Why Taiwan needs to get over itself and universally use hanyu pinyin

I have long felt that Taiwanese nationalism could be better promoted, not by tweaking existing systems of Mandarin phonetics, but by adding romanized Taiwanese (in POJ, please) alongside it. Accepting the mainland-derived Hanyu Pinyin for Mandarin could be glossed as a recognition that Mandarin is a foreign language here.

But then we’d lose the fun that comes with headlines like this one:

Remaining propene to be totally vented this morning: Duh

It’s the “totally” that makes it perfect.

(Edited: grammar.)

Beautiful! :laughing:

[quote=“lostinasia”]But then we’d lose the fun that comes with headlines like this one:

Remaining propene to be totally vented this morning: Duh

The “totally” that makes it perfect.[/quote]

now we just need another minister named “Doh” to complete the next day’s headline:

The remaining propane couldn’t get vented by this morning: Doh

My Chinese name is 孔書文. If I ever become a politician in Taiwan I’m envisioning my campaign posters as guaranteed vote-getters: Kong Shoe-in for the win! :slight_smile:

So … could ‘Hu’ be romanised ‘Huh’? :laughing: There needs to be a legislator named ‘Huh’ in government. Won’t someone think of the headline writers?

Why frame it as a political issue at all?

[quote=“lostinasia”]But then we’d lose the fun that comes with headlines like this one:

Remaining propene to be totally vented this morning: Duh

It’s the “totally” that makes it perfect.

(Edited: grammar.)[/quote]

This is one of those times where I literally lol’d. That is hilarious.

Because that’s why they went with TongYong.

Because it is a political issue.

Because everything in Taiwan is a political issue.

There are literally only maybe two things the blue and green camps agree on. One: They live in Taiwan. Two: Economic growth is good.

Everything else is complete antagonism.

It wouldn’t be funny at all, would it, if i - purely hypothetically - started a thread with the title “Why westerners in Taiwan need to get over themselves and learn hanzi”. :wink: :ponder:

A personal note, to put in perspective where i’m coming from: i’ve read over a decade worth of discussions on English bulletin boards in Japan (predominantly frequented by, you guessed it, “language teachers” from countries where English is the official language or one of the official languages), and the gist of what i’ve read (“gist” as per majority decision) is that “Japan needs to get over itself and use the Latin alphabet”.

Most entertaining - if you are into that sort of entertainment… :s

:2cents:

[quote=“yuli”]It wouldn’t be funny at all, would it, if i - purely hypothetically - started a thread with the title “Why westerners in Taiwan need to get over themselves and learn hanzi”. :wink: :ponder:

A personal note, to put in perspective where I’m coming from: I’ve read over a decade worth of discussions on English bulletin boards in Japan (predominantly frequented by, you guessed it, “language teachers” from countries where English is the official language or one of the official languages), and the gist of what I’ve read (“gist” as per majority decision) is that “Japan needs to get over itself and use the Latin alphabet”.

Most entertaining - if you are into that sort of entertainment… :s

:2cents:[/quote]

Not really related to the OP, though. The OP knows her Hanzi, trad and simplified. I’m advocating some sort of recognisable tranliteration for use in the English press or for international usage:the guy is in government, he’s not running a noodle shop.

And the “…” doesn’t come across the way you think it does. Really, you might want to think about using those less.

It was a light-hearted chuckle, not a neo-colonial gibe. Duh for president!

[quote=“yuli”]It wouldn’t be funny at all, would it, if i - purely hypothetically - started a thread with the title “Why westerners in Taiwan need to get over themselves and learn hanzi”. :wink: :ponder:

A personal note, to put in perspective where I’m coming from: I’ve read over a decade worth of discussions on English bulletin boards in Japan (predominantly frequented by, you guessed it, “language teachers” from countries where English is the official language or one of the official languages), and the gist of what I’ve read (“gist” as per majority decision) is that “Japan needs to get over itself and use the Latin alphabet”.

