Today I was walking in the Wenxin Forest Park and saw the signs for the upcoming MRT station.
Wunsin? What monstrosity of a romanization is that? The street sign in the background has “Wenxin Rd.”
Couldn’t they consult at least one Chinese-speaking foreigner before doing this? Couldn’t they find a romanization dictionary? Couldn’t they just look at their own freaking street signs?
I’m having trouble cranking the dial any higher than mild annoyance.
I’m easily angered.
Let it go, let it go…! 
New in town, sailor??
I’ve been constantly furious for nearly 18 years. Lol…
It’s just such an easy problem to avoid… and honestly, I thought we were passed this. For the past few years it seems like they have been fairly consistently using standardized pinyin, and then I see that they’ve screwed up the signs on this MRT that they’ve been working on over a decade… Grrrrrrr…
I think the grammatically correct way to express that would be: “I thought we were wunsin this”
It’s a problem… You have Zhongshan rd which exists in almost every city and town in Taiwan (it’s kinda like main st, 1st street, etc.) and they are all spelled with different pinyin system. It leads to confusion.
Sounds like it should actually reduce confusion to me, if each city stays consistent with their spelling that is.
You know that they don’t.
Taiwan still struggles using hanyu pinyin cuz it’s a PRC invention. Wadegiles makes no sense though but lots of places still use the original wadegiles name like tamsui. Wunsin seems like a bastardization not sure how they came up with that one.
Wunsin is certainly no romanization that I’m familiar with.
If they standardized to Wade-Giles, I wouldn’t like it…but I would accept it. At least it would be consistent. For the past decade or so, it certainly seems like Taichung and everything north of it has made a concerted effort to switch everything over to Hanyu Pinyin, which is obviously the best choice. But now I see this? I almost have to believe that these signs were approved by the previous mayoral administration in Taichung (Lin Chia-lung, DPP) in defiance of all things mainland.
PS. I had to look up the romanization for 林佳龍, because who the heck knows how to spell anyone’s name in Taiwan.
This is Tongyong Pinyin. I know I’ll get flak for this but I like a lot of Tongyong Pinyin because looks easier to reproduce if you dont know any Chinese at all.
I don’t get the Xs, Qs and other crap they put in Hanyu Pinyin. I much prefer Tongyong, but wish they’d modify it a bit more.
Tamsui is a terrible example because it isn’t a wade-giles spelling, but a former postal map spelling based off of Taiyu.
Hsinchu is a better example.
There’s a reason for this.
Danshui doesn’t so much “still” use the name, but rather reverted to it. It was spelled Danshui my first few years here. Then many signs switched to Tamsui. (Not all of them. The post office websites use a couple of different spellings.)
It may or may not be a coincidence that my mail with an English address became much less reliable around the same time.
A reason for what?
Romanization of chinese confuses me. I doesn’t sound right imo.
Pinyin comically throws off most uninitiated westerners. Paul Ogata has a funny bit when he tried to pronounce fuxing. 