Hanyu pinyin to be official in 2009

Taiwan Living in Taiwan
41

Well, it would be Cijhang Station in Tongyong. Arguably easier that Qizhang in this case.

If TY really could be used to write Hakka, Taiwanese, and Mandarin, that would be a very strong reason in its favor. I have reluctantly come to the view that it can’t, or at least not very well. Most of the Taiwanese teaching crowd has rejected TY. It is used more in Hakka pedagogy, but is by no means universally accepted.

In any event, this is a highly political issue and has been from the start. Ma’s switch will come with some small political cost, and any future switch back will exact a higher price. I think this issue has been decided. All hail Hanyu Pinyin!

42

Hmmm… “sidge-hang” vs. “quiz-hang”? Not necessarily easier…

43

In any event, for most Taiwanese, this is a non-issue altogether. Most do not use romanisation; most do not know much about romanisation; most do not care about romanisation. Zhuyin will continue to rule the phonetics landscape and no doubt, missed apostrophes and diacritics will continue to litter the maps and road signs of Taiwan.

44

Regarding the question about Tongyong for Taiwanese, the answer is yes, kind of.

As Chris says, any romanisation system can be adapted for different languages. There is an adaptation of Tongyong for Taiwanese, but likewise there’s an adaptation of Hanyu Pinyin for Southern Min (it’s called Pumindian and it was produced by the University of Xiamen). This is not a “strength” of Tongyong.

In fact, I’ve written about this on my site, so I’ll just quote that here:

[quote=“Taffy, on Tailingua”]POJ: Thōng-iōng Peng-im
Chinese: 通用拼音

The inventor of Tong-iong, Yu Bo-quan, billed it as a universal romanization for all of Taiwan’s languages (the name Tong-iong actually means ‘use for everything’). In actual fact it is modified to fit Mandarin, Taiwanese, Hakka and so on, so it can’t really be said to be a single system, rather it’s a collection of linked systems for different languages.

As a positive point for English learners, Tong-iong maps more closely to English orthography than the POJ system - a ‘d’ in Tong-iong is pronounced similarly to an initial ‘d’ in English (POJ would have ‘t’ in the same place).

One controversial aspect of Tong-iong for Taiwanese however is that it represents tones after the sandhi changes, whereas every other system detailed here describes the tones in their original state and leaves the reader to apply the sandhi and when required. This makes Tong-iong easy to read out, but is a disadvantage for learners in that same syllable will be written differently in different positions in a sentence.

See a comparison of the major romanization systems[/quote]
I was probably a bit too diplomatic there: I think that the sandhi issue really hamstrings Tongyong for Taiwanese.

In order to adapt to Taiwanese, Tongyong needs to add a number of new letter or combinations of letter: nasal vowels (ⁿ), stops (h, k, p, t on the end of syllables), the intials bh and gh, m as a final, the vowel “or” and more besides. It also re-uses combinations from Tongyong for Mandarin but gives them different pronunciations, for example “e” is pronounced something like “uh” in Mandarin, but then for Taiwanese you have to read it as the Mandarin “ei”.

So it can’t really be said to be the same system.

Yup. Even the Ministry of Education under the DPP rejected Tongyong and plumped for Tai-lo instead.

45

I don’t see this as being political. Changing from traditional to simplified characters would be political; changing from a home-grown, not particularly useful, romanisation method to the international standard is just common sense.

46

Just curious. What system is used for “Bangka”, the Taiwanese version of “Mengjia” a.k.a. “Wanhua” (萬華) as in Bangka Boulevard?

47

In any event, for most Taiwanese, this is a non-issue altogether. Most do not use romanisation; most do not know much about romanisation; most do not care about romanisation. Zhuyin will continue to rule the phonetics landscape and no doubt, missed apostrophes and diacritics will continue to litter the maps and road signs of Taiwan.[/quote]

Yep, well said. The first argument in the office was whether to keep Ilan -as it had been published before, and, if I am not mistaken, written in brochures, maps and websites of the local government- against Yilan -as per HP. Since old names are supposed to be kept… This is going to get interesting.

48

There should be no argument about this. The official spelling has been with the Y – Yilan – for several years, not [color=#000000]I[/color]lan.

49

I think it’s “suibian” pinyin (i.e. however the person writing the sign felt like spelling it). In POJ and Tai-lo (the two closely-related systems most used in Taiwan for Taiwanese) the spelling of 艋舺 is Báng-kah. The “h” at the end is a stop, and also gives “kah” a different tone to “ka”.

