The Directorate-General of Highways on Friday said it launched an online survey to gather feedback from the public about three-letter combinations for vehicle license plates to be issued next year.
Running until April 30, the survey asks for feedback on 26 combinations that might evoke negative sentiment, the agency said.
The combinations for which it seeks feedback include CCP, a common acronym for the Chinese Communist Party; CCC, which is pronounced “die, die, die” in Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese); CCK, which sounds like “go to hell” in Hoklo; PEE, for the word’s meaning in English; and CCR, which is the acronym for “cross-cultural romance,” an apparently derogatory expression used in Taiwan to refer to Taiwanese women who date or marry foreign men.
Photo courtesy of the Directorate-General of Highways
“If there are several people concerned about any particular combination, then we will include that in our report and won’t use that combination,” Motor Vehicle Section Deputy Director Wei Wu-sheng (魏武盛) said.
Vehicle license plates issued next year are to have three letters followed by four numbers, and those for two-wheelers are to have three letters followed by three numbers.
The survey seeks to help the agency ameliorate drivers’ concerns over license plate letter combinations that are considered offensive based on cultural or personal factors, Wei said.
Last year, respondents to the survey expressed concern over the letter combinations BYE and BUG, while in 2021 the combinations ERR and LAY were considered problematic, he said.
The combination NTR was also rejected in a previous survey, as it resembles the term “netorare,” meaning “to cheat” in Japanese, Wei said.
“Every combination we do not use leads to 9,000 fewer license plates that we can issue,” he said, adding that the survey’s results would be taken into account for license plates issued in the next two years.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS