Saturday 13 November 2010

iSudoku

Today I stumbled upon a Sudoku website that has interesting and clever Chinese IDNs.
Both 爱数独 and 愛數獨 mean Love(s) Sudoku. The website concerns an App called iSudoku. Now to the clever part. 数独 and 數獨 mean Sudoku. 爱 and 愛 mean love. The romanization of 爱 and 愛 in both Chinese and Japanese is ai. The pronunciation of ai in both Chinese and Japanese is i. Thus iSudoku becomes 爱数独 or 愛數獨.

But what of the Japanese form of Love(s) Sudoku? In Japanese Kanji this would 愛数独. Well Huáng Jīng (黄晶) has already thought of this. 愛数独.中国 redirects to the Simplified Chinese address 爱数独.中国. I am totally impressed.

This adds a whole new dimension to the i prefix used by Apple. iPhone becomes Love Phone, iPad becomes Love Pad, iPod becomes Love Pod and iWork becomes Love Work ...etc...

Sunday 7 November 2010

China Provinces

The major administrative division of China is the province (shěng/省). Below, I list official provincial government websites with IDNs. Where applicable, I list both the Simplified and Traditional Chinese forms of the IDN.
  1. Ānhuī (安徽) 安徽省人民政府.中国
  2. Héběi (河北) 河北省人民政府.中国 & 河北省人民政府.中國
  3. Húnán (湖南) 湖南省政府.中国 & 湖南省政府.中國
  4. Jílín (吉林) 吉林省人民政府.中国 & 吉林省人民政府.中國
  5. Líaoníng (辽宁) 辽宁省人民政府.中国
  6. Shǎnxī (陕西) 陕西省人民政府.中国 & 陝西省人民政府.中國