Taiwanese names and romanisation

[ABCinChina]

Those local Taiwanese are sure resistant to change. They can't even understand any pinyin anyways so it shouldn't matter much to them. All that's in their mind is..."Change our pinyin system to what? (Hanyu pinyin) The same system as China? (Yes) We oppose this change!"

[Lu]

Interesting that it's mainly the West including the expats in Taiwan, which are more concerned about fixing the Roman spelling and prefer pinyin but it's the local Taiwanese who oppose.

Most Taiwanese know f-all about romanisation. I have a TW friend who lives on 和平东路 and pronounces it 'hoping', as in 'I'm hoping for nice weather', because bad Wade-Giles spells it Hoping. Or people who think that spelling 台北 as Taipei means it should be pronounced 台陪. Another friend of mine spelled his surname Hsu, and instisted that that was not W-G but some other, locally developed system. Taiwanese generally don't learn any romanisation in school, and so mostly have no idea what it is, how it should be used, and what it can and cannot do.

Westerners in Taiwan on the other hand often start out with romanisation, if they ever learn characters at all, and so they often have much clearer ideas on romanisation, and why it would be nice to be consistent.

Also, Taiwanese don't really need romanisation, and so they don't really need an opinion on it either. Romanisation is most useful for people who don't read characters (well) and are only starting to speak.

[atitarev]

Here are some of the first signs of resistance:

Pinyin move hurts Taiwan's pluralism

I wonder what kind of pluralism is expected when a standard is introduced? Sometimes pluralism is a hurdle in introducing decisions.

Again talking about Tonyong Pinyin being better, blah-blah...

[ABCinChina]

I read the article and agree that sounds like "zh" and "x" and "c" didn't come easy at first, but that's not to say Tongyong is better than Pinyin. After all, when reading Russian or any other language that uses the alphabet, you're bound to come across some words that have exceptions. Not every language has to sound like English.

[renzhe]

Seems like some people out there assume that only English uses the Latin alphabet and that the purpose of a romanisation system is to write things the way an English speaker would write them.

English doesn't have a "c" sound, so it's ridiculous to use English spelling to represent it. It's better to use the character used by languages which do have a "c" sound, like Slavic languages. And they write it as "c".

I'm mostly happy with Hanyu Pinyin. There are things that irk me about it, and which could have been handled better IMHO, but that doesn't include "x" and "c", and it's a topic for some other thread. But the most important thing is that it's consistent and widely spread.

[Lu]

Seems like some people out there assume that only English uses the Latin alphabet and that the purpose of a romanisation system is to write things the way an English speaker would write them.

This overall idea that foreign=Western=American=English, and that ergo pinyin=Chinese written in English, tires and annoys me to no end. I have the feeling that Taiwanese are especially guilty of this, and that Chinese do it to a lesser degree, but I might be wrong. This is related to the idea that I am foreign=American and the belief that my original name=English name (since everything not Chinese must be English), also very very annoying.

Some utter nonsense from that editorial:

The politically derived hegemony of Hanyu Pinyin derived from China's global clout must be balanced against the difficulty for persons unfamiliar with Chinese and with the Cyrillic alphabet to correctly pronounce its "zh" and "x" and "c" sounds.

Although the systems are broadly similar' date=' the Tongyong system arguably is easier for non-Chinese and non-Russian speakers to pronounce with an understandable approximation to standard Chinese pronunciation.

Moreover, Tongyong's structure also allows its use to romanize other Sinitic languages spoken in Taiwan besides the Beijing dialect, such as Hoklo (or Minnan) and Hakka and can better embody the value of lingual pluralism, a value absent from the arbitrary Hanyu Pinyin system which can only be used to transliterate the Beijing dialect.[/quote']Sigh. Tongyong is 'native' Taiwanese, and since we know that native Taiwanese=DPP and KMT=evil, it doesn't matter that we have no idea what romanization means or what it does, we can just spout nonsense as long as it is deep-green nonsense.

[Hofmann]

What a mess. I've never really liked Hanyu Pinyin, but Tongyong Pinyin is no better. The only improvement over Hanyu is that they spell [iou] like iou and [uei] like uei.

[renzhe]

The day I witness a non-Chinese, non-Russian speaker pronounce "si" properly, I'll cut my own head off.

The problem with pronouncing "xi" is not the fact that it's written like "xi", it's that it's a completely new sound to most people, and calling it "si" or "hsi" neither makes it easier to pronounce nor results in a closer approximation. Neither "ksee" nor "huh-see" nor "see" are more correct than each other.

From everything I know about Tongyong pinyin, it's neither more logical nor less logical than Hanyu pinyin. It's only advantage over Hanyu pinyin is that basically nobody uses it.

The only improvement over Hanyu is that they spell [iou] like iou and [uei] like uei.

That's exactly the part that annoys me about Hanyu pinyin, and it's made even worse by the fact that the "wrong" letter gets the tone (which should be on the "o" or "e", but those have mysteriously disappeared).

Edited October 1, 2008 at 07:14 PM by renzhe

[atitarev]

The day I witness a non-Chinese, non-Russian speaker pronounce "si" properly, I'll cut my own head off.

Not too important for this discussion but Russian "сы" is not exactly like Chinese "si".

