If Taipei’s MRT (mass rapid-transit) system doesn’t finally get its Pinyin right when the next set of stations opens later this year, I propose that the 永安 (Yǒng’ān / “perpetual peace”) station be renamed 庸暗 (Yōng’àn / “ignorant”) station, in accord with how the error in the romanization of the name has gone uncorrected for several years.

Given the nature of the error, mine is a relatively polite suggestion. The way the station name is written now, “Yongan,” actually much more strongly suggests the distinctly rude “yòng gàn” (用幹 / use fuck). The problem with this and other MRT station names has two main causes:

1. The first rule of Hanyu Pinyin — words, not syllables, are the basic units when writing in romanization — has not been followed properly. (中文)
2. Taipei has continued its long and ignoble tradition of leaving out required apostrophes in romanization.

A little more now on the second point. In the bad old days of not so many years ago, when Taipei used bastardized Wade-Giles for signs marking streets and MRT stations, the lack of apostrophes made the majority of such signs unreliable. (The capital city’s appallingly sloppy spelling didn’t help, either.) Since 25 percent of Mandarin’s syllables require apostrophes when written in Wade-Giles, that made for a lot of missing apostrophes — and a huge mess.

Fortunately, Taipei has now adopted Hanyu Pinyin, which, incidentally, requires no apostrophes whatsoever within individual syllables. The system, however, does require an apostrophe between some syllables. Although these are very seldom required — the apostrophe occurs in only about 2 percent of Mandarin words written in Hanyu Pinyin — they’re still a crucial part of the system and cannot be omitted. (I don’t want to overburden this post, so later I’ll add a separate Web page explaining the rules for Pinyin’s syllable boundaries and when to use apostrophes.)

The following MRT stations have their names miswritten at present. These need correcting on all MRT maps, station signage, etc.: 唭哩岸站, 大安站, 景安站, and 永安市場站.

Please, Taipei Department of Transportation and Taipei Rapid Transit Corp., don’t make us beg for mercy (乞憐, qǐlián)! Give us proper Pinyin. We need Qili’an (ㄑㄧ ㄌㄧ ㄢ), not Qilian (ㄑㄧ ㄌㄧㄢ).

I should probably add that the solution is most emphatically not to use InTerCaPiTaLiZaTion, a horrible perversion of proper style that should never have been used in Taipei and should never be adopted elsewhere. All uses of InTerCaPiTaLiZaTion and Taipei’s “nicknumbering” system should be removed from the MRT system when the new maps and signage are made.