Anyone been noticing the recent sign changes on the MRT? And by sign changes I mean sticking stickers over “Danshui” and making it “T-a-m-s-u-i.” I’ve also noticed its incomplete, just on the maps and a few other places so far. Anybody know why?
Edit Thanks for pointing that auto pinyin error out
The auto-pinyinizer is making both spellings the same. Try making the non-pinyin hyphenated or bold and shrink one letter.
D-a-n-s…
Danshuiie
Maybe they’ve decided to go with legacy spellings.
How are they doing it with 板橋?
Just a guess: maybe the local (Taiwan) pronunciation is considered more appropriate than the foreign (Beijing) pronunciation?
The official English homepage of 淡水 certainly uses “Tamsui”…
It wasn’t that long ago that they insisted on changing it to ‘Danshui’. I suppose it is a preference for the Taiwanese pronunciation?
In that case i doubt that it was the same “they” then. Could be a political tug-of-war between different “they”…
We’ve had issues like this in Okinawa, too - to give one example: the administration of the town of Tomigusuku at one time decided to change the name of the town to the Japanized reading Tomishiro, while another administration reversed that decision years later to return to the local name. That’s why i offered that guess regarding the “Danshui”-“Tamsui” issue… 
Yes, I agree. One faction thinks everything should be in Taiwan’s version of pinyin, and another thinks they should be using Taiwanese-specific spellings. And so the signs will be changing back and forth depending on who is in power.
And there’s TTa an Park
Hmmm… maybe they’ll change Kaohsiung’s name back to Takao.
OP is actually expecting sense from these guys?
I think this particular situation can be explained in terms of mind over matter: They don’t mind, and we don’t matter.
It’s kind of interesting that they even care about romanization. If I were Taiwanese, I’m not sure I would.
Imagine government officials in English speaking countries arguing about how, say, Spanish or French ought to be written…
Imagine government officials in English speaking countries arguing about how, say, Spanish or French ought to be written…[/quote]
They care in Canada.
Danshui is mando, T.a.m.s.h.u.i. is closer to Taiwanese. In taiwanese it is pronounced something like dham with a soft T (meaning Wet) tzuee (with a T and a Z sound. and the word means Water). Together “soft water” means it is fresh water and is not salt water.
It’s tidal.
I know the water is actually tidal but dhamtzuee means fresh water against geeyam tzuee , which means salt water in taiwanesezee
It ain’t fresh either, tommy.
I am not even sure it’s water.