Um…pretty much beating the dead horse around these parts…there have been numerous discussions of this already, including one fairly recently (month or so ago, I think.)
Take a quick look around the earlier threads or use search. I’m pretty sure you’ll come up with something.
Huh?
I don’t think so… but…
… that answers your question. 
Anyway, have fun learning Chinese!
Bopomofo is a nuisance, to be honest. However, in the main, any low-level annotated Chinese you’ll find around you (e.g. such as everything at the elementary school I work at) will be in bopomofo, as will books and so. So, you kind of have to accept this. They’re not going to start teaching kids hanyu pinyin in school here any time soon, and so most adults will not need to know pinyin (of any form). As such, in some respects, even if you favour hanyu pinyin (as I do), you’re just going to have to accept bopomofo in many situations.
That said, my approach to learning bopomofo now is not to sit down and learn it because that’s incredibly boring. I reverse engineer the problem. I look at characters I already know and try to take note of the bopomofo (when provided) from those.
In the words of the great A-Bian, “Tongyong was written by the Taiwanese for the Taiwanese.” :loco:
In the words of the great A-Bian, “Tongyong was written by the Taiwanese for the Taiwanese.” :loco:[/quote]
But, but … if the government hadn’t changed to Tongyong, then the official system would have remained one that was made in Taiwan. 
Obviously, something had to be changed. 
[quote=“GuyInTaiwan”]Bopomofo is a nuisance, to be honest. However, in the main, any low-level annotated Chinese you’ll find around you (e.g. such as everything at the elementary school I work at) will be in bopomofo, as will books and so. So, you kind of have to accept this. They’re not going to start teaching kids hanyu pinyin in school here any time soon, and so most adults will not need to know pinyin (of any form). As such, in some respects, even if you favour hanyu pinyin (as I do), you’re just going to have to accept bopomofo in many situations.
That said, my approach to learning bopomofo now is not to sit down and learn it because that’s incredibly boring. I reverse engineer the problem. I look at characters I already know and try to take note of the bopomofo (when provided) from those.[/quote]
Actually, if you compare it to Japan:
There, the pupils learn a romanisation (I think either Kunrei or Hepburn) in school, but usually it is only for their names and maybe where they live (I think). But afterwards, usually the romanisation system they tend to adopt is ‘Wapuro (word processor)-romanisation’.
For example:
私は中国がめっちゃ嫌い。 (I really hate China.)
would be, in correct Hepburn, or Kunrei, resp.:
watashi wa chūgoku ga meccha kirai. / watasi wa tyûgoku ga mettya kirai.
But, as far as I know, most Japanese do it somehow like this:
watasi ha tyuugoku ga mettya kirai or watasi ha chuugoku ga meccha kirai etc., so just like they would write on their computer (most Japanese type with a romanisation input method, which will then automatically be converted to Hiragana).
So, my point is: Nobody really takes their romanization for real. They almost every time drop the long vowel (e.g. Kyōto would just become Kyoto), write it, in the case of an ō with ou (Because the Hiragana spelling is おう), don’t adjust the spelling of the particles は (ha, in the case of a particle wa) or へ (he → e) etc. Of course, if you have some mastering of Japanese, it is not that hard to figure out what is meant, but still, there are some problems (especially the long vowel). But, because everybody who learns Japanese knows how to read Hiragana/Katakana, you would just let the Japanese person write down the reading in Hiragana for you.
So I wonder why this is not possible in Taiwan? You argue that they should learn Pinyin in school, and maybe, best of all, that they should abandon Zhuyin in favour of Pinyin. What for? Isn’t Zhuyin just for three purposes: Let the Taiwanese pupils learn how to read; type Chinese in the computer and consult a dictionary? So why should then every Taiwanese learn a western romanisation which they will never use, just to please some foreigners?
I am not per se against Pinyin. It has some really nice advantages:
But, and now comes the biggest disadvantage: How to you write vertically? Can you imagine a children’s book, which is printed vertically, to have Pinyin printed next to the characters?
And please don’t tell me that they should abandon vertical writing. I think this is one of the nicest features of Chinese writing in Taiwan. Maybe some people think that sticking to Traditional Chinese is so nice, but (even though I also like it more), Simplified and Traditional is still just Chinese. But vertical writing—only Japan and Taiwan uphold this culture. And I really think that it should be preserved, just because of cultural diversity. Should every language be written from left to right or right to left in the future? I think that this is a little bit boring.
Also, Pinyin in a completely Chinese text just looks ugly. It is ok if you mix it with western text, but the other way, it just does not look right, imho. I guess it would be nearly the same as writing Chinese characters in an, for example, English text. I think every typographer would be opposed to that.
(Of course, nowadays there are words in latin characters in Chinese texts, but it is not that often…)
Of course, I also think that Taiwanese should have at least have a basic crash course in school what Hanyu Pinyin is—that it is not ‘English’, that it can fully represent the Chinese sounds, how the tones can be written etc; so that they maybe know how to write their name in Pinyin and other stuff. But full romanisation of Chinese? Why should they care? I really really think that the foreigner should take the 2 hours time and learn Zhuyin and be happy to let every Taiwanese write down the reading correctly.
