Chinese language identity from commercial signs in business areas in Thai Chinese communities: a case study of Prasarnmaitri Road, Suren Road, and Chatchai Road, Sop Tui Subdistrict, Mueang District, Lampang Province
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Abstract
This study entitled “A study of Chinese language from commercial signs in the Thai-Chinese community, Sop Tui Sub-district, Mueang District, Lampang” aimed to study Chinese writing characteristics and to analyze the structures of Chinese names from commercial signs in the Chinese-Thai community. The scope of the study was studying writing styles, including the language that appeared on commercial signs, the way of reading letters on commercial signs, characteristics of Chinese, Chinese characters appeared on commercial signs, reading accent, the origin of the language on signs, semantic relationships of languages from commercial signs. Furthermore, this study focused on the commercial signs on three roads: Prasarnmaitri Road, Suren Road, and Chatchai Road in Sop Tui Subdistrict, Lampang.
The results showed that there were forty Chinese commercial signs along the three roads in Sop Tui, Lampang. According to Chinese writing style, most of the commercial signs displayed two languages, Chinese and Thai, at 57.5%, the way of reading Thai from left to right and reading Chinese from right to left at 87.5%, the characteristics of Chinese appeared in traditional Chinese characters at 100%. In terms of structural analysis, the color of the Chinese characters appeared in gold at 45%. Mostly, reading accents were Teochew Chinese accent which was at 95%. The information on the signs was the name of the store at 45 %, followed by the name and surname of the person followed by an auspicious word at 40%. In addition, in terms of the semantic relationship of language, most of them were related at 82.5%. However, the languages on the sign had no relationship and had different meanings between Chinese and Thai was at 17.5%.
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