The Taiwan Pinyin League yesterday called on the Control Yuan to impeach Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄), Minister Without Portfolio Ovid Tzeng (曾志朗) and Minister of Education Cheng Jei-cheng (鄭瑞城) over their decision to replace Tongyong Pinyin with Hanyu Pinyin as the national standard Romanization system.
On International Mother Language Day yesterday, the Taiwan Pinyin League and its head Yu Bor-chuan (余伯泉), who led the team that designed Tongyong Pinyin, staged a rally to protest the government’s decision to adopt Hanyu Pinyin, saying it violated the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights.
PHOTO: CNA
IDEOLOGY
Yu said President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was being guided by his ideology in replacing Tongyong Pinyin with Hanyu Pinyin, which would cost the nation between NT$7 billion (US$210 million) and NT$8 billion at a time when the public is struggling to make a living because of the recession.
Ma’s administration favors Hanyu Pinyin — invented in China — over Tongyong Pinyin because it belittles Taiwanese, Yu said.
WASTE
He said it would be a waste of money to replace Tongyong Pinyin with Hanyu Pinyin nationwide as a survey conducted by the education ministry showed that only 6 percent of the nation’s transliterations used pinyin.
Making the statement near the Taipei MRT’s Ximen station, Democratic Progressive Party Taipei City councilors Chuang Jui-hsiung (莊瑞雄) and Liu Yao-ren (劉耀仁) covered the letter “X” on the Ximen Station nameplate with an “S” sticker.
The councilors urged the government to at least adopt both Hanyu Pinyin and Tongyong Pinyin at the same time for use on road signs and street names.
Taipei Rapid Transit Corporation staffers at Ximen Station later removed the “S” sticker.
Ling Chi-yao (陵啟堯), a spokesman for the company, said that changing station names was up to the Taipei City Government because the company was owned by the government.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
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