Every Taiwanese should learn both Tongyong Pinyin, the country's recently approved official system for Romanizing Mandarin, and Hanyu Pinyin (
As for foreigners, Lee said, it is better for the government to decide on a single system for them to learn.
"Since the two systems are 85 percent similar, it shouldn't be a problem for a smart individual to learn the two systems, although it may be a little bit inconvenient in the beginning," he said.
Lee made the remark before he delivered a lecture entitled "A Nation's Competitiveness and the Sustainable Development of Mankind" held at the Civil Service Development Institute in Taipei City yesterday morning.
Lee said that Taiwanese students could use the Tongyong Pinyin system for courses in languages such as as Hakka, Fukien, or Aboriginal dialects.
When students reach the third or fifth grade, he said, they could learn the Hanyu Pinyin system, which is more useful for finding information on the Internet.
"I think everyone should learn both the systems," he said. "It's not right to learn one system and discriminate against the other."
Opposition lawmakers have viewed the Ministry of Education's selection last week of Tongyong Pinyin as the country's official system for Romanization as politically motivated.
The Taipei City Government even planned to lobby other KMT-led county and city governments to adopt Hanyu Pinyin.
Although the Tongyong Pinyin was chosen as the country's official system for Romanization, the Ministry of Education does not require that local governments use the system and said that it would respect the will of individual regions.
There are three commonly used Romanization systems in Taiwan: Wade-Giles, which was created by British scholars in the 19th century; Second Chuyin (
Tongyong Pinyin was created by a group of Taiwanese linguists in 1998.
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