How familiar are you with Hanyu Pinyin?

[ironlady]

Dan,

While I support Hanyu Pinyin over Tongyong due to the "get a life and don't change just to be different" argument, I would take exception at your characterization of the publishers of Taipei "not caring less" about Romanization. In the past six months, I've had two major publishing houses pay me a fair chunk of change to check E>C and C>E dictionary projects, and in both cases I've been asked to check the Pinyin spellings. I'm not going to characterize exactly which companies I am working for, but you get the general idea.

Specifically, Lanbridge (Mr. Su) has an excellent Pinyin dictionary out, and is in fact the first Taiwanese publisher to put out Chinese materials indexed by alphabetical Pinyin (more useful for foreigners' listening purposes than searching by individual characters). Far East brought out a nice compact C>E dictionary with accurate Pinyin entries last year, and will be porting it for Palm shortly.

Now, what happens when that corrected galley text goes to a Taiwanese typesetter who is conversant with neither English nor Hanyu Pinyin is anyone's guess...

It might be more accurate to point out that some publishing houses need to modernize the way they handle texts -- cutting down on the repeated keying in of copy which leads to errors. It's very frustrating to spend time editing something and then see errors thrown back into the finished product. [img]images/smiles/icon_sad.gif[/img]

Terry

[jplowman]

To answer your question about Modified Pinyin, Laowai, I believe that in third-tone words with more than one vowel, the vowel to be doubled is the one which would carry the tone mark in ordinary Pinyin. But I usually just guess.

Anyway... yes, Dan Jacobson, I would present a unified front behind Hanyu Pinyin in public meetings, as I think adopting it as standard would be a great improvement. And you and Hartzell shouting at me in public would probably damage the impression of consensus more than not. But I do want to point out that what you call "our Hanyu Pinyin [26 letters, no tones,
case not significant" is just that, your Hanyu Pinyin, a modification of Hanyu Pinyin which omits pronunciation information by leaving out Hanyu Pinyin's tone marks. I prefer a modification of Pinyin which retains that information, even passing through postal input systems and whatnot. But I am interested to meet Hartzell anyway, so let me know if there's a hearing and I'll support your Hanyu Pinyin.

[jidanni]

ironlady: I meant Mr. Su, head of Lanbridge, couldn't be bothered less with the government's waverings, as he was steadfastly Hanyu pinyin, and gave me 3 dictionaries, and wished me luck on the campaign.

[ironlady]

Ohhh....that seems more like the Mr. Su I know. [img]images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

If there's one thing I like, it's being handed dictionaries!! [img]images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img]

[jidanni]

Noticing that both Feiren and I are both into Linux, we must explore
"is hanyu pinyin like the evil giant, Microsoft, whilst tongyong
pinyin like the heroic gladiator GNU?"

Sorry, just the opposite: Hanyu pinyin is more like ASCII, the
"owners" would have a hard time changing the standard now, even if
they wanted to. Tongyong is like Microsoft trying to make special
HTML proprietary "value-added extensions". One can see from Yu Boquan
trying to move further and further from hanyu pinyin, even after
hanging Zh, X, Q on Taibei streets.

Rest assured that if one day China was on drugs and said "wow,
tongyong is great, I'll adopt it, I've read the documents and it
sounds like a great system... I'll junk hanyu pinyin"... rest assured
that under the philosophical definition of tongyong pinyin, to be
different than China, that tongyong must then change again. As is
usual with shyster [sorry, my free spelling corrector doesn't have
that word] schemes, the goal, to be different, is opposite from the
name, tongyong. "But that was to be "tong1" amongst the
dialects"... ok, where is Yu's final Mandarin--Taiwanese
[Guoyu--Taiyu] proposal?

Ok, hanyu pinyin is an international standard. The originators would
have a hard time changing it now even if they wanted to. Does one
look at international standards and say "I don't use any that were
invented by people with German surnames", or "I don't use anything
invented by the government of China"... well, considering that, what,
98% of people speaking Chinese live in China, it is not unexpected
that there should be some inventions regarding the Chinese language
coming from there. Isn't it odd that "the tongyong camp" prefer we
still use Beijing language signs rather than, say the Taiwanese
romanization street signs as often seen in Yilan County.

By the way, I was supposed to be all burntout about this issue, but I
found it just too odd that another fellow foreigner would "go in" for
the tongyong sales pitch [despite a curious lack of interest of Yu
toward trying to sell his ideas to us [perhaps sour memories of how
our "love affair" ended [I told him I only liked him because he was
real close to hanyu pinyin at the time, but noticing that his brain
was splitting further and further from hanyu pinyin, I dumped him]]]
[now I specialize in traveling long distances just for the 2 minute
pleasure of making him look like a fool at conferences]

[Wait a second Jacobson, it is obvious from your postings that it is
you, not Yu, who has the mental problem. --- No your honor, get to know
Yu, then compare.]

