Category Archives: Taipei

Ma Ying-jeou speaks of Taipei County adopting Hanyu Pinyin

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In another sign that Tongyong Pinyin’s days in Taipei County are numbered (not that Tongyong was ever used here much in the first place), Taipei Mayor (and KMT Chairman) Ma Ying-jeou said this on Tuesday:

mùqián Táiběi Shì yǔ Táiběi Xiàn lù míngzi de pīnfǎ bùyī, Táiběi Shì cǎi Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, Táiběi Xiàn cǎi Tōngyòng Pīnyīn, wèilái kěyǐ tǒngyī yòng Hànyǔ Pīnyīn (目前台北市與台北縣路名的拼法不一，北市採「漢語拼音」，北縣採「通用拼音」，未來可以統一用「漢語拼音」)

Although he didn’t state specifically that Taipei County most definitely will use Hanyu Pinyin (which wouldn’t be his announcement to make), he certainly seems to back that happening. Of course, that’s no big surprise; but I like to chronicle such things anyway.

source: Mǎ Yīngjiǔ: Táiběi Xiàn-Shì hézuò; Yīngwén lù míngzi kěyǐ cǎi Hànyǔ Pīnyīn (馬英九:台北縣市合作 英文路名可採漢語拼音), CNA, April 18, 2006

Taipei mayor calls for more Mandarin, less English and Taiwanese in primary schools

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According to one of the stories on this, the Taipei City Government’s Department of Education did a study comparing the amount of time sixth-graders spent on Mandarin classes in several countries. In Taiwan the figure is between 80 and 133 hours. In China the figure is 172 hours. And in Singapore the number is between 80 and 200 hours. As a percentage of the population, however, I would expect Taiwan to have the highest number of fluent or native speakers of Mandarin. On the other hand, Chinese characters are difficult for everyone.

Ma’s call is probably aimed not just at boosting Mandarin but at edging out the teaching of Taiwanese and Hakka (which may not be able to be reduced without eliminating their teaching altogether). This also sounds like another move to increase the amount of Literary Sinitic (Classical Chinese) in the classroom, which would certainly be a move in the wrong direction.

I suspect, though, that calls from parents, who often place more value on English than on other courses, will put an end to this. And anyway, in Taiwan it’s the central government that sets educational policy.

sources:

the Zhuzihu spelling blues

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road and trail signs giving different spellings for the same placeLess than 10 years ago the romanization on Taipei’s street signs was a complete mess. The “standard,” such as it was, was the inherently bad bastardized Wade-Giles; but misspellings were abundant, so much so that even some individual intersections had signs with several different spellings. It was the sort of thing foreigners in Taiwan loved to point out. Since almost all of those signs are now gone — and good riddance! — I offer up this lesser sample, taken about ten days ago when my wife and I went walking on Yangming Shan to see the sakura and calla lilies.

The sign on the top, reading “ZhuZiHu Rd.”, is in a mix of Hanyu Pinyin and English (Rd.), though, like other Hanyu Pinyin signs in Taipei, it uses InTerCaPiTaLiZaTion for individual syllables, which is wrong, wrong, wrong. (It should be Zhuzihu or Zhuzi Hu, not ZhuZiHu.) The trail marker at the bottom marked “Jhuzihu” is in misspelled Tongyong Pinyin; in Tongyong it should be written “Jhuzihhu”.

misspelled and poorly made Tongyong road signs in TaipeiThe reason for the different spellings here is almost certainly that the road, being within Taipei, is labeled in Hanyu Pinyin, whereas the trail marker, for a trail within Yangming Shan National Park, was put up by the central government and is thus in Tongyong Pinyin — well, almost. The misspelled Tongyong in the sign isn’t just a one-off, either. All of the Tongyong-ish signs I saw in the area are misspelled in the same way. See, for example, the sign at right. (The arrows, by the way, are both correct: The road is a loop.)

Note, also, how the “i” in the second example below is printed incorrectly, with the top of the dot lining up with the tops of the other lowercase letters. I’ve been seeing increasing instances of this particular typographical monstrosity, which puzzles me because it seems like the sort of error that someone has to go out of their way to make.

