Hello numista, it looks like there is a problem when 1 register chinese/taiwanese coins according to date. The screenshots from numista looks inaccurate. The coin in my collection says 89 or 八十九 but it says in numista that its from 98 or 九十八. Please fix this issue.
Hm seems like I should believe people less on the forum and should have actually checked the claim properly. 😅
If you are unsure about the reading direction for dates regardless if they are Chinese or Japanese look for the year character (年) that is always at the end.
Dates on old Chinese coins and Taiwan coins are written from right to left as a cultural tradition. Writing in many Asian languages was done from top to bottom and right to left. As convention changed, the custom of writing dates from right to left remained a cultural tradition. Numista is correct with the numbers. Do some more research if you want to become a knowledgeable collector.
I can see that some of the posts here have already explained how to read those characters on the coin. If you are still confuse, I hope this will help.
年 八 十九 國 民 華中
Year 8 ninety Republic China
(ten-nine)
Perhaps, the easier way is to remember this character 中 (middle). If you see this, this is where you should start reading from.
All Taiwanese banknotes were printed the same way until the T$50 1999 commemorative when they changed it from left to right. I am not sure about the coins.
A funny example of how important it is to ask a question with the relevant parameters. The AI-bot should have answered with a question: “What do you mean?”, since some might mean that Chinese is read backwards compared to another language - or that English is read backwards - or some would have asked: “backwards! - as in sdrawkcab?”
Hello numista, it looks like there is a problem when 1 register chinese/taiwanese coins according to date. The screenshots from numista looks inaccurate. The coin in my collection says 89 or 八十九 but it says in numista that its from 98 or 九十八. Please fix this issue.
Traditionally, Chinese was written from top to bottom and right to left, similar to Japanese. After the Chinese Civil War, a law was passed in China and this change caused Chinese to be written from the left to right, similar to English. It is now more common to see Chinese being written from left to right due to most Chinese speakers being from China.
However, this change was not implemented in Taiwan so most books in Taiwan are still written from the top to bottom, right to left. Older signs in China such as those in temples and palaces are still read the traditional way. Oh, and Taiwan uses traditional Chinese characters too so some words are different.
The words on the coin can be read as 中华民国九十八年 (I only have a simplified Chinese keyboard on my laptop). ROC year starts in 1911. So 1911 + 98 = 2009.
I would be glad to help translate the catalogue to Chinese if Numista would like to implement a Chinese interface one day.
