The story in one Picture

Once in a while, a single picture can tell a whole story.

 Small is OK - a story

Once upon a time, there was a small tree that grew is a stone planter. It stayed small because its water and food was only what its owner gave it. One day, being a living thing without a brain, its roots broke through the planter bottom and found that the sewer underneath the planter had lots of water and nutrition.

Now it grew and grew, its roots opened the planter bottom to suck more water and nutriments from the sewer. The planter was no longer big enough for the growing tree. The tree and its roots now moved the planter off the ground.

One day, the owner realized that the tree had gotten out of hand and cut down the tree with a chain saw. The End.




Another picture, another story.

 

Taipei is trying to make itself friendlier to visitors, so many of the street signs are now in Chinese and English. This can be a problem because Chinese is a much more concise language than English.

大湖山莊接                                      Chinese
Dàhú Shānzhuāng Jiē                         Romanization
Big Lake Mountain Village Street     Translation

DaHuSh.Zh St.                                   Abbreviation

To get the same street name on the sign that accommodates the Chinese Characters requires some abbreviations.

 Chinese is actually 2 languages, the spoken language and the written language. Unlike some languages, the Chinese characters only occassionally give clues on how the word is pronounced. So a person could be literate but not fluent. Similarly a person could be  fluent(able to speak) but illiterate(able to read).

For children this is evident, so they are taught a phonetic language so they can "sound out" the characters. In the picture above the phonetic symbols(Zhuyin Fuhao, BoPoMoFo) are to the right of the Chinese characters.  This sign at an Elementary School says: "Don't climb on the fence".

 

 (Don't get me started on Homophones!)