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Rewriting Chinese a Foolish Move
In an attempt to fix Taipei's confusing street signs, Taiwan's "ministry of education" last week decided to use tongyong pinyin romanization instead of hanyu pinyin, an internationally recognized romanization of Chinese, setting off a new round of arguments on the island about how to transcribe Chinese words into the Roman alphabet.
The authorities have based their decision on the teaching of local languages in elementary schools, which also uses tongyong pinyin (basically, hanyu pinyin with a few letters changed). Making classes in local languages (namely Hokkien, Hakka and Aboriginal languages) compulsory at elementary school is in line with the authorities' localization initiative.
While hanyu pinyin is internationally recognized, the introduction of tongyong pinyin is politically motivated rather than a simple linguistic move.
Understandably, the romanization of street signs largely serves the needs of foreigners, as locals can rely on the Chinese characters, but even foreigners agree that street signs in hanyu pinyin are far easier to recognize than those in tongyong pinyin. The transcribing of Chinese into tongyong pinyin creates a brand new language for foreigners and inevitably confuses them. For example, when transcribed into tongyong pinyin, "Dalong Street" becomes "Pronpon Street" which even has the locals baffled.
The authorities surely cannot have been so ignorant and foolish as to abandon a well established and useful tool in favour of a new and made-up one. The crux of the matter lies in the fact that hanyu pinyin was born on the Chinese mainland, and thus committing to the use of hanyu pinyu would be seen as a sign of wanting to reunite with the mainland.
The irreversible fact, that seems to have been overlooked, is that Chinese is the lingua franca of Taiwan. No matter how hard the Taiwan authorities try to avoid Chinese, Taiwan and its people remain an inseparable part of China.
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