Why does the auto pinyiniser change my PERFECT pinyin Mingchuan into minquan???
I can understand if the auto pinyiniser changes non-pinyin into pinyin, but mingchuan is pinyin!! Why change it??
I don’t like the auto pinyinizer. Please allow for a way to disable it. I just saw a post about something for sale in Hsinchu (Xinzhu) and something else for sale in Kaohsiung (Gaoxiong). Yuck, it looks like the PRC took over the place and romanized everything with Hanyu pinyin. My lunch is coming up.
It is one thing to change your own posts but you shouldn’t force it on others. You don’t fix people’s spelling mistakes, but you have to make their romanization into the Communist China romanization. Instead of this auto pinyinizer why don’t you have auto spell check.
I think for place names and people’s names it is over the top. I can agree biru shuo ruguo you yige ren yao yong loma pinyin zai tade post, jiangzi ni shuyao bang ta shouli tade pinyin. Place names and people’s names in Taiwan is not a good idea IMHO.
“luoma”
Isn’t it ironic the pinyiniser can’t correct erroneous HYPY, but corrects “mingchuan” ?
I don’t like it either, Hobart. I know it does “mingchuan” to catch the road of the same name, but I would like to be able to choose. I would be horrified if my HYPY was translated by a “bopomofo-iser”, for instance.
Hobart, if spelling things correctly in the only standard romanization system offends you. I suggest you go to itaiwan.org. I think their illogical hate of everything Chinese will appeal to you, well… hate of everything really.
Communist leaders = evil, therefore Hanyu pinyin = evil ? Support of pinyin = support of communism ? I must be missing something…
K
aohsiung is more well known than Gaoxiong. The signs say
K
uting even if there’s no way to know how it’s pronouced. It would help if people could use pinyin by themselves, but some people do awful romanization - “Goo Teen” ?
Maybe we can let the mods fix it, or just let people look silly calling refering to
C
hunghsiao ?
[quote=“Big Fluffy Matthew”]Hobart, if spelling things correctly in the only standard romanization system offends you. I suggest you go to itaiwan.org. I think their illogical hate of everything Chinese will appeal to you, well… hate of everything really.
Communist leaders = evil, therefore Hanyu pinyin = evil ? Support of pinyin = support of communism ? I must be missing something…
K
aohsiung is more well known than Gaoxiong. The signs say
K
uting even if there’s no way to know how it’s pronouced. It would help if people could use pinyin by themselves, but some people do awful romanization - “Goo Teen” ?
Maybe we can let the mods fix it, or just let people look silly calling refering to
C
hunghsiao ?[/quote]
I don’t hate everything Chinese?! I am actually quite enamored with everything Chinese. I even consider myself a Sinophile. I also love traveling to China and I like the people in China. I just don’t like the government there threatening my Taiwanese family, way of life and home here in Taiwan. I never said that supporting Hanyu pinyin means supporting Communism. If that were the case, I would be a supporter of Chinese communism as well.
Didn’t you realize I myself love to use Hanyu pinyin?! I studied Hanyu pinyin in University back home when I learned Mandarin and again when I was in part time study of Mandarin in Taiwan I sought out Chinese classes that used Hanyu pinyin based texts. However, in Taiwan for place names, street names and people’s names, I prefer anything except Hanyu pinyin.
While the use of Hanyu pinyin is not politicized by Taiwan’s foreign residents, it is by the PRC’s and Taiwan’s governments and it is by me.
Taiwan is Taiwan and China is China. I don’t want to see the place names, street signs and people’s names in Taiwan romanized to look like China.
From my many travels to China and my University Chinese history classes among other Chinese studies classes I took I am very familiar with Hanyu pinyin. If Hanyu pinyin was used for the romanization of all place names, street signs and peoples names in Taiwan it would look to me as if the Communist PRC took over the place.
If you are confused by the strange romanization in Taiwan, ask a local how to read the Chinese characters and the even that strange romanization that Taiwan chooses to use will still help you to remember what the characters are. I have never had a problem and I know how to say Kuting.
My apologies to Sir Donald Bradman for taking this off topic on Matthew’s
prodding. Maybe it was my Commie pinyin remark which set him off. I hope we can keep this thread on topic. I can however, edit my Commie pinyin remark and can agree to delete this post if Mathew’s is also deleted or edited.
The auto pinyinizer does place names, because so many people don’t know how to spell them correctly in ANY pinyin system. Words with traditional spellings that conform to neither Tongyong, Hanyu, or even Wade-Giles in some cases, get Hanyu added in parentheses, as Hanyu is the most internationally understood method of phoneticizing Mandarin. Hanyu doesn’t replace traditional spellings. That’s been the policy so far on this website, and I daresay that we’ve been a good deal more consistent than many other organizations in this country, non-governmental or not.
