Lüdao is an interesting case, though for reasons beyond the umlaut. Technically, the island is Lü Dao. But place names tend to blend together. Thus, Lüdao for the administrative region but Lü Dao for the island; and Alishan for the township but Ali Shan for the mountain, etc.
I will take this under consideration. Thank you.
[quote=“Dragonbones”]I edited this into the above post so you might have missed it, Cranky:
OK, if there’s never an apostrophe between n and g, then how do you distinguish 南竿 Nan’gan from 囔安 Nang’an? Purely hypothetical example but the point is valid, no?[/quote]
Because Nangan is ambiguous, where Nangang is not.
Nangan could be Nan gan or nang an, but nangang could only be nan gang, can’t be nang ang (since there’s no “ang”) by itself.
Similiarly it should just be Suao and not su’ao, because there’s no “sua.”
[quote=“BAH”]Similiarly it should just be Suao and not su’ao, because there’s no “sua.”[/quote]Shouldn’t it Daan and not Da’an ? there is no d-aan, daa-n or 1 sylable daan. There’s no ambiguity in Daan surely ?
There is a mountain range by this title, but there is no mountain called Ali Shan. It’s like Yangmingshan: an area, not a specific peak.
There are several characters pronounced “ang”.
oops, you’re right about ang.
Because Nangan is ambiguous, where Nangang is not.
Nangan could be Nan gan or nang an, but nangang could only be nan gang, can’t be nang ang (since there’s no “ang”) by itself.[/quote]
No. Nangan is nan + gan. That’s all there is under the rules.
No, no, no! 
This isn’t difficult. Here are the two main rules to know about this:
[ol]
[li]Hanyu Pinyin’s syllables are presumed to begin with a consonant (including y and w, for the purpose of simplicity) or consonant cluster (ch, sh, or zh) unless something – the beginning of a word, a hyphen, or an apostrophe – indicates otherwise.
[/li][li]Put an apostrophe before any syllable that begins with a, e, or o, unless that syllable comes at the beginning of a word or immediately follows a hyphen or other dash.
[/li][/ol]
See, isn’t that easy? Notice that there’s no mention of ambiguity.
For more information, see these:
[ul][li]Apostrophes in Hanyu Pinyin: when and where to use them[/li]
[li]How to find syllable boundaries in Hanyu Pinyin[/li][/ul]
There is a mountain range by this title, but there is no mountain called Ali Shan. It’s like Yangmingshan: an area, not a specific peak.[/quote]
Good point. But I’d still say that under the rules of Pinyin it’s Ali Shan, not Alishan. And Yangming [color=#000040]S[/color]han, not Yangmingshan.
Come to think of it, I remember attending a seminar a few years ago (outside of Taiwan) where an expert on pinyin Romanization from China discussed many of the more advanced problems of full sentence Romanization (which “words” to split, which not to). It was all very impressive, but it also struck me as doctrinaire and self-defeating. The level of detail was so great and the implications of absolute correctness and enforcement were so obvious that I had to resist the urge of asking him what the point of it all was and suggesting that the Romanization plebs could look after themselves.
For a language as oblique as Chinese can be (classical usage in particular), I’ve always thought that Pinyin needs to be largely restricted to syllabic transfer. The apostrophe is part of this process, but mandating “Zhonghuaminguo” rather than “Zhonghua Minguo”, or vice versa, is going too far (librarians forced to type in Pinyin day after day may disagree, but there aren’t that many librarians). The other reason for this, of course, is that Chinese characters themselves are not “separated” and therefore any set of rules might be more Western in grammatical conception than Chinese.
I would support “Yangmingshan” over “Yangming Shan” (the spelling Nazi is fucking up what I am trying to express here) because the “shan” implies a single peak (unlike “shanmai”). But I wouldn’t order a purge of the Internet and your fine website to enforce it.
I am a committed Pinyin user myself because after all is said and done it is the most efficient system (I exclude bopomofo from this because it has its own special uses in written Chinese, especially in rendering other Chinese language sounds within a Mandarin sentence).