (飯店)! 太子 means “crown prince,” which is actually pretty funny. The English name for this hotel is, according to Google, The Prince Hotel.
2 Likes
Taught on wanikani too: https://www.wanikani.com/vocabulary/皇太子
3 Likes
This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.