The Ministry of Education sponsored a gathering on Saturday to conduct preliminary discussions on how to write Taiwanese. The hope is that a decision can be reached soon on an orthography.
I would hope that by now there’s sufficient worry about the future of Taiwanese that scholars will stop arguing among themselves about which system to use. Maybe soon they’ll finally come together. But I suspect that instead they’re going to continue to bicker as the clock runs out on Chen Shui-bian’s second term.
I haven’t seen any reports on how Saturday’s gathering went.
Jiàoyùbù jīntiān xiàwǔ zhàokāi “Mǐnnán yǔyán yīnbiāo” zuòtánhuì, yāoqǐng xiāngguān lǐngyù xuézhě zhuānjiā, Táiyǔ wén zuòjiā, mínjiān tuántǐ dàibiǎo yánshāng tǎolùn. Jiàoyù Bùzhǎng Dù Zhèng-shèng zhǐchū, jǐnguǎn huìyì méiyǒu gòngshí, tuīdòng tǒngyī de Mǐnnányǔ yīnbiāo xìtǒng hái zài tǎolùn jiēduàn, Jiàoyùbù jiāng zūnzhòng zhuānjiā yìjian, qīdài jǐnkuài gěi shèhuì yī ge dá’àn.
Dù Zhèng-shèng zhǐchū, zhìdìng tǒngyī de Mǐnnányǔ yīnbiāo xìtǒng, zàixué lǐ shàng yǒu kùnnan, ér gè bùtóng pàibié yěyǒu bùtóng jiānchí, Jiàoyùbù qīdài xuézhě néng chōngfèn gōutōng, tǎolùn chū gòngshí, Jiàoyùbù yě huì zūnzhòng zhuānyè, jiànlì yī tào shìhé shèhuì xūyào de Mǐnnányǔ yīnbiāo xìtǒng.
Jiàoyùbù Guóyǔ tuīxíng wěiyuánhuì zhǐchū, mùqián shǐyònglǜ bǐjiào gāo de Mǐnnányǔ pīnyīn xìtǒng bāokuò jiàohuì luómǎzì pīnyīn, Táiwān Mǐnnányǔ pīnyīn xìtǒng yǔ Tōngyòng Pīnyīn, lìngwài hái yǒu TLPA Mǐnnányǔ jí gǎiliáng shì TLAP děng xìtǒng, yóuyú quēfá tǒngyī de zhěnghé bǎnběn, shǐ xuéxiào tuīxíng xiāngtǔ yǔyán kèchéng shí, yě zāoyù bùzhī shǐyòng hézhǒng bǎnběn de kùnnan.
Jiàoyùbù Guóyǔ Huì biǎoshì, jīntiān de huìyì zhǐshì zhèngshì huìyì de “huì qián huì,” mùdì shì zài gè pài xuézhě zhuānjiā jiāoliú yìjian, chōngfèn gōutōng, qīdài wèilái tòuguò hézuò jiāoliú, zhěnghé chū yī tào fúhé mínzhòng qīdài yǔ xūqiú de pīnyīn xìtǒng.
source: Mǐnnányǔ yīnbiāo xìtǒng Dù Zhèng-shèng: zūnzhòng zhuānjiā yìjian (閩南語音標系統 杜正勝：尊重專家意見), CNA, March 18, 2006
Interesting… Quick question: Is there a reason why you’re hyphenating Du’s given name?
That’s just a personal habit, definitely not a rule of Pinyin (which would call for no hyphen). I do that from time to time because I like to show that adopting, ugh, Tongyong Pinyin isn’t the only way of distinguishing the names of people from Taiwan from those of China. (And that’s assuming people would even find a need to do so.) So I tend to write names of people in China solid and those of people in Taiwan with a hyphen.
Of course, with Mandarinization enforced in China, simply romanizing names based upon Taiwanese or Hakka rather than Mandarin would do an even better job most of the time — at least for the names of native speakers of those two languages.
Strictly speaking the meeting is not about how to write Taiwanese per se but which romanization scheme to be given the nod of official approval. I am not hopeful something will happen soon. Last I saw the POJ and TLPA folks were still mad that the Tongyong people had packed the Mandarin Promotion Council with sympathizers. That was a few months ago. Now that the Minister of Education has apparently decided to take the matter into his own hand (albeit keeping at a safe distance) I imagine some kind of balance has been restored. Hence stalmate. In the mean time distractors will continue to point to this kind of non-consensus as ground for resisting the teaching of local languages in favor of Literary Chinese.
That sounds right.