Face the Fact:
‘Hanyu Pinyin is the only Standard Romanization System for Mandarin’ 

It’s a great relief to know that the Ma administration made Hanyu Pinyin the standard for Romanization island-wide on Jan 1st, 2009. Inspite of strong objection to the use of the Hanyu Pinyin system by Tongyong Pinyin supporters, this decision enables Taiwan to be better connected with the rest of the world.

As far as I know, foreigners who cannot read Chinese always get confused with the Romanization systems used for  street signs and MRT stations in Taiwan. A friend of mine used to complain that there exist six different Romanization versions for 中壢. “That’s ridiculous. It’s a headache to find my way around with maps and street signs that use different Romanization systems,” he told me. This is just an example of the confusion caused by screwed-up Romanization systems used on this island. There should be only one Romanization standard for government agencies and street signs.  

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a big fan of Hanyu Pinyin. I’m just against the government’s unwillingness to face the truth. This world is, and will continue to be, dominated by China in terms of Chinese romanization, whether you like it or not. One of my pro-Taiwan independence graduate classmates is living in the U.S. teaching Chinese for a living. Guess what, the Romanization system she uses is the Hanyu Pinyin system. You want to use Tongyong Pinyin to romanize Chinese characters? Be my guest! But no westerners would recognize or understand them. Just save it for yourself. I don’t want to waste time doing something useless. I’ve got a life.       

The purpose of Romanization is ‘communication’. It is an undeniable fact that the Chinese-language student population around the world is much more familiar with Hanyu Pinyin than  with other Romanization systems,  even those invented with English speakers in mind, such as Wade-Giles, Yale, and Simplified Wade. The Taiwanese government should not have adopted Tongyong Pinyin as the nationwide standard for romanizing Mandarin eight years ago while the pro-independence DPP was in power. Fortunately, Tongyong Pinyin has been abandoned and flushed into the toilet.   

Tongyong Pinyin is often referred to as the Taiwan version of Hanyu Pinyin by its supporters, and it is claimed to be a one-size-fits-all system designed to cover Mandarin, Taiwanese, Hakka, and aboriginal languages. The claims, however, seem to be wildly overblown. I can think of no alphabet that successfully encompasses more than one language. Even European languages, such as French, German, and Danish, have very different pronunciations. I am inclined to be a skeptical of the claims by Tongyong Pinyin advocates simply because the languages of Taiwan’s tribes have sounds that cannot be found in any dialect of Chinese. I need to see more substantiation for Tongyong Pinyin to be the first phonetic system to cover a myriad of different languages.         

Again, ‘communication’ is the key point of using a Romanization system for Chinese characters. Hanyu Pinyin is the one and only standard for romanizing Mandarin. It is widely used by the United Nations, the U.S. Library of Congress, and countless other institutions around the world. All sinologists know Hanyu Pinyin, which is also the standard for students of Mandarin throughout the world. In view of this, the use of any Romanziation system, other than Hanyu Pinyin, will only create unnecessary confusion for the foreign community no matter how much similarity it has as compared with Hanyu Pinyin. Technically speaking, a system that is 95% similar to Hanyu Pinyin is as useless as a system that is only 20% similar. A compromise here is uncalled for. It just confuses the whole issue.      

To sum up, my point is: Hanyu Pinyin is the only international standard of Mandarin Romanization. Taiwan has no choice but to adopt it as the standard for Romanization island-wide. Period!

I’d like to point out another issue. Since when has the Taiwanese government, including the DPP administration under the rein of Chen Shui-bian, started to care about the preservation of aboriginal languages? Western missionaries have already created several distinct Romanization systems for Taiwan’s aboriginal languages in the past decades. It is a shame that these incredible achievements were made through the efforts of foreign missionaries rather than that of Taiwanese linguists. These Romanization systems for aboriginal languages have existed for a long time to help preserve aboriginal languages to great success. Have any non-biased, academically-sound comparisons been made between them and Tongyong Pinyin before it was adopted as the standard of Romanizing Mandarin in Taiwan nine years ago? I really doubt that Tongyong Pinyin linguists and supporters have done this. What they provide are only exaggerated claims.

My mom is learning a Romanization system I’ve never heard of to spell or romanize Hakka. If Tongyong Pinyin is such a great system that can be used to take care of all the dialects of Chinese, why is it not used by the majority of academic institutions in Taiwan? Also, the drop of Tongyong Pinyin would not cause Taiwanese culture to be lost because culture preservation is not merely a linguistic issue. But this topic is too broad to be covered adequately in this short article. To be honest, as a person whose mother language is Hakka, I’ve never learned any Romanization system. I find it a distraction to read phonetic symbols while reading Hakka texts.  

It is time to put aside our feelings of distaste towards Mainland China, at least as far as the Romanization issue goes. National chauvinism would do no good for us given that China is an emerging economy with which Taiwan has been doing billions of dollars of business for many years. It is for sure that Taiwan is not, and will never be, negatively affected  by adopting the same Romanization system for spelling Chinese characters. The use of a non-standard Romanization system (to be specific, Tongyong Pinyin) as the Romanization standard is, and will be, regarded by the foreign community as a ridiculous change away from Hanyu Pinyin, the only universally, popularly recognized Romanization system for Mandarin alphabetic representation. 

 

 

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