On April 6 last year, the Ministry of Education sponsored a national conference in Taipei on Mandarin Romanization systems. Four competing systems were presented for deliberations at the conference: the Wade Giles (WG) System (
Of these, the Wade Giles system is the most traditional and, until very recently, the most widely used. But it has now lost its appeal largely because a total of 136 syllables require additional phonetic signs or diacritic marks, making it a fairly cumbersome system for printing and typing. As a consequence, a consensus emerged at the conference that the WG system should be rescinded from the list of potential systems for future deliberations.
The remaining three systems represent three different models of thinking. What underlines MPS-II is the credo that Taiwan should say no to whatever system China comes up with; adoption of the Hanyu Pinyin system, on the other hand, represents a contrary belief that there is little rational basis for going against a system that is already enjoying international currency. Finally, Taiwan Tongyong Pinyin was developed to achieve an optimal balance between internalization and national autonomy.
On June 21, the Ministry of Education, having decided to dump the MPS-II, proposed a still-newer system -- Guoyu Pinyin (
Six county commissioners and a dozen or so legislators from both sides of the aisle soon endorsed a proposal for the Executive Yuan to strive for a Romanization system which embodies the idea of internalization and national autonomy.
On July 26, the government, in a surprise move, announced the use of China's Hanyu Pinyin System for the Romanization of street names throughout the island, a move seen by many as a blatant disregard of the fact that the system is currently used in Beijing and could therefore suggest to the world that Taiwan is part of PRC.
Thereupon, 14 county commissioners and a number of prominent educators and linguists openly voiced strong opposition to the policy change, including Paul Jen-Kuei Lee (
On Sept. 16, legislator Weng Chin-chu (
Since the concept of IMS is nearly equivalent to that which underlies Tongyong Pinyin, it behooved us to consider in some detail the differences between Guoyu Pinyin and Taiwan Tongyong Pinyin. Basically, they boil down to two issues: One has to do with the way the zero-initial is handled. In Tongyong Pinyin, one single value is applied to all of the syllables with the same zero-initial. Thus the morpheme "
A second difference between Guoyu Pinyin and Tongyong Pinyin pertains to the issue of dentals and palatals.In Guoyu Pinyin, "
It is important to note that Tongyong Pinyin has joined hands with inventors of the Natural Input Method (
To sum up briefly, we believe that any Mandarin Romanization system developed for Taiwan should ideally strive for a principled balance between internalization and national autonomy as suggested above and that the Taiwan system should, therefore, contain distinctive features that sets it apart from China's Hanyu Pinyin. It is our hope, however, that the two systems may learn to accommodate each other in a productive symbiosis.
Hwang Hsuan-fan is director of the Graduate Institute of Linguistics at National Taiwan University; Chiang Wen-yu is associate professor of the Graduate Institute of Linguistics at National Taiwan University; Lo Seo-gim is a professor in the department of Chinese at National Changhua University of Education; and Robert Liang-wei Cheng is a professor in the department of East Asian languages and literatures at University of Hawaii in Manoa.
Congressman Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) led a bipartisan delegation to Taiwan in late February. During their various meetings with Taiwan’s leaders, this delegation never missed an opportunity to emphasize the strength of their cross-party consensus on issues relating to Taiwan and China. Gallagher and Krishnamoorthi are leaders of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. Their instruction upon taking the reins of the committee was to preserve China issues as a last bastion of bipartisanship in an otherwise deeply divided Washington. They have largely upheld their pledge. But in doing so, they have performed the
It is well known that Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) ambition is to rejuvenate the Chinese nation by unification of Taiwan, either peacefully or by force. The peaceful option has virtually gone out of the window with the last presidential elections in Taiwan. Taiwanese, especially the youth, are resolved not to be part of China. With time, this resolve has grown politically stronger. It leaves China with reunification by force as the default option. Everyone tells me how and when mighty China would invade and overpower tiny Taiwan. However, I have rarely been told that Taiwan could be defended to
It should have been Maestro’s night. It is hard to envision a film more Oscar-friendly than Bradley Cooper’s exploration of the life and loves of famed conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein. It was a prestige biopic, a longtime route to acting trophies and more (see Darkest Hour, Lincoln, and Milk). The film was a music biopic, a subgenre with an even richer history of award-winning films such as Ray, Walk the Line and Bohemian Rhapsody. What is more, it was the passion project of cowriter, producer, director and actor Bradley Cooper. That is the kind of multitasking -for-his-art overachievement that Oscar
Chinese villages are being built in the disputed zone between Bhutan and China. Last month, Chinese settlers, holding photographs of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), moved into their new homes on land that was not Xi’s to give. These residents are part of the Chinese government’s resettlement program, relocating Tibetan families into the territory China claims. China shares land borders with 15 countries and sea borders with eight, and is involved in many disputes. Land disputes include the ones with Bhutan (Doklam plateau), India (Arunachal Pradesh, Aksai Chin) and Nepal (near Dolakha and Solukhumbu districts). Maritime disputes in the South China