Here's a menu sign outside a lunchbox restaurant. Although the playful use of "G" for 雞 is fairly unusual, almost no one in Taiwan would have any trouble reading this sign. Similarly, a common vegetable in Taiwan restaurants is, more often than not, written "A菜."
Although the Taiwan Railway Authority has for the most part switched the names of its stations over to Tongyong Pinyin, it has yet to make the switch in its software, which continues to put out names in bastardized Wade-Giles, as well as in the odd but still-official romanization of "Keelung" for "Jilong." Unusually, every one of these place names is the same in Tongyong and Hanyu: Jilong, Hualian, Nangang, Songshan, and Su'ao.
A street sign in the old MPS2 romanization system. These are still quite common outside Taipei, which has now essentially completed its transition to Hanyu Pinyin. Note the use of all capital letters (bad) and the separation of syllables (even worse). Some people like to say that Chinese characters take up less space than romanization; they sure don't here! For that matter, the romanization would take up even less space if it were written properly: "Shijian", not "SHR JIAN".
This is an example of a new style of address plate being used in Taipei. Unfortunately, the practice of InTerCaPiTaLiZaTion found on Taipei's street signs is duplicated here. For reasons I have yet to understand, these signs appear in a variety of colors. Another mystery is why the address is given as No. 4 in Chinese but as No. 2 in English/romanization.
Here's what the old-style address plates look like. Even in Taipei, these are more common than the new-style signs.
These signs, in the DPP-held Taipei County, are in Tongyong Pinyin. A number of things are worthy of note:
- the inclusion of some English rather than full romanization, e.g. "Taipei City" rather than "Taibei Shi," and "Bri" as an abbreviation for "bridge" rather than "qiao"
- the superfluous (in English) use of "City"
- "Wan-Ban" (short for "Wanhua-Banqiao") is incorrectly given as "Wanban"
- the confusing and unnecessary abbreviation of "bridge" as "bri"
- the large amount of extra space between some Chinese characters, such as in 中和
- the horrible practice of InTerCaPiTaLiZaTion, so often seen in Taipei, is not used here
- the continued use of "Taipei" rather than "Taibei" (as it would be spelled in Tongyong Pinyin, Hanyu Pinyin, and most other romanization systems)
Government offices seem to love putting too much information on their romanized/English signs, which only serves to increase clutter and make everything harder to read. Here, a simple "Taipei County Veterens' Service Dept." would be better. Are the people in the office afraid that someone would be confused?
"Oh no. This says only 'Taipei County Veterens' Service Department.' Maybe this isn't the Taipei County Veterens' Service Department that belongs to the Executive Yuan's Veterens' Affairs Committee. Whatever will I do?"
Whether all of that information is also needed in Chinese is another question.
Here's a sign for Taipei's mass rapid transit (MRT) system. Because the system is controlled by the Taipei City Government, the sign here is in Hanyu Pinyin rather than Tongyong Pinyin, even though this particular station is in Taipei County, which does not use Hanyu Pinyin on its own. Within the Taipei County MRT stations themselves, however, most places other than MRT station names are identified in Tongyong Pinyin (in parenthese) as well as Hanyu Pinyin.
The sign is nicely done, with a beautiful font for the romanization.
