Linguists back Tongyong as symbol of independence

Criticism by opposition politicians of the Ministry of Education's decision to adopt Tongyong Pinyin (通用拼音) as its official Romanization system is misplaced, linguists claim, saying that the experiences of other countries show that convenience and relevance to the rest of the world should not be the only criteria in deciding such a contentious issue.

"After the US' independence from Britain, Noah Webster's unswerving effort to advocate American English -- a system distinctive from British English -- encountered opposition from pro-British forces, but his hard work proved worthwhile now that American English has become the mainstream language in the world," Yu Bor-chuan (余伯泉), an associate researcher at the Institute of Ethnology at Academia Sinica, told the Taipei Times. Yu was a leading member of the team that invented the Tongyong Pinyin system in 1998.

Yu quoted an article written last year by Loretta Chen (陳潘美智), a Mandarin-English translator recognized by the Canadian government, to back up his argument.

In the essay, Chen used the example of the US two centuries ago to persuade the government to forsake Hanyu Pinyin (漢語拼音) -- a system used by China and accepted by the UN but which is flawed in many aspects, according to some linguists.

Dubbed "the father of the American dictionary," Webster maintained that the spelling, grammar and idioms of a language should develop according to the principle of easy learning. He thought reform of British English was needed because it contained a lot of unreasonable spellings.

In this first "American" dictionary, published in 1806, Webster introduced distinctively American words such as "skunk" and "hickory" and "chowder." He also introduced American spellings such as "color" and "music," derivations of the English spellings "colour" and "musick." Other examples include the modification of "centre," "draught," "plough" and "mould" into "center," "draft," "plow" and "mold."

Chen said that Webster's efforts to challenge the mainstream view at the time provided the foundation for the privileged status that American English now has in the world -- and that his perseverance should be a role model for the proponents of Tongyong Pinyin.

She said that, speaking as a Taiwanese living overseas, Taiwan should have its own system because "the adoption of a different spelling system illustrates Taiwan's independence from China."

Tongyong Pinyin was created by a group of pro-Taiwan linguists who argue that it preserves Taiwan's cultural sovereignty, corresponds to people's spelling habits and accommodates sounds in the Hokkien, Hakka and Aboriginal languages. Advocates of the system consider it a perfect combination of "globalization and localization."

The system has about 85 percent of the spellings used in Hanyu Pinyin, designed in 1958 in China.

The primary differences between the two are that Tongyong uses "s," "c" and "jh" instead of the "x," "q," "zh" used in Hanyu, which Tongyong's creators say is strongly influenced by Russian.

For instance, "jhang" will replace "zhang" in Hanyu to represent 張, "ciu" replaces "qiu" to mean 邱, and "sie" replaces "xie" to indicate 謝.

Opponents of Tongyong said it would make it more difficult for foreign visitors to read street signs and isolate Taiwan from the international community.