PeterSep 17th, 2008 - 16:19:29

'Chinese Civil War and fled to Taiwan to set up their government-in-exile':

Please, Taiwan was not and is not 'in-exile'! It was not and is not a foreign land. Please stop misleading the readers!

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DudeSep 18th, 2008 - 13:56:58

Maps printed in mainland China under communist control before 1949 do not show Taiwan as part of the Chinese state.

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a Mandarin learnerSep 21st, 2008 - 22:26:13

They should have done it long ago.

I think the rules won't be strict and people will still write the 'traditional way' - in bastardised Wade-Giles (with missing apostrophes, thus mixing different phonemes), especially for established English names of the cities, people, etc. I read that there will be flexibility in personal names. So, the confusion will continue. Taiwan is not China - the government says 'we start using hanyu pinyin', everyone follows.

BTW, the articles uses the old way to romanise the names: Chen Hsueh-yu and Taipei, not Chen Xueyu and Taibei (Hanyu Pinyin).

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RebeccaSep 25th, 2008 - 04:15:17

After having extensive exposure to both the Taiwan and mainland Chinese phonetic spelling systems, I strongly support Hanyupinyin-based standardization for the exact reasons reported in this article.

However, it's obvious to me that the author of this article clearly does not understand the history of cross-strait relations, nor does he/she understand the motivations of Taiwan for retaining use of traditional Chinese characters.

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AlexNov 30th, 2008 - 19:26:06

I agree with Rebecca, the adoption of Hanyu Pinyin will likely be a boon for the Taiwanese and visitors alike, but the author has clearly not read any linguistic research on the pros and cons of romanizations and on 'the old characters'. The efficacy of a romanization in a social context has less to do with its ease as much as to the extent to which it is promulgated. Also, traditional characters are used in Taiwan and yet Taiwan has a higher literacy rate than China--literacy isn't about the writing system, it's about access to education.

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