The government plans to make Hanyu Pinyin (漢語拼音) the standard system of Romanization nationwide starting on Jan. 1, an official with the Ministry of Education said yesterday.
Government agencies will be compelled to adopt Hanyu Pinyin, a Chinese Romanization system developed by the People’s Republic of China, Chen Hsuch-yu (陳雪玉), executive-secretary and senior inspector of the ministry’s National Languages Committee (NLC), said in a telephone interview.
While the public will be widely encouraged to use the system, individual preferences on which Romanization system to use will be respected when it comes to personal matters such as the spelling of their surnames, Chen said.
To facilitate the change, “we will refer the Guidelines of Using Chinese Phonetic Spelling (中文譯音使用原則) to the Executive Yuan for review within a month,” Chen said.
The guidelines, enacted by the former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government in 2002, stipulate that the official Romanization system for Chinese in the country is Tongyong Pinyin (通用拼音), but its use is not mandatory.
Chen said the ministry would soon convene a meeting of local governments and central government agencies to sort out rules and regulations that would need to be revised to conform to the change. These include rules on naming roads and passport regulations, among others.
The move came after a proposal that Hanyu Pinyin be adopted was approved at a Cabinet meeting convened by Minister Without Portfolio Ovid Tzeng (曾志朗) on Tuesday.
Tzeng said the ministry made the proposal in line with the government’s aim to enhance the country’s international competitiveness.
An official with the Research, Development and Evaluation Commission quoted Tzeng as saying at the meeting that the change should not be a problem and has the support of Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄), who is expected to ratify the proposal after the intergovernmental meeting.
The NLC said it would provide a Hanyu Pinyin guide on its Web site to show the equivalent pronunciation in the traditional phonetic system.
“The guide can help the public and civil servants learn how to use Hanyu Pinyin at a glance,” Chen said.
So far, Taipei City, Hsinchu City and Kinmen County are the only three municipalities that use Hanyu Pinyin.
“We know there might be objection to using the Hanyu Pinyin system,” Chen said, “but we ask the protesters to realize that this would enable Taiwan to become better connected with the rest of the world.
“It would also help foreigners in Taiwan, who would only need to learn one transliteration system,” she said.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY JENNY W. HSU
PAST CATCHING UP: Raphael Lin was last year convicted of intimidating his girlfriend at the time, and in 2015 allegedly confined his parents and assaulted his mother Doctoral student and media commentator Raphael Lin (林秉樞) is in detention and has had his communication rights limited after he was arrested on Wednesday for allegedly subjecting Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Kao Chia-yu (高嘉瑜) to two days of violence in a hotel room, the New Taipei District Court said yesterday. The New Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office had filed a request to detain Lin — who was Kao’s boyfriend at the time of the incident — with the court approving the request early yesterday. The prosecutors’ office said that it is likely to charge Lin with seven offenses: assault causing bodily harm, violating
NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom has taken to social media to urge Jeremy Lin (林書豪) to “stand with Taiwan” and stop taking “dirty Chinese Communist Party money.” “Haven’t you had enough of that Dirty Chinese Communist Party money feeding you to stay silent?” Freedom wrote on Facebook and Twitter on Sunday. The 29-year-old Boston Celtics center, who took a new surname when he became a US citizen on Monday last week, urged Lin: “Stand with Taiwan! Stop bowing to money & the Dictatorship.” Lin, a US citizen of Taiwanese descent who last year obtained a Taiwanese passport, has not responded to Freedom. Lin is
A COVID-19 vaccine trial carried out in Taiwan has found that a combination of the AstraZeneca and the locally developed Medigen vaccines is more effective than two doses of AstraZeneca, the research team said on Saturday. The trial, which was initiated by Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, examined 100 people aged 22 to 62 divided into two groups: One group was vaccinated with two AstraZeneca doses, while the other received a first dose of AstraZeneca and a second dose of Medigen, team leader Chen Chih-jung (陳志榮) said. The geometric mean titers (GMTs) of neutralizing antibodies in the mix-and-match group after 10 days were
Toads are a symbol of prosperity and good fortune in Taiwan, but the unexpected discovery of an invasive species has officials and environmentalists scrambling to contain their spread. With flashlights in hand and shielded by protective gloves, dozens of volunteers from the Taiwan Amphibian Conservation Society worked through the night searching rice fields and vegetable plots for their quarry — the cane toad. There should be no reason for these large and highly toxic amphibians to exist in Caotun (草屯), a township in the foothills of the central mountain range. Cane toads are indigenous to South and Central America, and while they have
RSS