That article made some assumptions that Russian and Chinese phonology and spelling are somehow similar or that Hanyu Pinyin was based on Cyrillic:

Although the systems are broadly similar, the Tongyong system arguably is easier for non-Chinese and non-Russian speakers to pronounce with an understandable approximation to standard Chinese pronunciation.

This statement (it's not the first time I hear it) makes me laugh. Since when Hanyu Pinyin and Cyrillic have anything in common? The initials ch, zh, c, z, r, j, q, x, s are rendered with ч, чж, ц, ж, цз', ц', с' and с and the problems with Chinese pronunciation for Russian speakers are very similar to those for English speakers. Well, Russian has palatalisation but not aspiration whatsoever, many palatalised/unpalatalised pairs don't have an exact equivalent, etc.

Here's the Cyrillic transliteration of Chinese, it is standard but similar to Hanyu Pinyin, not everyone likes and not everyone is happy with the way Chinese is cyrillised.

Cyrillization of Chinese

My point is, as you guys mentioned, every language is different, so the writing system (or the transliteration methods) is made for that particular language.

[atitarev]

More on resistance from Gaoxiong (Kaohsiung) - Now talking about the $$$ cost of the switch.

As expected:

The DPP administration was criticized as selecting the Tongyong Pinyin romanization system for political and ideological reasons and accused of abandoning the universal Hanyu Pinyin system mainly because it originated and is used in China.

Edited October 2, 2008 at 12:46 AM by atitarev

[Lu]

See, the DPP could have gone about this the smart way. Way back when they started thinking HYPY is evil, they could have hired some smart linguists, have themselves educated on the subject, have the linguists develop a sensible romanization system, and when the DPP took office, have it used consistently all over Taiwan, while educating the Taiwanese on the meaning and use of romanization. I bet everyone would have been so relieved that the romanization mess was over, after eight years of consistent Tongyong (it's not a bad system in itself), even the foreigners would have ardently defended it by now, afraid of going back to the old mess.

Sigh.

[ABCinChina]

I agree that Tongyong is not all that bad, but for consistencies sake, why don't we all just use HYPY? Also, HYPY is much more easier to type than TYPY which makes it better in my book.

[atitarev]

The cities will be renamed in romanisation as well, perhaps with the exception of Taipei/Taibei.

Taibei, Gaoxiong, Xinzhu, Qinshui, etc.

The author clearly shows his negative attitude to the change but his arguments are lame. Hanyu Pinyin is common not just for English speakers learning Chinese, it's an international romanisation method for Mandarin.

Edited October 6, 2008 at 04:20 AM by atitarev

[atitarev]

It looks like the Hanyu Pinyin won't be accepted in Taiwan:

Government chiefs slam sign changes

Picking a system for romanizing Chinese should favor simplicity, consistency and be easy for users to understand, and any system used should not be chosen for political purposes or have political overtones, the statement said.

My previous post shows "consistency", simplicity? isn't H. Pinyin simple enough, if somebody still doesn't understand, can look it up in a one page table, IMHO.

[Lu]

The city government said it had spent a lot of money over the past two years to make the romanization on signs more consistent as part of its efforts to build an international English-language environment.

Wrong yet again. Tongyong is not English.

Well, whatever else happens, this HYPY at least is one good thing that will come of the KMT administration. Now if only Ma and Siew themselves would spell their names in any existing system...

[atitarev]

No news since the new year, the time when Hanyu Pinyin has become the only official romanisation system in Taiwan. Some articles I read before said the major cities are unlikely to change the spelling but the spelling based on HP (e.g. Taibei, Gaoxiong) become more frequent in the media, not only in English but French and German.

[Lu]

And so the romanisation mess is exported. It's no good if some papers/people write Kaohsiung and some Gaoxiong, it just adds to the confusion.

[encal]

Confusion is part of how language works though

I'm not arguing that standardisation is required. I have a friend who's last name in English is different from his sisters and different still from their father, all because of the whim of Taiwanese customs agents that produced their visas separately and spelled "xue" 3 different ways.

That said, but there are places that it just doesn't matter all that much, like the names of places. I find the old-spellings historical rather than wrong. The historical aspect is what makes English so messed up too, coming from both Latin, Greek and other languages in between. But, again, that's what makes a language a language, the nonsensical nuances.

[Lu]

Except that romanized Taiwanese Mandarin isn't a language. The language is Mandarin, the writing system of it is characters, romanization is just a system (or, in Taiwan's case, the lack of a system) to make it easier for the rest of the world to deal with the language. I don't know any native speaker (except perhaps some school children) who writes Mandarin in romanization.

[encal]

Right, Romanised Taiwanese Mandarin is a language, and i'm arguing that it's not a broken system. But, the history is still there right?

Changing even the signs of streets and maps would feel like a... power trip? That's not the right word. It'd be similar to changing Bombay to Mumbai 50 years after the British left India, or taking off "中正" to the name of parks and airports by the previous Taiwanese government.

The last example is not in the right context, but still, aside from inconveniencing those who studied and knows the standard Pin-yin Romanisation front to back, why change the names of locations, some of which carry hints of Taiwan Minnaese.

Like i said before, standardise the teaching, the passports, the official documents, etc. But leave Taipei and Kaohsiung alone.