{"id":3645,"date":"2010-08-05T14:04:30","date_gmt":"2010-08-05T06:04:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/?p=3645"},"modified":"2018-08-28T12:23:12","modified_gmt":"2018-08-28T04:23:12","slug":"persistent-mps2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/2010\/persistent-mps2\/","title":{"rendered":"persistent MPS2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Poagao<\/a> sent me this photo of signs on Zhong’an Bridge, which joins Xindian and Zhonghe (both in Taipei County). (So the zhong<\/em> is probably for Zhonghe<\/em>; but I’m not sure what the an<\/em> is meant to be short for.) The signs are a good illustration of the sloppy approach to romanization in Taiwan. Because this is a new bridge, these are definitely new signs and thus should be in Hanyu Pinyin, which is official not just in Taipei County but nationally. <\/p>\n

\"two<\/p>\n

As the table below shows, however, the only name that definitely isn’t written in MPS2<\/a> — the romanization system that predated Tongyong, which in Taiwan predated Hanyu Pinyin — is a typo. MPS2 hasn’t been official for the better part of a decade. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
on the sign<\/th>\nsystem<\/th>\nHanyu Pinyin<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
Junghe<\/td>\nMPS2<\/td>\nZhōnghé<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Benchian<\/td>\nwrong in all systems<\/td>\nBǎnqiáo<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Jingping<\/td>\n(MPS2, Tongyong, Hanyu Pinyin)<\/td>\nJǐngpíng<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Shioulang<\/td>\nMPS2<\/td>\nXiùlǎng<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

And there’s no excuse for making “Shioulang Bridge” so small and squashed. This also brings to mind another aspect of Hanyu Pinyin: because of its design and the fact that it uses abbreviated forms of some vowel combinations (e.g., uei -> ui, iou -> iu), it doesn’t need as much horizontal space as MPS2 or Tongyong Pinyin, which means it can be written with larger letters — an important factor in signage. (See the second table of the comparative typing chart<\/a> to see such differences between Hanyu Pinyin and Tongyong Pinyin.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
system<\/th>\nspelling<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
MPS2<\/td>\nShioulang<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Tongyong Pinyin<\/td>\nSioulang<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Hanyu Pinyin<\/td>\nXiulang<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Poagao sent me this photo of signs on Zhong’an Bridge, which joins Xindian and Zhonghe (both in Taipei County). (So the zhong is probably for Zhonghe; but I’m not sure what the an is meant to be short for.) The … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,106,32,20,48,3,52],"tags":[627,696,277],"class_list":["post-3645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chinese","category-hanyu","category-mandarin","category-pinyin","category-signage","category-taiwan","category-tongyong","tag-mps2","tag-xindian","tag-zhonghe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3645"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7872,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3645\/revisions\/7872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}