[quote=“fanglangzhe”]Tongyong is dead and buried
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongyong_Pinyin
“On September 17, 2008, the Ministry of Education announced that the government standard for romanization will be switched to Hanyu Pinyin nationwide, effective January 1, 2009. Individuals will retain the choice of what spellings to use for their names. This effectively scraps Tongyong Pinyin as the ROC’s standard.”[/quote]
Wow…those words sure seem familiar. Oh yes… I wrote them! 
Excellent and well written, thoroughly researched. :bravo:
So Ovid Tzeng also presided over the recent adoption of Hanyu Pingyin. He must feel vindicated after his ordeal under the previous DPP administration. I hope tongyong doesn’t come back from the dead like jason in friday the 13th. :fume:
Well, I only made some small contributions to the article…including the quote above. Most of it was written by numerous others. The magic and purpose of Wiki.
The Ma Administration better start nailing that coffin while it has the chance.
[quote=“fanglangzhe”]Tongyong is dead and buried
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongyong_Pinyin
“On September 17, 2008, the Ministry of Education announced that the government standard for romanization will be switched to Hanyu Pinyin nationwide, effective January 1, 2009. Individuals will retain the choice of what spellings to use for their names. This effectively scraps Tongyong Pinyin as the ROC’s standard.”[/quote]
Hi, may i ask a few questions? I am not in Taiwan (yet) and do not know how people in Taiwan write when using computers and cellphones (i only know how to use Japanese cellphones), so please excuse my elementary questions.
I was told that i need to know Bopomofo if i want to use computers and cellphones in Taiwan. Is this true? And if so, is that going to change now?
Do people in China use Hanyu Pinyin with computers and cellphones?
Do Chinese cellphones have keypads that are different from those in Taiwan?
Many thanks in advance!
You can switch cellphones to English, and you can get computer systems installed with English, so no, it’s not necessary to know Bopomofo.
If what you mean is that you plan to write in Mandarin on a computer, you can get it set up to use HYPY (I’m sure there’s at least one thread on how to do that). As for cell phones, I think there is probably a thread on that too-- I know my LG won’t let me input Mandarin using HYPY, but I think someone said there was a model that would.
[quote=“Dragonbones”]
If what you mean is that you plan to write in Mandarin on a computer, you can get it set up to use HYPY (I’m sure there’s at least one thread on how to do that). As for cell phones, I think there is probably a thread on that too-- I know my LG won’t let me input Mandarin using HYPY, but I think someone said there was a model that would.[/quote]
‘Motorola’ rings a bell (no pun intended) for having pinyin input, if someone wants to search that?
I have used two Sanyo PHS cellphone models and they both have Hanyu pinyin as well as zhuyin fuhao (bo-po-mo-fo) for inputting Chinese.
Hi again. Thank you all for your replies! (^^)
OK… that’s like with many cellphones in Japan: English may be helpful on some occasions - but, of course, the only way to get up to speed in Chinese is to use it… 
OK, i’ll search for those threads, since that is what i am after.
Motorola, Sanyo - i’ll keep this information for when i make it to Taiwan. (^^)
Many thanks again!
Problem: the Pinyin “Juan” would be pronounced as roughly “jwen” rather than “hwahn” which aligns with the Spanish “Juan,” for John. The rough Pinyin spelling for the Spanish “Juan” would be “Huan.”
Tongyong Pinyin had seen the following Nationalist Chinese leaders’ names changed:
Instead of the Hanyu Sun Zhongshan, in Tongyong it’s Sun J h o n g s h a n.
Instead of Jiang Zhongzheng in Hanyu, it’s Jiang J h o n g j h e n g in Tongyong. Similarly, Jieshi would become Jieshih.
Jiang Zhongzheng/Jieshi’s place of birth, Zhejiang (in the People’s R.O.C.; known as C h e k i a n g in Postal Map Romanization), becomes J h e j i a n g in Tongyong.
~Ben
It’s not really a problem, since HYPY is independent of Spanish orthography.
[quote]Tongyong Pinyin had seen the following Nationalist Chinese leaders’ names changed:
Instead of the Hanyu Sun Zhongshan, in Tongyong it’s Sun J h o n g s h a n.
Instead of Jiang Zhongzheng in Hanyu, it’s Jiang J h o n g j h e n g in Tongyong. Similarly, Jieshi would become Jieshih.
Jiang Zhongzheng/Jieshi’s place of birth, Zhejiang (in the People’s R.O.C.; known as C h e k i a n g in Postal Map Romanization), becomes J h e j i a n g in Tongyong.[/quote]
And that’s one of TYPY’s problems: it changes established spellings into a system that nobody uses.
It’s not really a problem, since HYPY is independent of Spanish orthography.
[/quote]
Otherwise you could also argument that it is better to use some kind of “target language spelling”. Of course it is easier to be able to just copy the name in Pinyin from e.g. an English document and write it in a German newspaper. But then the problem arises that the reader will get the pronounciation wrong to a larger degree.
If you would use a system which is specifically designed for e.g. German, he could pronounce it to a larger degree correctly (of course not 100%) as if everybody just uses Pinyin. Why should we use write “yao” if it would “jao” would be more natural?
If someone actually learns Chinese, he could still use Pinyin (or Bopomofo or whatever). But I think, the problem with Pinyin is that it makes it easier for the writer to just use the names from text written in another languages, but does not make it easier for the reader to pronounce it correctly.
So basically we have the following problem: Instead of making it easier for the reader, we make it easier for the writer. I think that is a little bit weird logic, isn’t it? Shouldn’t the writer have the job to make it easy for the reader?
And why should we have some kind of independent orthography? Pinyin is not used primarily in Chinese, so why should we use it (except for learning Chinese?).
Latin names get transcribed for example into Japanese or Korean case by case. I don’t see why it should be different in latin script based languages.
E.g. look at Czech: 上海 is written as Šanghaj (The Š is the same as Sh). Esperanto writes it as Ŝanhajo (ok, this is now from Wikipedia; I actually don’t know if they have some kind of own transcription system). I don’t see the point in using one transcription for every language.