When Taipei’s MRT system — which is mainly a subway system but which also has elevated portions and even sections at ground level — opened, most of its signage was in bastardized Wade-Giles, with the “English” pronunciation of the station names broadcast in the cars resembling a hideous parody of the speech of an especially clueless foreign visitor. Fortunately, the romanization was switched to Hanyu Pinyin and the English announcements were re-recorded to give pronunciations that much more accurately reflected the Mandarin station names.

Unfortunately, English announcements have been added in recent months that feature a high-pitched voice that is probably intended to be ke’ai (“cute”) but which is actually cloying. These must die, die, die! But I’m straying from the main topic.

Anyway, the MRT’s current signage, nicely designed as most of it is, does not give any tone marks. Nor does it provide Pinyin for the station names that are translated into English. And there are also a few mistakes that really need to be corrected in the official forms of the names.

So, I have updated and added some minor corrections to the lists I put up long ago on my first Web site, Romanization.com. The new versions, here on Pinyin Info, are here: Taipei MRT stations in Chinese characters, Hanyu Pinyin, and some English.