Those familiar with Taipei may have noticed something odd about the name Zhuzihu: It is not bisyllabic. Indeed, it is the only road name of Sinitic origin within Taipei to have more than two syllables. (The only other two such names are loans from English (Roosevelt) and a language of one of Taiwan’s tribes (Ketagelan). See Taipei street names and the monosyllabic myth.)

calla liliesCloser examination, however, reveals that Zhuzihu is based upon a bisyllabic name after all. Zhuzi Hu means “Bamboo Lake” (Zhúzi Hú / 竹子湖). The only particular reason for writing it solid (Zhuzihu) rather than as “Zhuzi Hu” is that there’s no actual hu (lake) there anymore. (It was more like a marsh, anyway.) Come to think of it, I don’t remember seeing any bamboo there, either. A case could be made for writing it either way: Zhuzi Hu or Zhuzihu

By the way, I wrote the Taipei City Government to have it correct its Web site on the calla lilies. The problem was that the Tongyong Pinyin spelling, Jhuzihhu, was used rather than the Hanyu Pinyin spelling, Zhuzihu. More than a week passed without any changes. Today, however, I noticed that some (but not all or even most) of the spellings had been changed — to another wrong spelling! Now some of the time the Web site gives the Tongyong Pinyin version, Jhuzihhu, and some of the time it gives Zhuzihhu, that latter having one h too many for correct Hanyu Pinyin. No one has yet responded to my message.

KMT chairman reiterates support for Hanyu Pinyin

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Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou, who also serves as chairman of the Kuomintang, recently gave an interview (video) with the BBC’s Mandarin service. He also took questions from callers. One dealt with the issue of romanization.

Ma, who will almost certainly be the KMT’s presidential candidate in 2008 and will likely win if the DPP doesn’t get its act together, again backed Hanyu Pinyin for Taiwan.

I haven’t yet watched the entire piece, which lasts an hour, so I’ll use a newspaper report of this:

Duìyú pīnyīn wèntí, Mǎ Yīngjiǔ biǎoshì, Hànyǔ Pīnyīn suī bù wánměi, dànshì quánshìjiè shǐyònglǜ dá bǎi fēnzhī 80 zhì 90, rúguǒ Táiwān jiānchí Tōngyòng Pīnyīn, wúfǎ yǔ guójì jiēguǐ, zhōngjiāng shòudào shānghài.
(On the question of romanization, Ma said that although Hanyu Pinyin isn’t perfect its international use rate is 80 or 90 percent. If Taiwan persists in using Tongyong Pinyin, Taiwan won’t be able to participate in international links and will finally suffer for it.)

Ma, who also serves as mayor of Taipei, initiated the change of the capital city’s romanization system to Hanyu Pinyin, a move widely applauded by Taiwan’s foreign community.

If anyone watches the whole video, I’d appreciate hearing just when in the broadcast Ma made his remarks on this.

sources:

Taipei street names and tone marks

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Here’s another in my series on official signage in the Taipei area.

Taipei has more than 630 different street names. Although none of these are homophonous, five pairs of names should have tone marks added to the Hanyu Pinyin so that the names will be easily distinguished from one another.

But whoever makes the signs should be especially careful because the only official signage with tone marks I’ve seen in the Taipei area has been ugly and inept. (But those signs were in Taipei County, not Taipei City.)

Chinese characters Pinyin and English mix
景華街 Jǐnghuá St.
景化街 Jǐnghuà St.
同安街 Tóng’ān St.
通安街 Tōng’ān St.
萬慶街 Wànqìng St.
萬青街 Wànqīng St.
五常街 Wǔcháng St.
武昌街 Wǔchāng St.
向陽路 Xiàngyáng Rd.
襄陽路 Xiāngyáng Rd.

Note the use of an apostrophe in “Tong’an.” For more on this, see ‘Hot-Milk Road’ and other street-name errors.

For a related entry, see Taipei street names and the monosyllabic myth.

‘Hot-Milk Road’ and other street-name errors

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Just 3.6 percent of Taipei’s street names need apostrophes. But those that need them really do need them, and Taipei’s ill-advised, counterproductive, and downright annoying InTerCaPiTaLiZaTion on street signs is no substitute for doing things right.

