Return of Pinyin Wars

[quote=“sofun”]Something for Hok to think about. When I was learning English, the school taught us Kenyon and Knott. However, later I found out that’s not the pronunciation key used in most dictionaries especially English-English dictionaries used in the English-speaking world.

There’s no need to complain.[/quote]

Apples and oranges. KK is used only to teach English; Romanization for any East Asian language is used on street signs, postal addresses, passports, maps, history books…

[quote=“Hokwongwei”]
Apples and oranges. KK is used only to teach English;[/quote]
That means you can’t use learning Mandarin as an excuse to promote pinyin for a unified romanization.

Street signs etc are locale-dependent. No need to make Singapore the same as Beijing.

[quote=“Hokwongwei”][quote=“sofun”]Something for Hok to think about. When I was learning English, the school taught us Kenyon and Knott. However, later I found out that’s not the pronunciation key used in most dictionaries especially English-English dictionaries used in the English-speaking world.

There’s no need to complain.[/quote]

Apples and oranges. KK is used only to teach English; Romanization for any East Asian language is used on street signs, postal addresses, passports, maps, history books…[/quote]

Romanization maybe, but not Hanyu Pinyin. HP is almost exclusively used for Chinese.

I prefer HP but I don’t have any angst with TP. But no more changing. It’s HP.

WG is another story. That one should be eradicated forever.

This is 100% correct. Even studying in Taiwan during the CSB years, we used Wade Giles and Yale rather than TY. Locals don’t know it. Foreigners don’t know it. It’s an uphill battle to teach it to anyone.

That is very incorrect. All academics who study China are very well acquainted with Wade-Giles. I wouldn’t mind if Taiwan returned to WG, as long as people used it correctly – let’s not forget those apostrophes![/quote]

Fine… But I doubt many academics are relying on romanization for communication or navigation.

Yes but I don’t think that’s terribly relevant. People manage to go to Hong Kong and Macau, which largely use ad hoc Romanization for Cantonese, and they get around just fine. This is why I support either an established system (Hanyu preferably, WG as a distant second choice) or just switching to Taiwanese Romanization instead. (Plus other indigenous languages, to be decided by local residents; Miaoli for example would have street signs in Hakka romanization)[/quote]

Of course. Any standard romanization system (even an ad hoc one) can fulfill foreigner navigation needs. The crux of my argument is that HP can fill that role with many additional benefits.

The counterargument is that serious Mandarin learners can read the street signs in Chinese characters, so the romanization isn’t very important.[/quote]

I don’t just mean serious Chinese learners. Any decent modern beginner materials is likely to use HP as well.

I fail to see how Zhuyin is a horror. It has lots of problems – inaccurate phoneme mappings that are based on Northeast China pronunciation and still manage to get that somewhat wrong – but it’s just as functional as Japanese kana for learning and typing and looking things up. It’s quite useless to Chinese language learners, but for locals it’s doing fine.[/quote]

Oh, I agree. I explained my view on Zhuyin Fuhao in a post earlier. It functions pretty much identically to HP in teaching phonetics and for typing. It’s just that it’s completely one-dimensional. It can’t be used on signs or for international documents or Chinese as a second language learners… That’s why I hate it.

[quote=“sofun”][quote=“Hokwongwei”]
Apples and oranges. KK is used only to teach English;[/quote]
That means you can’t use learning Mandarin as an excuse to promote pinyin for a unified romanization.

Street signs etc are locale-dependent. No need to make Singapore the same as Beijing.[/quote]

It’s all a moot argument really if the populace is too undereducated to even know how to spell their own addresses – and names. I know plenty of people who ask me “How do I spell my name again?” For a country as advanced and educated as Taiwan, that’s a really, truly pathetic failure of education.

There is no ideal romanization and there probably never will be, but I’d prefer tongyong to hanyu.

[moved from here:]
http://tw.forumosa.com/t/life-on-the-mrt/782/2122

Singapore and Malaysia (and probably others) also use Hanyu to teach their kids. Keyboards/apps all use Hanyu Pinyin to type Mandarin Characters. Why would Taiwan not want to use what is basically the universally accepted standard? So we would have to learn 2 types? Tongyong for reading and Hanyu for typing?

From what I’ve seen, Hanyu makes the most sense, IMO. Do we pronounce Kaohsiung with a “K”? What about Keelung? I used to say Taichung just like it’s spelled, with the “ch” sound, before I started learning Chinese. Not to mention Zhongli, Chungli, Jongli! And why the hell does Taipei have a “p”??

:2cents:

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Taiwan already has a huge problem with haphazard implementation of romanization. Adding Yu’s “system”, which is unintelligible to most people and has itself changed in an inconsistent fashion over the years, would basically being telling the world that Taiwan effectively has no interest in romanization at all, and everyone who can’t read characters can just go to hell.

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not sure why they needed to make a news story out of this. that group of protesters literally looks like 5 retarded ah beis with nothing better to do.

Let Tongyong die a well-deserved death.

The funny thing is that those “protesters” will never use or benefit from Tongyong (or any romanization system) themselves. They just think they know what’s best for foreigners.

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Uh…because it’s the Taipei Times?

Hanyu pinyin is “the official language of the People’s Republic of China”? WTF!? What are the editors at that rag smoking? (I’ve actually heard rumors about that)

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As I mentioned a while ago, imagine how late everyone would get to work if the MRT Robot Lady had to announce that the next stop was Large Serenity Woodland Forest Public Garden!!

It would be kind of cool… But then imagine a mainland city having a station with the same name and the protesters demanding the one in Taipei be changed to Big Peace Majestic Forest Metric Park, to reflect Taiwan’s unique identity. :trollface:

Well, they are quoting Yu. And you are supposed to quote verbatim.

But is that even what Yu actually said? Considering the standards at TT, it’s more likely just a translation fail. Yu may be an idiot (you’d have to be to invent a steaming pile like Tongyong), but I don’t think he’s Taipei Times dumb.

Indeed. Something could have been lost in translation… but I have heard worse. Especially from academics. Sigh. From both sides of the aisle.

My favourite part of the Taipei Times article linked above is a quote from National Language Education Promotion Office head Wu Chung-yi:

“The romanization used on road signs and at transportation stations is intended for foreigners… Every foreigner learning Mandarin learns Hanyu pinyin, because it is the international standard,” Wu said. “The decision has nothing to do with the nation’s self-determination or any ideologies, because the key point is to ensure that foreigners can read signs.”

“It is impossible to reason with the groups, as they are bent on politicizing the matter,” he added.

Awesome!

Guy

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Well, that makes sense. Until you stop to think about it.

Hanyu is a sucky way to learn Mandarin. And what about brief visitors who aren’t studying Mandarin anyway? `Coz it’s also a sucky romanization.

Most things rammed down our throat by Communists kind of suck, actually. And they come pre-politicized.

its no less sucky than all the other 30 ways of romanizing chinese that taiwan uses.
just stick to one, and pinyin more or less works. i don’t see whats to argue, Taiwanese don’t even use it.

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How is Hanyu Pinyin more a product of political ideology than Tongyong Pinyin?