Commie pinyin?
From each letter according to it’s abiltiy, to each letter according to it’s means.
Bri
Well, I´m pro-Hanyu Pinyin (actually, pro “Tonally Orthographic Pinyin” which is largely the same thing 
) but have you considered that misspelled place names are actually more likely to match up with the reality we are confronted with on the street? I’d like to see someone find Xinzhu on a map of Taiwan, let alone on a highway sign.
Maybe there is no need to be so tight on this one?? It does get visually annoying when you quote a person who used non-standard Pinyin that was corrected, because then it gets corrected AGAIN in the quote, and so on ad infinitum. And if people got so het up about one accented character in the old title “La vida loca en Taiwan” (when the last “a” used to carry an accent that looked “funny” on Chinese OS machines) then surely this is at least as annoying? ('Course, the other was easy to fix…)
Tai-Pei Tai-Bei T’ai-Bei T’aipei Tai-Bei
T’ai-Pei
Tai-Chung T’aichung Taijong Taijung T’aijung T’aijong
T’ai-Chung
Kaohsiong Gao-Xiong Gaoshong Gaoshiong Gaoshiung
Kao-Hsiung
Tai-Dong Taitong T’aitung T’ai-Tong
T’ai-Tung
Hwa-Lien Hwa-Lian Hwalien Hwalian Hualien
Hua-Lien
Jeelong Jilung Jee-Long Ji-Lung Keelong Kilong Keelung Kilung
Danshuei Tamshui Tamshuei Dan-Shuei Tam-Shui Tam-Shuei
Changhwa Janghwa Janghua Changhua Chang-Hwa Jang-Hwa Jang-Hua
Chang-Hua
I think it’s safe to say that at least 90 percent of the time people on Forumosa.com give street names, they are referring to Taipei streets. The Taipei City Government has adopted hanyu pinyin and instituted it on the street signs of the capital. So, in the context of this board, no, misspelled place names are not more likely to match what is seen in the street. “Tun.hua” is dead, and good riddance.
As for street names in other places, consistency can be hard to come by, as I think everyone knows. With parenthetical hanyu pinyin, at least people will know the correct pronunciation, which is more than can be said for bastardized Wade-Giles.
“Mingchuan” (as in the university name) being put as “Minquan” is simply a mistake – but not one that would have been made if people hadn’t been mistakenly adding a g to the street name wrong so frequently. I believe that the auto-correct feature has helped improve the spelling habits – and thus the communication – of many on Forumosa.com.
As Maoman noted “Hsinchu” doesn’t disappear; it is merely annotated. (And BTW, Xinzhu has adopted hanyu pinyin for its street names.) The government simply has not shown that it can be trusted to get things right.
Deciding to do nothing because of how the street signs may be [mis]spelled in some places just leads into a vicious circle. I believe that finally there is not only wide recognition that things are very wrong and need to be fixed but also a greater will to do something about it. I am pleased that Forumosa.com is doing its own small part for standardization rather than meekly following the screwed up conventions that have done more harm than good.
All people have to do is delete the parenthetical addition in the reply text. That way only one will appear.
I sympathize with your linguistic leanings, but I think people just want to post and not see a lot of stuff that they didn’t personally type on the page. Very simple, really. Even though I don’t like double Pinyin after non-Pinyin words in quotes, I’m hardly going to remember to axe the first Pinyin when I’m posting. Just not gonna happen. 
While the auto-pinyiniser is slightly annoying sometimes, it has a useful function in providing a pronunciation guide for some big city names and some Taibei street names. This would seem to be particularly useful for people who had recently arrived in Taiwan, although of course the lack of tone markings could still cause confusion.
There are two functions it does not perform, however. Firstly, it does not pick up the majority of possible erroneous spellings, as my test post above shows. It converts from one or two widely used spellings.
Secondly, it does not aid in identification of a place in reading or writing. It is an oral aid only. While it may seem that there are a multiplicity of variant spellings for each place, at least in the case of big city names, one particular spelling per city has become by far the most widely used, internationally as well as locally. Some Google searches show this:
Occurences of Taichung 220,000 and of Taizhong (Hanyu Pinyin) 16,000 (many German travel agencies)
Occurences of Keelung 101,000, of Keelong 1030, of Jilong (HYPY) 4380 but these mostly refer to another place in the mainland.
Of Hualien 43,500, of Hualian (HYPY) 16,700
Of Tamshui 3900, of Danshui (HYPY) 2140 but again mostly refer to another place in the mainland.
Of Changhua 35,400, of Changhwa 7,490, of Zhanghua (HYPY) 1670
Of Kaohsiung 330,000, of Gaoxiong (HYPY) 17,800 some referring to a mainland place; many of the usages referring to TW coming from German travel agencies, of Kaoshiung 13,400
The majority of all the search results came from non-Taiwanese sites.