50

Yes, absolutely. Calling three somewhat related but different things by the same name doesn’t make them one system.

Here’s an important question: “Did the creators of Tongyong, in circulating the ‘many languages, one system’ falsehood, lie through their teeth in an attempt to gain favor or were they so lacking in basic linguistic knowledge and common sense that they believed their own propaganda?” Either way, the answer does not reflect well on them.

51

Hmmm… “sidge-hang” vs. “quiz-hang”? Not necessarily easier…[/quote]

Yeah, I’m with Chris. Not easier. Chee-jhang would be easier (for native English speakers).

52

True, true, absolutely right, but you know that’s the way the cookie crumbles…

53

Hmmm… “sidge-hang” vs. “quiz-hang”? Not necessarily easier…[/quote]

Yeah, I’m with Chris. Not easier. Chee-jhang would be easier (for native English speakers).[/quote]

No need even for the “jh”: “chee-jahng” would be more English-oriented! “jh” is for Sanskrit and “jheri curls”, not Chinese! :slight_smile:

54

Doesn’t that go for Taipei as well, since I know some people write it Taibei as that’s the way it “should” be.

Just sort of by the by, is there actually a system that makes sense for a non-Chinese speaker where you don’t have to re-learn how to pronounce every letter if you already know English as in Pinyin?
I know a lot of the sounds are different, but I was hoping for something simple that would at least teach you the basics as I can’t figure out bopomofo either for that matter :blush: maybe I’m just too old and stupid :laughing:

55

[quote=“TheLostSwede”]Doesn’t that go for Taipei as well, since I know some people write it Taibei as that’s the way it “should” be.

Just sort of by the by, is there actually a system that makes sense for a non-Chinese speaker where you don’t have to re-learn how to pronounce every letter if you already know English as in Pinyin?[/quote]

Yes: Yale. It’s designed for the education of English speakers. But even then, due to Chinese having certain sounds that aren’t in English, some sounds still have to be learned. (e.g. “sy”, “yw”)

56

I think it’s “suibian” Pinyin (i.e. however the person writing the sign felt like spelling it). In POJ and Tai-lo (the two closely-related systems most used in Taiwan for Taiwanese) the spelling of 艋舺 is Báng-kah. The “h” at the end is a stop, and also gives “kah” a different tone to “ka”.[/quote]

I see. “Suibian Pinyin”? Sure it’s not “Shuibian Pinyin”? :wink:

And Keelung (Jilong) is “Gay-Lung” in Taiwanese, right? :stuck_out_tongue:

57

I’ve seen the use of “E-Land” quite a lot. Probably someone in the local government had that bright idea. :loco:

58

Spelled Ke-lâng, it does indeed sound a bit like Gay-lung.

59

I am surprised you are moaning about this considering English is not your native language anyway. Try looking at Hanyu pinyin from a German point of view and it will suddently become more intuitive.

About Qizhang:

Q represents a sound for which there wasn’t a letter, and the letter Q was going spare, so Q got the job. Besides, Q is used to represent a similar sound in at least one other language - Albanian.

Z in Hanyu pinyin represents a similar sound to the one it represents in German and Italian. ZH has the same relationship to Z as SH has to S and CH has to C, i.e. the combinations with H are retroflex while the letters alone with no H are not, SH and CH being pronounced moreorless as in English. Quite logical really. Tongyong dumped this consistent pattern by using JH.

I hope you follow me. Anyway, I am highly experienced in teaching beginners to intermediate Mandarin, so I can give you a couple of free lessons in Hanyu pinyin if you like. You buy the coffee - or beer, OK? Or you can teach me how to pronounce Swedish in exchange.

60

I wasn’t moaning, I was just asking, as I’m stupid and I don’t get it :frowning:
I’d be happy to buy you a couple of beers if you’d be daft enough to try to teach me :smiley:
My girlfriend gave up on me and in all fairness, I haven’t taken any lessons, but I think my real problem is memorizing stuff, school in Sweden doesn’t make you learn that skill unlike here :wink:
And with regards to learning Swedish, sure, as long as you can roll your R’s, somehow it seems like most people can’t and my girlfriend gets slightly cross with me every time I do it…
I guess my problem was that I didn’t realise the whole idea behind the system, it’s not for stupid waigouren who wants to try to learn Chinese the easy way, it’s for Chinese people so they can write their names and stuff when they go abroad or when they need to contact the outside world (or Taiwanese people as it may be here).