Because Taipei continues to omit required apostrophes from street names, one of the city’s main thoroughfares is labeled the Mandarin equivalent of Hot-Milk Road. This is because according to the rules of Hanyu Pinyin RENAI is RE+NAI, not REN+AI. Thus, rather than a road named after rén’ài (love for one’s fellow man; humanity; 仁愛), Taipei has rènǎi (hot milk) road (熱奶路).

I’m not going to bother giving all of the misleading readings, as I did in my earlier entry on mistakes in Taipei’s MRT system. But there are plenty of awkward results of Taipei’s mistakes.

Below are all of Taipei’s street names that require an apostrophe. Almost all of these contain the character 安 (an).

Note the tone marks on Tóng’ān St. (同安街) and Tōng’ān St. (通安街). More about those in a later entry.

Chinese characters Pinyin and English mix
保安街 Bao’an St.
北安路 Bei’an Rd.
博愛路 Bo’ai Rd.
長安東路 Chang’an E. Rd.
長安西路 Chang’an W. Rd.
大安路 Da’an Rd.
惠安街 Hui’an St.
民安巷 Min’an Ln.
寧安街 Ning’an St.
農安街 Nong’an St.
仁愛路 Ren’ai Rd.
瑞安街 Rui’an St.
泰安街 Tai’an St.
同安街 Tóng’ān St.
通安街 Tōng’ān St.
萬安街 Wan’an St.
西安街 Xi’an St.
新安路 Xin’an Rd.
信安街 Xin’an St.
興安街 Xing’an St.
鍚安巷 Yang’an Ln.
永安街 Yong’an St.
詔安街 Zhao’an St.

mistakes in Taipei’s MRT system

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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.

Chinese characters for MRT station name Proper Hanyu Pinyin Incorrect current form How the incorrect current form is read according to Pinyin’s rules
唭哩岸 Qili’an Qilian qi+lian
ㄑㄧ ㄌㄧㄢ (乞憐)
大安 Da’an Daan (This doesn’t have a proper reading. It’s just wrong regardless.)
景安 Jing’an Jingan jin+gan
ㄐㄧㄣ ㄍㄢ (金幹)
永安[市場] Yong’an Yongan (This doesn’t have a proper reading. But it strongly suggests a typo
for yong+gan
ㄩㄥ ㄍㄢ 用幹)

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.

pro-Hanyu Pinyin Taipei mayor elected head of KMT

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On July 16 Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou was elected KMT chairman by a wide margin. Ma was behind Taipei’s welcome switch from bastardized Wade-Giles to Hanyu Pinyin.

Most advocates of Tongyong Pinyin, which Taiwan’s central government has adopted but not made mandatory throughout the country, like to tout the made-in-Taiwan aspect of their system. This is simply another way to oppose China. And perhaps the KMT of today, with its relatively cozy good relations with Beijing, would indeed generally favor Hanyu Pinyin. But it’s important to remember that the KMT in the past opposed Hanyu Pinyin. The KMT government’s decision back in 1986 to come up with a new romanization system was a direct result of the growing popularity of Hanyu Pinyin elsewhere and an increased understanding in Taiwan of the failure — at least in implementation — of Gwoyeu Romatzyh. So MPS2 was devised in reaction to Hanyu Pinyin. Predictably, it received little attention or support despite its nominally official status. In the end MPS2 was used basically nowhere but on some street signs. And so Tongyong Pinyin replaced another system that was already made in Taiwan.

If the KMT had backed Hanyu Pinyin a long time ago, the romanization situation in Taiwan wouldn’t be such a mess.

I believe Ma’s support for Hanyu Pinyin is not the result of politics but a recognition that the system is what the majority of Taiwan’s foreign population wants.

A note here on Ma’s preferred spelling of his name. In hanzi it is 馬英九. In Hanyu Pinyin it would be Mǎ Yīngjiǔ. But the standard romanization of his name is “Ma Ying-jeou.” The “jeou” certainly evokes the Gwoyeu Romatzyh tonal spelling system. But in GR Ma’s name would be Maa Ingjeou. Very curious.