Minister of Education Huang Jong-tsun (黃榮村) yesterday promised that he would minimize political confrontation when implementing Tongyong Pinyin (通用拼音) as the country's official spelling system for Romanizing Mandarin.
The selection of Tongyong Pin-yin is regarded by opposition politicians as politically motivated.
While acknowledging that political concerns were part of the reason for the decision, the minister promised that he would strive to avoid the ensuing political tension when traveling the country advocating the system.
"The issue of adopting a language system is complex and cannot be forced. [The government] will not stir upheaval by compelling schools or local governments to use the system," Huang said at a meeting with scholars and PFP lawmakers.
The education minister promised that authorities would show respect to the will of individual regions, because it would not be in the nation's interest if the government coerces implementation without the approval of opponents.
Huang made the statements in an attempt to answer the concerns of some regional governments, including Taipei City, which insist on using Hanyu Pinyin (漢語拼音), the system used in China.
The education ministry triggered a fierce controversy after it announced last week that Tongyong Pinyin, a system created by a group of Taiwanese linguists in 1998, would be adopted as the standardized Mandarin Romanization system.
The decision ended a year-long debate which divided academics and officials and raised the passions of many foreigners living in Taiwan.
Street signs have created a major obstacle for foreign travelers in Taiwan, as at least four systems are in use concurrently.
The system used most often is the Wade Giles (
In deciding on an official system, Wade Giles and the Second Chuyi system were ruled out immediately. Wade Giles was ruled out because it is unfriendly to computer users, as it requires too many supplementary notes, whereas the Second Chuyi system was abandoned because it contradicts the widely-used Hanyu system -- which has also been accepted by the UN.
Backers of Hanyu Pinyin support the system because of its prevalence overseas. They condemn supporters of Tongyong, saying they oppose Hanyu simply because it is used in China.
But Tongyong Pinyin advocates say the system preserves Taiwan's cultural sovereignty, corresponds to local spelling habits and accommodates sounds in Hokkien, Hakka and Aboriginal languages. Supporters consider it a perfect combination of "globalization and localization."
The system has about 85 percent of the spellings used in Hanyu Pinyin.
The primary differences between the two are that Tongyong uses "s," "c" and "jh," which corresponds more with English spelling habits, instead of the "x," "q," and "zh" used in Hanyu, which English speakers without Mandarin skills cannot usually pronounce.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching