Language that should be banned

Intelligent people use words and writing. I expect more from canada than war. I cannot say the same for china.

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They do talk about that.

The reason it’s used is because Taipei is a metonymy for Taiwan.

Winningest

“I would say…” to every question asked. Who’s teaching them that? Some famous teacher?

I had to look up what “metonymy” meant :smile:

that is how it is used, but the reason one wants a metonic (real word? metonymy anyways) is the problem. Taiwan is just fine. I have found it interesting that the cookie cutter media outlets have all been expanding.their use of city names rather than countries. I wonder how much trouble they would get from china if they actually said they use the capital city names :rofl: :nauseated_face:

eg.

Taipei has arranged …

The capital, Taipei, has arranged…

the new worlds’ overlords might have issues with the latter.

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Nice!

$10 word award!
:trophy:

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London has said…
The capital, London, has said…

Reports from Washington indicate…
Reports from the capital, Washington, indicate

Beijing has issued a statement…
The capital, Beijing, has issued a statement…

I can see something like “Tensions increased today in Tanzania as rumours spread in the capital, Dar es Salaam…” because many people don’t know what the capital is.

Any romanization is going to be imprecise if you haven’t learned all the rules and exceptions.

For example, why is “quan” pronounced 全 even though it ends with “an” 安?

Or why is “qu” pronounced 去 instead of “queue”? Where is the Q sound?

If you haven’t learned all the rules and exceptions to the Wade-Gilles system, that’s not going to make sense to you either.

“Taipei has arranged…”
“Washington has arranged…”
“Beijing has arranged…”

These are all correct because they refer to the executive branch of the government which are located in the capital cities. They aren’t referring to the whole country.

“The Chinese Taipei baseball team has arranged…” doesn’t work if you’re actually talking about the Taiwan team, because the Taiwan basketball team isn’t located or headquartered in Taipei.

Tbh, those are perfect arguments for why zhuyin sucks.

“quan” in pinyin and zhuyin both end in “an”. But “quan” is known to be pronounced the way it is in 全 (more of an “en” sound, but certainly not “嗯”) because it always, consistently is. But in zhuyin it’s “ㄑㄩㄢˊ”. Ch (with closed lips, represented as “q”) + “yu” + “an” is “ch-yu-an”, which is not even close to “quan”. It doesn’t matter how fast I say “q-yu-an”, theres a pesky little “yu” there where I’m just supposed to know to drop the “y” sound. Pinyin gets over that problem by not putting a “y” in in the first place.

As for “去”, “q” is always a closed “ch” and “u” is a final sound. “Qu” is much more precise than the “ch-yu” (technically “q-yu”) that zhuyin “ㄑㄩ” represents. Once again, theres an extra “y” that you’re supposed to know to drop. But why?

Zhuyin always reminds me of how not to teach English phonics — “b-uh”.“a”.“t-uh”. “b-uh. a. t-uh”. “buh-a-tuh”. “bat!”
What?! Except my English example is a failure of the teacher (likely not trained in how to teach phonics) to know that phonetically, /b/ and /t/ don’t have “uh” at the end. If you teach English phonics without pronouncing the aspirations that don’t exist in the first place, theres no problem. But “ㄩ” can be “yu” or “u”, depending on where it is in the sentence. “ㄨ” is even better.

Point is, both systems have things that people like to pick apart, but there is nothing inconsistent at all about pinyin. There are things that people who prefer zhuyin think are stupid, but that doesn’t change the fact that pinyin is still very consistent.

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Fair to say it is common. But inaccurate in regards to international situations where the country is being represented. Unless of course is China wont invade taiwan, just Taipei. In that case, I am happy with that wording as I live in the south and am completely safe :slight_smile:

In football, there is no “China”, as the “China” team was extinct just after WW2. Instead we have “China PR”, “Chinese Taipei”, “Hong Kong” and “Macau”.

In football, there is no “Ireland”, as the “Ireland” team was extinct just after WW2. Instead, we have “Rep of Ireland” and “Northern Ireland”.

In football, there is no “Korea”, only “Korea Rep” and “Korea DPR”.

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Private Eye Neasden Police log, if anyone wants to run a search.

Too bad they still fucked up on taiwan :frowning:

At least they tried?

The best system without exceptions is