Most entertaining - if you are into that sort of entertainment… :s

:2cents:[/quote]

Don’t misunderstand – nobody is advocating ditching Hanzi and going full-Latin like Vietnam was forced to do. Going back to a previous comment you made, Taiwan has no legal obligation to Romanize signs. In that you are correct.

But it’s a pretty dumb idea to choose not to do so. If you hope to have any investors from anywhere in the world (except China) come to Taiwan and find their way to your company, or if you hope to have any tourists at all travel around without a guide, or if you hope to hold any international conventions or conferences or fairs or festivals… You had better have some way for non-citizens and non-residents to find their way around.

I for one have always been grateful for the widespread Romanization shown on signs in major Japanese cities. I can read the characters obviously, but have no idea how to read them in Japanese, and asking someone where “shenhu” is doesn’t help you get to Kobe any faster.

Wouldn’t forcing everyone to use hanyu pinyin be a bit communist?

This is a free country, a democracy, I think we all need to remember that when we’re lost in the land of zh j ch sh x. Go Taiwan!

[quote=“SloanRanger”]Wouldn’t forcing everyone to use hanyu pinyin be a bit communist?

This is a free country, a democracy, I think we all need to remember that when we’re lost in the land of zh j ch sh x. Go Taiwan![/quote]

Let’s see… Is Korea’s implementation of the Revised Romanization Scheme communist? Or Israel’s national standards for transliterating Hebrew? What about France’s Académie française for how to spell French words?

Having a language policy is not a war crime – something a lot of people in Taiwan refuse to accept. It’s a set of guidelines, not a life-or-death ultimatum. Deviations are obviously allowed.

Freedom is not tantamount to chabuduoism.

Quite, but taking a hard line on such things seems often seems to go hand in glove with taking a hard line on other things. With reference to your examples, one is a nation with a long held mania for federal regulation and standardisation (perhaps just in my opinion), and the other two nations have security (and insecurity) issues that perhaps do make it a life or death issue.

Personally, I think that Taiwan probably has the right perspective on this issue - chabuduo!

[quote=“SloanRanger”]Wouldn’t forcing everyone to use hanyu pinyin be a bit communist?

This is a free country, a democracy, I think we all need to remember that when we’re lost in the land of zh j ch sh x. Go Taiwan![/quote]

nope. forcing everyone to use siplified chinese would. because it sucks. pinyin wouldn’t be a problem, its a better system and it would just be helpful to consistently use one system. i don’t see it as political at all, purely practical.

[quote=“Lros”][quote=“SloanRanger”]Wouldn’t forcing everyone to use hanyu pinyin be a bit communist?

This is a free country, a democracy, I think we all need to remember that when we’re lost in the land of zh j ch sh x. Go Taiwan![/quote]

nope. forcing everyone to use siplified chinese would. because it sucks. pinyin wouldn’t be a problem, its a better system and it would just be helpful to consistently use one system. I don’t see it as political at all, purely practical.[/quote]

Agreed, while I personally think that Taiwan should choose to use simplified characters (as ugly and difficult as they are) I recognize there is a vast difference between asking the Taiwanese to alter the native script they use for their own personal everyday communication (a very intrusive imposition) and adopting a uniform, widely used standard for the limited purpose of romanization. Honestly, if governmental bodies are going to have multiple, conflicting and ad hoc romanization forms, I wonder if it would be better not to bother romanizing at all (why go through the effort of trying to romanize when the end results don’t actually assist, and may actually further confuse, the target audience -people who can’t read Hanzi).

Pinyin isn’t a better system at all–each system is equally flawed in its own way. Well, except for tongyong, which is unique in its suckiness. Of course it would be better to use one system consistently, but which one? How could that decision NOT be political? When it comes to China and Taiwan, Blue and Green, EVERYTHING is political…

Pinyin isn’t a better system at all–each system is equally flawed in its own way. [/quote]
While it is true that Hanyu Pinyin probably isn’t inherently better than other systems of romanization, it does have one strength: it’s known to tens of millions of people around the world, and is far the most popular system of romanization encountered by learners of Mandarin Chinese. It’s popularity alone is a huge strength. It’s also an ISO standard (ISO 7098:1991).