Iv heard that city names and names of famous places will not be changed to the new PINYIN. Any news on this? Taipei is not going to become TAibei and Kaohsiung is not going to become gaoxiung or whatever? Whats the news?
they did change the name of BOMBAY (in india of course) to its original name of MUMBAI.
ARe they gonna do something similar here? IM not too sure i could get used to Kaohsiung becoming Gaoxiung for example?? And i probably spelled that wrong too
i mean ROME is still ROME and not ROMA, MILAN is still MILAN and not MILANO, FLORENCE is still FLORENCE and not FIRENZE, VENICE is still VENICE and not VENEZIA like the locals call them.
But then? in those cases? I wonder if they really should be renamed to their real names as the Italians call them.
If you consider the fact that they donât even have one standard of romanization here yet, it is very unlikely they will be changing the spellings. Taipei city officially uses Hanyu Pinyin and the central government prefers but does not mandate Tongyong Pinyin, and of course many places still use the Wade-Giles system. And then thereâs the people who just romanize things whatever way they feel. I donât think this will happen anytime soon.
I personally don;t like the idea of changing names of cities in the way India did. Hell, why not just tell us to call India âBharatâ instead of India? Itâs like the Germans insisting we call Munich âMunchenâ (with an umlauted u) from now on, or Britain insisting the French drop âLondresâ and start using âLondonâ. No thanks!
Plus, just think of all the books, letterheads and business cards that have to be reprinted with each change. $$$ down the drain.
The problem in Taiwan is Tongyong Pinyin, which may be scrapped as soon as the KMT retake power, thus resulting in spelling changes with every change of administration. I say Taiwanâs place names should either use to the classic Wade-Giles system or take the plunge and convert entirely to Hanyu Pinyin once and for all.
[quote=âChrisâ]I personally don;t like the idea of changing names of cities in the way India did. Hell, why not just tell us to call India âBharatâ instead of India? Itâs like the Germans insisting we call Munich âMunchenâ (with an umlauted u) from now on, or Britain insisting the French drop âLondresâ and start using âLondonâ. No thanks![/quote]I donât think itâs quite like that. Itâs not really changing the name. The various Romanised versions of a city name refer to the same words in Chinese, so are intended to be pronounced the same. That is unless weâre talking about that ridiculous thing where people (locals and foreigners both) refer to places with a quasi Anglicised pronunciation, for example Jilong becomes âKey-lungâ.
The government has gave up to change those city/county names. Those which are going to change are mostly township/city under the county governments.
For example, Taipei, Taichung and Kaohsiung would not be changed. But for Xindian, which is a city under Taipei County government, would be changed into Sindian.
I am just wondering how these romanization things matter for foreigners. For me, as long as I can pronouce the names with the corresponding characters, that would be fine for me.
But, yes, sometimes I cannot match the map and signs on the road, that is problem.
Some names are so entrenched that it would be hard to change. Even the PRC didnât try to change Hong Kong to Xianggang or Macau to Aomen. The PRC also did not try to force other nations to refer to herself as Zhongguo, but left it as China, Chine, etc. But it doesnât mean that it canât work. Afterall, Beijing and Guangzhou is now the preferred usage over Peiking and Canton although it took a few decades to take hold. Seoul, which used to be called 柢ĺ (han4cheng2) in Chinese has now been changed to éŚçž (shou3er3) at the request of the South Korean government. This happened within a very short span of less than 2 years from the time the Koreans made the request to the time the mainland and Taiwanese media started using the new name.
But didnât Turin become Torino?[/quote]
It didnât. The English is still Turin.[/quote]
So what language is this?
nbcolympics.com/index.html[/quote]
English and French are the official languages of the Olympics. However, Torino 2006 was the first Olympics to have deviated from using either English or French as its official name and this was done at the request of the city of Turin. NBC adopted the Italian version of the name in its reporting everywhere and it was criticized for doing so.
The Washington Post and New York Times went with Turin 2006 and the CBC went with Torino 2006 when it was talking about the official name of the Olympics but used Turin when it was referring to the name of the city. This resulted in funny sentences like âThe Torino 2006 Winter Olympics is about to end in Turin.â
I wonder what other irrelevances Taiwanese politicians can fight over? Whether to change the bin collecting times in Zhong He to 1:30 from 1:45. Hell itâs important! You just donât love Taiwan enough!
i think your right. Torino has now become accepted widely?? Just as Beijing use to be PEKING?
