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Tongyong Pinyin a mistake

The government has made a cowardly choice in selecting Tongyong Pinyin over Hanyu Pinyin for the Romanization of Chinese ("Tongyong Pinyin the new system for Romanization" July 11, page 3). If the DPP administration is truly pro-localization, they should choose Hanyu Pinyin.

"Wait," I hear you say, "Han-yu Pinyin is the Chinese system favored by the pro-unification camp and Tongyong Pinyin is the Taiwanese system favored by the pro-localization group."

I'm in favor of localization, and I support Hanyu Pinyin for two reasons. First, it is not just the system used in China, it is the system for writing Chinese with Roman script used everywhere except Taiwan. All foreign students of Chinese, news-papers, academic journals and books about China use Hanyu Pinyin these days. Why on earth does Taiwan want to go and cut itself off from the rest of the world because of its conflict with China? Do we use a different Internet with 85-percent-compatible Web addresses just because we don't want to use the same system as China?

Second, choosing Tongyong Pinyin is a sign of cowardice. To anyone who has studied the issue, it is quite obvious that for practical purposes Hanyu Pinyin is the best choice. Unfortunately some people argue that there are more important political considerations. By choosing Hanyu Pinyin, the argument goes, Taiwan will somehow be admitting that it is part of China. Are we so afraid of what China thinks? Can't we make a decision like this without worrying that it might have some hidden unificationist purpose? Choosing Tongyong is really just allowing ourselves to make the wrong decision because we're afraid of China's bullying.

I hope the government will stand up and choose a system because it is the best, not because they're afraid. At the same time we should be proud that we have retained Chinese culture through the use of traditional characters. This is proof enough that we do things differently than China.

Brian Rawnsley
Taipei

I commend the Ministry of Edu-cation's efforts to move towards a standard Romanization sys-tem. However, I believe that they have made a serious mistake by rejecting Hanyu Pinyin in favor of a new and unproven system. This is clearly a case where nationalist pride and anti-China sentiment have prevailed over logic and reason.

The lack of standards is a great source of confusion and mediocrity, as seen on the inconsistent, commonly mis-spelled street signs of Tai-pei. This situation is not only confusing to foreigners, it reflects poorly on Taiwan's image as perceived by the rest of the world. The first step in addressing this problem is the adoption of a standard Romanization system.

However, Tongyong Pinyin cannot be considered a stand-ard. It was devised a few years ago by a single committee of pro-Taiwan linguists and has yet to be embraced by major news organizations and publishers. It is at this point no more than a proprietary system and it well hurt rather than help the chaotic state of Romanization in Taiwan.

The proponents of Tongyong argue that it is more appropriate for the writing of Taiwan's local dialects, in addition to Mandarin Chinese. This argument is simply ridiculous. A quick examination of Hanyu and Tongyong reveals that there is a one-to-one correspondence between their typologies, meaning that the two are equivalent, and differ only in the choice of Roman letters to represent each phonetic element. Once the conventions of the systems are learned, either can be used to accomplish exactly the same task.

Tongyong supporters also argue that there is only a 15 percent difference between the systems. This is a misleading figure that refers to the spellings of phonetic elements (such as "zhu" or "chi"). The research of Chih-Hao Tsai (Similarities Between Tongyong Pinyin and Hanyu Pinyin: Comparisons at the Syllable and Word Levels) shows that this figure translates to differences of close to 50 percent at the word level. In practical terms, this means that of all Chinese names which are frequently Romanized, about half would be written differently between Hanyu and Tongyong.

These justifications cannot hide the real reason for Tongyong Pinyin's existence -- the stubborn resistance to Chinese influence. But would adopting Hanyu Pinyin really compromise Taiwan's cultural identity? Only to the extent that, for example, adopting the metric standard would make the US less American -- in other words, not at all.

Taiwan has a solid linguistic heritage, thanks to its use of the traditional writing system and the "bopomofo" phonetic sys-tem. It should be open-minded on the Romanization issue, by adopting the only true global standard. In the long run, the question is -- can it afford not to?

Joe Varadi
Taipei
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