“luoma”[/quote]
I’m not sure about that. I know that at least with the four initials b, p, m and f, the addition of the letter ‘o’ results in a b + uo sound, p + uo sound etc. I’ve forgotten whether this applies to an ‘l’ initial as well.
It is an ad hoc solution to frequently occuring mistakes, not a comprehensive tool. It could be expanded if necessary. And it can be adjusted as well, which is why it’s useful that the Ming Chuan problem was pointed out.
As I mentioned above, it most certainly does help in the reading and writing of street names, with those in Taipei and some other places being in hanyu pinyin. As for place names, Taiwan’s romanization situation is in flux. The majority of place names in Taiwan are officially no longer to follow the old [mis]spellings. The signs on major highways have already been changed (to tongyong, which uses the same spellings as hanyu about half of the time). Maps, etc., are to follow. Some of the Research, Development and Evaluation Commission’s guidelines are absurd and are unlikely to endure, e.g. having Hualian City in Hualien County, Yilan City in Ilan County, Taidong City in Taitung County. I expect the newer and more useful forms to supplant the old ones, giving us Hualian City in Hualian County, etc.
The old system (though the word “system” gives it too much credit) was a complete and utter mess. Because of this, even if the powers that be were planning to continue using it until the end of time, I believe giving hanyu pinyin would be valuable. But now that hanyu pinyin is being applied on an ever-wider scale in Taipei and some other places, and tongyong is more slowly being applied to other places, MPS2 and Wade-Giles can be said to be in their final stages of decline. The old forms might be more common at the moment on Internet searches, but they won’t always be so.
FWIW, I don’t expect tongyong to endure long.
“luoma”[/quote]
I’m not sure about that. I know that at least with the four initials b, p, m and f, the addition of the letter ‘o’ results in a b + uo sound, p + uo sound etc. I’ve forgotten whether this applies to an ‘l’ initial as well.[/quote]
Hexuan is correct: luoma.
Lo does exist, but just as a particle.
[quote=“cranky laowai”]It is an ad hoc solution to frequently occuring mistakes, not a comprehensive tool. It could be expanded if necessary. And it can be adjusted as well, which is why it’s useful that the Ming Chuan (Minquan) problem was pointed out.
The old forms might be more common at the moment on Internet searches, but they won’t always be so.[/quote]
Any thoughts on how long the ‘frequently occuring mistakes’ of Taipei, Taichung and Kaoshiung will continue turning up #1 in internet searches?
Your phraseology is disingenuous. The auto-pinyiniser’s function at present (as regards city names, at least; I know little about the ins and outs of Taibei street names as I don’t live there and it doesn’t seem very important) is not to correct posters’ spelling mistakes, but to impose a particular viewpoint on traditional although unsystematic spellings. It has some use, but please don’t dress it up as something it’s not.
The way it’s set up is inconsistent. It will not change Taipei, presumably because somebody decided that this was the accepted international spelling, but it changes Kaoshiung and Taichung, although these spellings are equivalent in usage rate and I assume in length of usage to those of Taipei. And please don’t tell me that somebody ‘forgot’ to included Taipei in the filter. This is deliberate.
Anyway, we are here now, not twenty years hence. Mistake or not, I will continue to use Taichung to identify the city I live in, and Taizhong to specify its pronunciation. Anything else would impede effective communication.
Yes, get rid of it.
If Forumosa users can’t sound out the word they are not smart enough to benefit from being here.
Keelung, Jeelong, Geelung and so on…don’t tell me you don’t know what I mean.
Don’t get rid of it. It takes stupid and obselete romanisations and converts them to Hanyu Pinyin. And why the hell wouldn’t you want to do that? So what if it’s imposing a preference. You’d be a fool to use another system.
Anyway there’s one over-riding reason to keep the pinyinser. If you want to make a search - for restaurants in Muzha for example - you can use the search function and put in Muzha and not have to try again using mucha, muja, and what ever other romaisations you may or may not be able to think of.
Brian
As Mapodofu has just pointed out, the automatic thing that changes bits of people’s posts is now changing the 21st letter of the alphabet into the word ‘you’. What is the use of this? What if, as in Mapodofu’s case, somebody wants to abbreviate the name of the United States? And what if somebody actually wants to use that letter to denote the word ‘you’, as people often do these days. Does it really matter?
I’ve already voiced my approval of the automatic ‘Pinyiniser’ function, but this is something different and I can’t see how it really helps anyone.
The forum keeps putting the ‘b’ in upper case automatically. Why? It’s a bloody noun first which happens to be the name of president. Imagine how silly a “Gardening Forum” would look? Think about it; bush in upper case and god in lower case. Who (assuming He exists) is more important?
BroonUpset