{"id":8345,"date":"2023-03-23T20:23:10","date_gmt":"2023-03-23T12:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/?p=8345"},"modified":"2023-03-23T13:37:16","modified_gmt":"2023-03-23T05:37:16","slug":"chunghwa-chunghua-zhonghua","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/2023\/chunghwa-chunghua-zhonghua\/","title":{"rendered":"Chunghwa, Chunghua, Zhonghua"},"content":{"rendered":"

My previous post on postage stamps with Bopomofo (Zhuyin fuhao)<\/a> mentioned Taiwan\u2019s postal service, Chunghwa Post, which is terrifically efficient at delivering mail but which made an odd choice in romanization in its English name however many years ago . The Mandarin is Zhōnghuá Yóuzhèng in Hanyu Pinyin. But the post office spells its name <\/p>\n

Chunghwa<\/p>\n

\"logo<\/a><\/p>\n

Chung <\/em>is clearly Wade-Giles. (It probably would be bastardized Wade-Giles<\/a>; but in this case chung <\/em>rather than ch\u2019ung<\/em> is correct \u2013 so, luck of the draw.) Yet hwa <\/em>does not exist in Wade-Giles, which uses hua<\/em>. So where is that hwa <\/em>coming from? The only system that uses hwa<\/em> and<\/strong> has been official in Taiwan is Gwoyeu Romatzyh<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The Yale system, devised by George Kennedy<\/a>, also uses hwa<\/em>; but despite occasional confusion by reporters and others, Taiwan has never used the Yale system. Instead, what many people mistakenly believe is Yale is instead MPS2<\/a>. <\/p>\n

I\u2019m afraid, though, that I don\u2019t have a definitive answer for how Taiwan ended up with the portmanteau spelling of Chunghwa. I suspect that what happened is that the initial intention was to go with the country\u2019s official romanization system, which, way back when, was Gwoyeu Romatzyh (“GR” for short), even if you wouldn’t know that from signage or maps or just about anything but long-distance buses<\/a>. But using GR would have yielded Jonghwa<\/em>, which would likely struck people accustomed to seeing 中 romanized as chung <\/em>as \u201clooking weird\u201d (even though chung<\/em> is hardly an intuitive spelling for native speakers of English for what is zhong<\/em> in Hanyu Pinyin). So they kept the chung <\/em>but then went ahead with hwa<\/em>, which is not so different than Wade-Giles\u2019s hua<\/em>. At least that\u2019s my guess, based on having followed romanization in Taiwan for decades. <\/p>\n

The odd choice of Chunghwa<\/em> is not limited to just the postal system. The main telephone system uses it as well: Chunghwa Telecom. <\/p>\n

\"logo<\/a><\/p>\n

If Taiwan ever gets a broader rectification of names under which the Republic of China (Zhōnghuá Mínguó) — not to be confused with the People\u2019s Republic of China (Zhōnghuá Rénmín Gònghéguó) — is simply called “Taiwan,” that would likely remove the issue. The spelling of Taiwan<\/em> is certainly standard and the same across most romanization systems \u2013 with the notable exception of Gwoyeu Romatzyh, which would give us Tairuan<\/em>. (GR\u2019s fuunny sperlinqs strike again!<\/a>) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My previous post on postage stamps with Bopomofo (Zhuyin fuhao) mentioned Taiwan\u2019s postal service, Chunghwa Post, which is terrifically efficient at delivering mail but which made an odd choice in romanization in its English name however many years ago . … 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":[12,133,32,20,19,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chinese","category-gwoyeu-romatzyh","category-mandarin","category-pinyin","category-romanization","category-taiwan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8345","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=8345"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8359,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8345\/revisions\/8359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}