Phoney pinyin war
I am shocked to read Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators’ opinion continuing the pinyin “phony war” by supporting the revival of the ill-designed Tongyong pinyin (“Language: A tool for messages or identity,” Jan. 18, page 8). They should spend their time instead on a wholesome language policy and real struggles of identity, rather than playing vainly with a few consonants.
When I wrote about this subject 17 years ago in this newspaper (“Letters,” Jan. 12, 2000, page 8), Tongyong pinyin was still a nascent system in a state of flux. Now we know its inconsistencies and defects.
One reason for these is that it was designed by amateurs rather than linguists. Another is the lack of public consultation and “road test” before being hastily promulgated — for crude ideological reasons.
We know how Tongyong has been designed, intentionally or not, to clash with Hanyu pinyin.
For example, the same two letters “ci” refers to one Mandarin syllable in Hanyu, but another in Tongyong.
The result is that many signs in Tongyong appear as irritating misspellings for those who have studied Mandarin through Hanyu pinyin.
At worst, lives might be at stake if such confusion appears in, say, mountaineering maps.
While proponents of Tongyong pinyin despise the international standard Hanyu pinyin, they gladly take for granted the privileged status of English as the dominant reference. They then mistakenly equate the Latin script with the English language.
However, the Latin letters’ sounds are not universally bound to those in English: They can be assigned different values depending on the language being written.
What is written as “ch” is pronounced differently in Italian, Spanish and German from that in English. This can be also the case in Mandarin, Taiwanese (also known as Hoklo) and Hakka — that is just fine. It does not have to be one-size-fits-all (tongyong, 通用)
As I wrote 17 years ago, the legislators should focus on developing a wholesome language policy.
The pro-localization groups could better spend their effort to change place names that do not accord with local identity and transitional justice (eg, Songjiang Road, Dihua Street, references to Chiang Kai-shek [蔣介石]).
They could promote signs written in the local languages: Zhongli/Chung-lak being the Hakka capital of northern Taiwan, perhaps signs in Taoyuan/Tho-yen airport metro can also show Hakka written in its Latin orthography?
Most importantly, we should support the established orthographies rather than new inventions.
Hanyu pinyin is no longer the property of this or that nation, but the common heritage of all Mandarin-speaking people, no matter their nationality.
Zhou Youguang (周永光) — the father of Hanyu pinyin — passed away this week at age 111. He was one of the very few modern intellectuals who had such stature to be able to criticize the Chinese regime without being brutally silenced.
May we remember his spirit of progressive rationality, especially when we consider issues of language policy.
Te Khai-su
Helsingfors, Finland
When US budget carrier Southwest Airlines last week announced a new partnership with China Airlines, Southwest’s social media were filled with comments from travelers excited by the new opportunity to visit China. Of course, China Airlines is not based in China, but in Taiwan, and the new partnership connects Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport with 30 cities across the US. At a time when China is increasing efforts on all fronts to falsely label Taiwan as “China” in all arenas, Taiwan does itself no favors by having its flagship carrier named China Airlines. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is eager to jump at
The muting of the line “I’m from Taiwan” (我台灣來欸), sung in Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese), during a performance at the closing ceremony of the World Masters Games in New Taipei City on May 31 has sparked a public outcry. The lyric from the well-known song All Eyes on Me (世界都看見) — originally written and performed by Taiwanese hip-hop group Nine One One (玖壹壹) — was muted twice, while the subtitles on the screen showed an alternate line, “we come here together” (阮作伙來欸), which was not sung. The song, performed at the ceremony by a cheerleading group, was the theme
Secretary of State Marco Rubio raised eyebrows recently when he declared the era of American unipolarity over. He described America’s unrivaled dominance of the international system as an anomaly that was created by the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War. Now, he observed, the United States was returning to a more multipolar world where there are great powers in different parts of the planet. He pointed to China and Russia, as well as “rogue states like Iran and North Korea” as examples of countries the United States must contend with. This all begs the question:
Liberals have wasted no time in pointing to Karol Nawrocki’s lack of qualifications for his new job as president of Poland. He has never previously held political office. He won by the narrowest of margins, with 50.9 percent of the vote. However, Nawrocki possesses the one qualification that many national populists value above all other: a taste for physical strength laced with violence. Nawrocki is a former boxer who still likes to go a few rounds. He is also such an enthusiastic soccer supporter that he reportedly got the logos of his two favorite teams — Chelsea and Lechia Gdansk —
RSS