Some country names got changed too. Ceylon is now Sri Lanka for example.
but Kaohsiung just looks and seems funny when it becomes Gaoxiung?? Although Gaoxiung is much closer to the truth in pronunciation. I guess its a matter of getting used to something. And Keelung sure does look funny to me as Jilong, but then Jilong is much more correct. Perhaps we should adhere to whats CORRECT according to the majority vote?
and by the way, whats with this automatic PINYIN we get when we put in place names in TAiwan?? haha. cracks me up.
Itâs only fair, after all we donât call New York âNeues Yorkâ or make up a new name for it. So why canât you guys spell and pronounce the names correctly? And itâs NĂźrnberg (or Nuernberg if you donât have a âĂźâ) for godâs sake, not Nuremberg.
I also expect that Bangkok is now called by itâs full and correct name:
Krungthepmahanakonbowornratanakosinmahintarayudyayamahadiloponoparatanarajthaniburirom-
udomrajniwesmahasatarnamornpimarnavatarsatitsakattiyavisanukamphrasit
Just kidding with all of the above, many places have different names in different languages. Personally I donât care, if Munich is the English name then so be it - there are also different names in German for some American / UK / Australian ⌠places (either translated or just different), in particular for non-English speaking countries.
With Chinese names you have the problem of romanizing them, i.e. to decide which system to use, or even to consider in what dialect you want to romanize them. And then you still may have some other, historical names. Confusing at best.
BTW: Does anyone know the origins of or meaning behind âQuemoyâ as name for Kinmen island? Is it some kind of romanization or ⌠?
I think they should change all the names to pinyin and popularise the accurate pronounciation. This would aide communictaion, as there would no longer be a Chinese name and a so-called âEnglishâ equivilent. If they taught pinyin in schools then Taiwanese would have a convinient and standardised way to romanise Chinese.
Many Taiwanese insist on pronouncing Jin as Kin (like Kinmen) and Jing as King (like Nanking) etc etc. When I ask why they say because thatâs the English pronounciation. They believe that saying these place names in âEnglishâ assists English speakers. In fact the opposite is true, the âEnglishâ versions are no easier to pronounce and are useless when communicating with people who know little or no English. More to the point - they are not English, just wrong Chinese.
Quemoy is the anglicized pronounciation of Jinmen éé in Minnan (Taiwanese), much like Xiamen ĺťé (just across from Jinmen on the mainland) is still widely know in the west as Amoy.
BTW, the reason that on Taiwan, place names often use K instead of J (pinyin) or Ch (Wade-Giles) is due to the legacy of Postal System Pinyin that was in use since the Qing dynasty. I suspect the usage of K instead of J or Ch was derived from the Cantonese pronounciation.
Torino or not (and I agree with Elegua), there is a trend towards using the local names. No-one says Leghorn for Livorno, Angora for Ankara, Lyons for Lyon or Marseilles for Marseille any more.
But what does this have to do with the choice of romanization? Which is foreign, which is local? K a o hsiung or Gaoxiong? And the the choice doesnât affect the actual name, does it?
[quote=âMawvellousâ]I think they should change all the names to Pinyin and popularise the accurate pronounciation. This would aide communictaion, as there would no longer be a Chinese name and a so-called âEnglishâ equivilent. If they taught Pinyin in schools then Taiwanese would have a convinient and standardised way to romanise Chinese.
Many Taiwanese insist on pronouncing Jin as Kin (like Kinmen (Jinmen)) and Jing as King (like Nanjing) etc etc. When I ask why they say because thatâs the English pronounciation. They believe that saying these place names in âEnglishâ assists English speakers. In fact the opposite is true, the âEnglishâ versions are no easier to pronounce and are useless when communicating with people who know little or no English. More to the point - they are not English, just wrong Chinese.[/quote]
What I want to know is this. Who taught the Taiwanese that when speaking English, the second syllable of city names is pronounced on the fourth tone. TaiPEI. KaoHSIUNG (also, with an aspirated K to make it sound completely silly.
The Americans of course. The fourth tone? Itâs done all the time on the news for Chinese city names â Hong Kong, Beijing, Nanjing, Shanghai, etc. So why not Taipei and Kaohsiung?
Actually, it makes perfect sense for someone speaking English to pronounce place names as they have been traditionally spelt. How does it make sense to pronounce a city on the map spelt as âKeelungâ as âJilongâ if one is speaking English? I can certainly tell you stories of many non-Americans getting lost in California because they could not find âSan Hoe-sayâ on the map. And do you say âPareeâ instead of âParisâ, âRomaâ instead of âRomeâ, âHeung Gongâ instead of âHong Kongâ?
