Double U

I think the person means to say that there is nothing left in the budget for whatever.

Personally, I don't think the person means that in the absolute sense.

The dictionary will say that a person doesn't have any money left.

I always wonder what people really mean by "I'm broke".

This is not the only one.

Someone downvoted me without even leaving a reply/comment. You know, this isn't helpful.

What I think translators should do is be consistent. Stick with one style of romanization.

Jiǎ Bǎo Yù is the Pinyin romanization of 賈寶玉. Sometimes, the tone marks may be removed, like so: Jia Baoyu. The translator of the novel used Jia Bao-yu. (S)he could have used Baoyu Jia, following the English name order. It really doesn't matter, because the Chinese name is still 賈寶玉.

Jason Bassford completely misunderstood the question. It was meant to be a question about common practice.

In Jyutping romanization, I would write it as Mui Lei.

In an English-language context, I would write with English name order Mei Li.

I don't care if a Chinese name is written as Li Mei or Mei Li. They are romanizations, and romanizations are not Chinese names. By looking at the Chinese source, I can usually identify the surname and given name. 李梅。

I once had a friend who asked me about my Chinese name; and I said it, unconscious that I went by the East Asian order. She instantly noticed that I used the East Asian order; I just replied that it's a cultural thing. In day schools, I would write my Romanized given name first, family name last; actually, most, if not all, people write this way. That becomes our legal names.

If I were writing a story with a character having a Chinese name, then I would use Dawei Ma, because (1) it's fiction and (2) it's common to follow the English name pattern in an English-speaking environment.

If I were writing a story with a character having a Vietnamese name, then I would use Dung Huu Trieu, because (1) it's fiction and (2) it's common to follow the English name pattern in an English-speaking environment.

If I were writing a story with a character having a Spanish name, then I would use Sofia Maria Casa Lujosa, because (1) it's fiction and (2) I don't want to look up alt codes all the time or copy+paste the exact name.

I think I just made a bad question. I thought that it might be a useful question, but then again, as one person pointed out, the question was far too broad.

@Randal'Thor That's just English literature with Chinese stereotypes. Not surprising, if you consider that the book is written in the 19th century. BTW, I loved MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin and The Princess and Curdie.

The Chinese language in all varieties and dialects is monosyllabic. So, a non-Chinese person just has to create a mono-syllabic name, like Hum-Drum and Kopy-Keck. In some varieties, the stop consonants are preserved from Middle Chinese, but it is unlikely that any name will sound bi-syllabic like "Kopy".

李 may be romanized as Li. 刘 may be romanized as Liu. 王 may be romanized as Wang. 汪 may be romanized as Wang.

In actuality, Chinese people will place heavy emphasis on writing, and the varied pronunciations are trivial. "You say it this way; I say it that. We are referring to the same character."

One big problem that I find is that non-Chinese people assume the romanization of a current Chinese name is the original pronunciation, and they put extremely heavy emphasis on pronunciation over writing, to the point that they will say that every single Chinese pronunciation is part of an unique language. That's never how the Chinese people view the language, though.

Sometimes, English authors would include ethnic Chinese characters for the sake of diversity, as in the case of JK Rowling's Cho Chang. The author is probably thinking, "I want a diversify my cast. So, I am going to choose Cho Chang. It's Asian-sounding enough."

A romanization is not a Chinese name. A romanization can refer to several different Chinese characters, but just by knowing the romanization, it is impossible to know the exact characters, especially if the romanization is unstandardized and individual.

I looked up Keck Kiong Te. The name is discussed on Quora and SE. On Quora, the person suggests it is a valid Chinese name and links to a Facebook page. The problem is, Chinese people may choose bizarre first names in combination with an unstandardized romanization of the Chinese name.

@Randal'Thor I wouldn't read too much into it. You may want to look into Asian stereotypes: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

It's weird how people are reading the transcript without entering the chatroom.

I tried that before.

Oh, I see! People can search in the search box!

@Randal'Thor So... how do I access the transcript?

@ChristopheStrobbe I never said "most of China".

@Randal'Thor Eh?

@Randal'Thor No, I meant to say I could access the transcript without entering the chatroom. A long time ago, I wanted to access the transcript but the only way to do that was to enter the chatroom and type in the search box.

@Randal'Thor How do you know?

How do you access the transcript without entering the chatroom?

@Randal'Thor I can't star other people's posts either.

@Randal'Thor I can't star anything.

@Randal'Thor People have access to the transcript from outside the chatroom?

@ChristopheStrobbe No, this is actually true in the most mountainous part of China.

Who is starring these posts? I see Mithrandir and Catija in the chatroom.

Some children of immigrants in the US are first-born children or only children. So, the parents may use the children as interpreters and translators. There are online articles about this. One advantage is that these children gain very high fluency in their mother tongue. One disadvantage is that these children have to deal with adult matters at such a young age.

@ChristopheStrobbe I doubt it.

A child might be born in the US, and because of US laws, that child would be automatically a US citizen to foreign-born parents. Some Taiwanese parents give birth to American children and then raise the child in Taiwan. So, these Americans are culturally Taiwanese.

Children of Spanish-speaking immigrants may have a range of fluency in the mother tongue, and birth order and time of immigration are related. A child that immigrated to the US at the age of 10 and naturalized as a citizen would probably retain Spanish as a mother tongue.

Private companies would have labels in English and Spanish... and maybe French.

However, many Americans are (1) native Spanish speakers, (2) fluent heritage Spanish speakers, or (3) fluent second-language Spanish speakers. Plus, America has a lot of immigrants of all stripes.

Because English is a global language, English-speaking countries really don't need to learn other languages. Other countries would just implement English classes in the school curriculum.

@CowperKettle LOL. In Mandarin Chinese, 愛 means love and is pronounced very similar to "eye" in English. However, Chinese is a tonal language. So, I can easily tell if a person is saying the English "eye" or Chinese 愛.