Lunar New Year greetings in Traditional & Simplified Chinese and Pinyin

January 30, 2024 12:20 PM

I am looking at Lunar New Year greetings in Pinyin, Traditional, and Simplified Chinese characters. I have a couple of very basic questions about them. If you can read Chinese fairly fluently, would you be able to answer?

Here is an image of the greetings I have (Imgur link).
Here are my questions (and may I respectfully ask for replies only from people who know for sure - no guesses, please!)

A - Are they all correctly translated into English, or are there better translations?

B - Can you tell me what the numbered ones are? (I think I know but I just want to double check that my info is correct - for example, hoping to get something like, "#1 means Congratulations & be prosperous in Simplified Chinese and #2 means Congratulations & be prosperous in Traditional Chinese", etc.).

C - What are some of the larger populations (meaning language, culture, or location) that would commonly use these phrases & these phonetic translations? (For example Mandarin, Cantonese, Taiwanese, etc?) and in those regions, are the Simplified or Traditional characters more common?

D - Is the pinyin still correct if the person speaks a dialect of Chinese where the pronunciations don't match? (for example, I know a native Chinese speaker who says that in their specific dialect, they pronounce "gōng" more like "kung"). I'm curious if in their region, they would spell the Roman-alphabet version differently.

E - When writing the phrase in pinyin, should each word be capitalized, or just the first word?

Thanks all for your patience with these very 101-level questions - I think I know the answers to most of them but I want to double-check my understanding.
I appreciate any help!

posted by nouvelle-personne to Writing & Language (4 answers total)

Best answer: Question A
They are both correct in that they are not blatant mistranslations, although for the first phrase "congratulations and be prosperous" is a fairly literal translation and there are definitely variations out there, e.g. you could just as well translate it as "may you be happy and prosperous."

It's basically a rote phrase that is used at this holiday as general well-wishing, so the exact translation I wouldn't worry about too much.

As for "Happy New Year," that one is pretty straightforward and means exactly that.

Question B
1 and 3 (恭喜发财) are identical, both in simplified characters, and correspond to "congratulations and be prosperous." 2 (恭喜發財) is the traditional-character version of 1 and 3.

4 (新年快乐) is in simplified characters and corresponds to "Happy New Year." You do not have a traditional-character version of 4, which would be 新年快樂.

Question C
Traditional characters (2) are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and some overseas Chinese communities**.

Simplified characters (1, 3 and 4) are used in mainland China (not including HK and Macau*), Singapore, and some overseas Chinese communities**.

*There is an increasing prevalence of simplified characters in HK and Macau as the Chinese central government exerts more control and influence, but any text primarily geared toward HK and Macau audiences will at a minimum always be available in traditional characters

**largely depending on where that overseas Chinese community originated / immigrated from

The characters can be read using a Mandarin pronunciation (which is what the romanized Pinyin indicates) or a Cantonese pronunciation. As far as I am aware, both phrases -- 恭喜發財／恭喜发财 and 新年快樂 / 新年快乐 -- have the same meanings in Mandarin and Cantonese. (This is not always the case, but is the case here.)

Question D
Yes, the Pinyin is still correct. Pinyin is a standardized orthography -- writing "gōng" like "kung" to reflect a local pronunciation is the equivalent of re-spelling English to reflect a particular accent, e.g. spelling "Harvard" as "Hahvahd" or "that" as "dat."

It can be confusing because there are other methods to transliterate Mandarin, as well as ad hoc non-systemic romanizations. But if you are sticking to Pinyin, Pinyin is spelled in one way (well, except for the space issue -- see next question!)

Question E
Usage is inconsistent and will vary a lot. In theory Pinyin should have spaces between words, which ≠ characters, so xīnnián kuàilè and gōngxǐ fācái, but under the influence of character orthography, many many people will write each syllable with a space in between (as you have here).

Honestly, there's such little standardization in this space that any way you write it will be fine. Because Pinyin in Chinese-speaking locations is used rarely as a full-fledged independent writing system but largely as a pronunciation guide, it's often encountered alongside Chinese characters and thus written with spaces in between. In this case, it's not like English where writing "Happynewyear" would be unambiguously wrong.
posted by andrewesque at 1:28 PM on January 30, 2024 [9 favorites]

Best answer: I forgot to add to your questions C and D -- Pinyin is a representation of Mandarin Chinese only. It does not write Cantonese, Taiwanese, Shanghainese or any other "dialect" of Chinese (which are not mutually intelligible when spoken and thus much more akin to the Romance languages, but I digress).

So for example in Cantonese, 恭喜發財／恭喜发财 is pronounced gung1 hei2 faat3 coi4 (using the Jyutping romanization) or gūng héi faat chòih (using the Yale romanization). (As a side note, the gung hay fat choy spelling that you sometimes see is basically an effort to represent this Cantonese pronunciation for English speakers).

Pinyin is not at all attempting to represent this Cantonese pronunciation -- it represents Mandarin only. Each of the major "dialects" of Chinese has its own Romanization system (which vary very widely in general use and adoption) -- Cantonese has Jyutping and Yale, Taiwanese / Southern Min has Pe̍h-ōe-jī, etc.

It's worth noting that within Mandarin there are different accents and varieties (in the same way there's Canadian, Australian, South African, Indian, American or British English, etc. or Metropolitan or Quebec French, etc.). But Pinyin is spelled the same regardless, in the way that we spell "lieutenant" the same whether you pronounce it without an "f" sound (as Americans do) or with an "f" sound (as Britons do).
posted by andrewesque at 1:45 PM on January 30, 2024 [6 favorites]

Best answer: One advantage of characters is that the two versions are all you need. I would be careful with the pinyin unless you know you're addressing Mandarin speakers. If you're addressing Cantonese folks, it'd be like wishing "Bonne noël" to a Spanish speaker.
posted by zompist at 5:21 PM on January 30, 2024 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thank you andrewesque for this fabulous, in depth, and very clear lesson! It was so hard to be sure I was cobbling this knowledge together properly from so many bits and pieces, and you just filled in all my blanks plus so much more helpful context too. Appreciate it so much!!

And zompquist thank you for that heads up, it's clear & helpful too!
posted by nouvelle-personne at 8:38 PM on January 30, 2024