So once again my point: Of course, the situation is not perfectly for foreigners in Taiwan, but instead of saying ‘Every Taiwanese has to learn Pinyin!’, just learn Zhuyin and be happy. Of course, if you think that Pinyin is better (which it may really be), nobody has anything against you using it for your own studies, e.g. vocabulary lists, or for using romanisation in an English text. But if you have a language exchange, I really think that you should be learning the system the native uses, not the other way round. If you don’t do language exchange, you don’t need to learn Zhuyin, because basically you will only stumble across it in language exchange. In this case, it is a little bit similar to Japanese: They also don’t know how to write correct romanisation, but nobody cares.
Concerning official romanisation in Taiwan: Of course, I am also in favour of Pinyin there. Please print every road sign etc. in Pinyin. But then don’t use ‘bastardized’ Pinyin (without tone marks), but please print it with tones.
Am I the only one who thinks that Pinyin without tone marks is, to some degree, as bad as bastardized Wade-Giles? (of course, bastardized Wade-Giles is even worse, because it drops two informations)
But because Taiwan will never do that, I actually don’t really care 
Hi danbinggui - I have to disagree with you on this one. I have a friend who’s major was in Mandarin. She learned Hanyu Pinyin. I started studying Mandarin here in Taiwan by myself a couple of months back. I learned ㄅㄆㄇㄈ by myself and practiced reading the sounds together. I spoke a little Chinese to my friend and she said that it sounded perfect and that using ㄅㄆㄇㄈ to speak Chinese is the best way to say each character correctly. When she speaks Chinese to the locals they find it very difficult to understand her and she has been studying for so long. She says this is because she studied Pinyin.
Yes OK its not the same as what the Mainland Chinese use but if you want to speak like them maybe you should learn there and not in Taiwan?
I don’t think learning Zhuyin is a waste of time if anything its better. All the kids books here are in Zhuyin and are widely found in so many cheap book stores that will help with your Chinese. There are also Kids Newspapers that I use to help me read. I think you’ll find the Pinyin resources are somewhat limited to what is available to the locals.
She’s simply wrong.
Wrong again. She learned the sounds incorrectly. If learned properly, both systems produce exactly the same sounds. Why do so many people have such a hard time understanding this?
[quote=“Magicgirl”]It’s the best if you can learn both Zhu yin and Pin Yin, but what if you only wanna spend time on one of them!?! (some might be confused if they study them both at the same time)
Sure, that’s much easier for westner to learn the pin yin, but in the other hand, you will miss the chance to read the “zhu yin” materials which has no pin yin on it. I personaly think this is a pity. or maybe we should have “pin yin” materials more.[/quote]
Learning chinese is a many year long process… If you don’t have the time to learn both, then why are you starting to learn chinese.
And yes, if you are in taiwan and cant understand someone, they wont be able to write down for you you the pinyin, only the zhuyin. For practical reasons in taiwan, learn both. If you are not planning to interact with people from Taiwan, then learn only pinyin.
[quote=“Hellstorm”]
Concerning official romanisation in Taiwan: Of course, I am also in favour of Pinyin there. Please print every road sign etc. in Pinyin. But then don’t use ‘bastardized’ Pinyin (without tone marks), but please print it with tones.
Am I the only one who thinks that Pinyin without tone marks is, to some degree, as bad as bastardized Wade-Giles? (of course, bastardized Wade-Giles is even worse, because it drops two informations)
But because Taiwan will never do that, I actually don’t really care [/quote]
Yes the inconsistency in romanisation and dropping the tones is almost worse than having no tones. Try and refer to name of a place without the tones to a native person and see if they know what you are talking about. Also Tamsui (tam sue-ii??) sounds nothing like 淡水！
Sometimes, they can’t write the zhuyin either.
Sometimes, they can’t write the zhuyin either.[/quote]
That is true, and some of them don’t even understand “Chinese” (:
No, it’s because her pronunciation is poor, which could be due to one of several things.
It is not reasonable to take samples of ONE person studying each system, and then attribute the difference in resulting pronunciation quality to the system, when there are numerous other variables involved, including the person’s linguistic aptitude (including specifically how good their “ear” is for tones), the quality of their instruction, amount of effort spent, and so on.
I could easily pick one person who studied bopomofo and compare their pronunciation to mine, and if the person I picked doesn’t pronounce well, we could declare Pinyin the winner. We would again be wrong, because the method is wrong.
She probably says this because that’s what the locals say to her, and they say it because they “just know” that Zhuyin is better – because it’s how they learned – not realizing that they actually acquired Chinese long before they ever knew the bopomofo symbols existed.
This is neither here or there, but I believe T a m s u i is a Hokkien romanization. I was similarly puzzled over Tamkang (淡江, dan4jiang1) University until someone offered that explanation.
Someone who knows (speaks) the language says so, too: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=101267&start=15 
I’m really glad to see that this old thread is coming to a sensible conclusion with such explanations as those posted by Hellstorm, Dragonbones, Ironlady, and odysseyandoracle. 
Alternatively, maybe i could join the pool of the illustrious many on this BBS who think that the government of Taiwan ought to listen to them by adding one more wasted opinion: what the Taiwanese really should do is set up a mandatory test on the history and languages of this country that applicants have to pass before they get their visas. :roflmao:
PS: By the way, in Japanese the two locations recently mentioned are called “Tansui” and “Tankou” - here, too, as with Hokkien, the soundshift from “k” to “j” that we observe in the official language has not happened.