Updated Monday, October 6, 2008 10:43 am TWN, By Joe Hung, Special to The China Post

Taibei, Gaoxiong, Xinzhu, etc., etc.

That’s the trouble foreign residents or tourists may find in Taiwan. Long-time foreign residents have no hard time getting along around Taiwan, for they are by and large used to the Mandarin Romanization tower of Babel. Many of them — Japanese and Koreans, for instance — can read road signs and street names in Chinese. Tourists from abroad? Most of them don’t care in whatever way those names are spelt. Japanese and Korean travelers read Chinese. Native English speakers can’t read Hanyu pinyin or any pinyin unless they have learned it. How about Spaniards, Germans, Italians or Frenchmen? Gaoxiong can’t be properly pronounced in Spanish because the letter x is usually pronounced “h” like in Don Quixote. German visitors will call Wenshan “Ven-schan,” for their w is pronounced “v” and “sh” has to be spelt “sch.” Cao Cao is Kao Kao for Italians, while “ce” in the Hanyu pinyin of the Wade-Giles “tse” which means “volume” will be recognized as ce in “ce’s la vie” pronounced like “se” in English. Incidentally, the Germans prefer Tsingtao to Qingdao, which was the largest city in their sphere of influence in the present-day Chinese province of Shandong, formerly Shantung. Yes, foreign visitors have trouble reading our place names spelt according to whatever Romanization system. Pardon me, I’ve forgotten a very few visitors from Greece, Russia and former Soviet republics, and Arab countries. They are more comfortable if their own alphabets are used in spelling the place names in Taiwan.

It’s clear that the Romanization of Mandarin under whatever system does not contribute to what all politicians in Taiwan call internationalization of their universities, cities or country. I am positive that they do not quite understand what their mantra of internationalization means. Most probably, they are convinced that universities, cities and — let’s not forget — our dear country are all internationalized if everybody here speaks, or just understands a bit of English which is a functionally a universal language. If this standard is applied, the Philippines certainly is an internationalized country. Even Bangladesh may qualify as one. Such an internationalization doesn’t add anything to Taiwan’s national competitiveness, which is sliding down on the league table.

Why not let our Mandarin Romanization take its own natural course? The current chaos isn’t intolerable. It causes a few people some inconvenience, but they do not really mind. There’s no need whatsoever for spending a lot of money to forcefully “unify” all the different Romanization systems. Premier Liu Chao-shiuan’s Cabinet is more than busy enough to cope with the milk powder scandal and the stock market crash. I am sure he doesn’t want to change “shiuan” to “xuan.”

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Comments

October 6, 2008 Anatoli_Titarev@

Finally. This is long overdue and is awaited by most foreigners. Hanyu Pinyin is much better understood and studied than any other romanisation system.

May 24, 2009 fdocruz@

"Gaoxiong can’t be properly pronounced in Spanish because the letter x is usually pronounced “h” like in Don Quixote."

I recommend Mr. Hung to research a little bit more before writing wrong statements like this one. In Spanish, x has the same pronunciation as in English.

The romanization is a chaos in Taiwan right now, this will finally set a consistent standard.

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