[dl7und]

The discussion reminds a bit of the endless OS/editor/CPU/whatever wars, though it shouldn't - and I think it might help to let comparisons to operation systems out of this.
A language is a nice thing: It allows its users to communicate with each other, to transfer information, to share it. Who can still remember "secret languages" used in the childhood? Why would you use them? To hide information being transferred in front of others, right?
A language is also a very complex thing: Most languages have two ways to be transferred, written and aural. To let a language be right that and serve to transfer information, it needs a system of assignments. In English, the three characters "car" are assigned to a small-size vehicle, mostly on four wheels, driven by a motor. If you change only one character, it could become "cat" - with a completely different meaning, although it looks very similar (especially, if you are not familiar with English - and it is easilly mistyped on a computer). The same applies for the aural version of the language. In addition to such assignments, there are a lot of rules to allow more complex operations (like expression of past and future). A set of rules can be called a system, but it only deserves this name if it is consequently applied in the way it is defined. Now what did the "secret language" of your childhood do? It changed assignments or established new ones. Remember the aim?
Now to Pinyin: Actually, I don't care very much if there are tone marks on street signs or not. The difference is like the color depth on your screen: Eight or 16 bit - it looks better in 16 bit, but you can get most information with eight. (24 bit would be the version Richard demanded in the China Post once, where you can retrieve the original chinese characters from it.) While it would be nice to have tone marks, the situation now is much worse.
I admit I don't like Wade/Giles, but at least their conversion table can still be called a system - though it is not the most popular in the world. The problem is: No-one (at least almost no-one) here in Taiwan knows that system. Why? It is not taught. The authorities probably assume that you either don't need it or will learn it by yourself. Unfortunately, the latter happens seldomly. The result is a wild "Well, I just happen to write it this way, so what?" behavior, which definitely does not serve a basic function of language: Communication. If everyone speaks and writes his/her own way, you can hardly speak of a "system", right? But as a language is a system of sounds and characters, there will be no language if there is no system. So actually, what we see on Taiwans road signs and everywhere else is not Wade/Giles but some noisy expressions sometimes reminding of language. As long as you don't teach a system, the discussion about which system to choose is useless.

I understand that a few persons in Taiwan might not like the political component of Pinyin, being "the system from Mainland", but I am always surprised how powerful Taiwan must be when you can ignore a transcription system used by the majority of countries on this planet and tell them to use your newly invented one instead. I'm sure, within a few months, every department of China studies at any university on this planet will apply this new system - or not, because they invented Tongyong more than a few months ago and so far I failed to notice a significant response. (Or maybe I'm too ignorant?)

Anyway, we're back to the "secret language": Which method did it use? Changing existing assignments or creating new ones. Why? To exclude people from communication.
So my simple conclusion - which does not sound very nice - is that Taiwan (let's use this term) has a very low interest to let the world outside access its local information. In some cases it could even be said that there is a very low interest in communication at all.
Who would usually use and benefit from a transcription system of Chinese? I thought it would be foreigners who are not able to read chinese characters. It would be a logical conclusion to ask foreigners about their opinion, but that opinion seems not to be worth very much - another argument for my "ignorance theory".

I can often hear the excuse that "we just write it that way" or "well, that's the way it is" but sorry, a language without a system is no language (as well as a transcription, which is only another written form of the language, is no transcription without a system) and a language (or its written form) can hardly serve for communication between two parties if one has never heard of that language/transcription. Guess what happens if you write chinese characters the way most people here are handling romanisation...?

But of course, that's all only my personal opinion and as a foreigner, I will probably not have a deep enough understanding of the very complex problem of language and transcription use...

Olaf

[Bu Lai En]

The arguments in favour of pinyin are simply overwhelming.

What we should look at is just why some people still support Tongyong or some other system, and how they might be persuaded otherwise. I can only think of two reasons people would oppose pinyin:

1) They are ignorant. The solution: explain clearly why pinyin is better. Unfortunately it involves a bit of patience and an ability to understand a bit about Chinese and romanisation, but I think anybody could be convinced.

2) Politics: People think that the political implications outweigh the factors in favour of pinyin. In this case we can either a) Emphasis the practical advantages of pinyin so that they think 'OK practicalities outweigh political considerations, OR b) Argue politically. So what are the POLITICAL arguments in favour of pinyin over Tongyong. Well here's two that I can think of: First, we should be able to say that Taiwan is confident enough in it's sense of de facto independence from the Mainland that we can opt for pinyin without it being a loss of sovereignty and who cares if China says "this PROVES that Taiwan is a part of China" because they say that about anything anyway. Secondly, I believe that one factor in overseas students of Chinese deciding where to study Chinese is that they'd ratehr study somewhere that uses pinyin so they are (slightly) more likely to go to China, whereas if they went to Taiwan they'd end up being a 'friend of Taiwan' int he future.

3) I just thought of another reason. Obstinancy or face. Politicians may be unwilling to back down. So throw them a bone. Something like "we'll use pinyin, but goddammit, we're not going to adopt simplified charcters" or "pinyin for Mandarin, Tongyong for Taiwanese".

Bri

[jidanni]

Sorry, got more:

Let's examine calling the year 2002 "Year 91". Isn't that the
same deal as needing a tongyong pinyin for the _same_ Chinese
language? Doesn't this year 91 thing strike you as one of the most
brilliant inventions of the century? If we stopped calling it year 91
would the nation crumble? Would the minions run around now confused
about what country this is? [Or any less confused?]

As I said in a rare letter accepted by the Liberty Times
http://www.geocities.com/jidanni/my-newspaper-letters.htm [Chinese]
Dueling pinyin systems for the _same_ language is just showing that
one's brain is stuck in the phase of "I'm the real China, they are the
fake China. Real China does not use fake China's pinyin. [Real China
does not accept fake China's college degrees too.]"

If one grasps better the meaning of independence, one would say "I am
Taiwan, they are China. I will treat China like any other of the 200+
other foreign countries of the world." "I will stop sibling rivalry
over the family name because I am not your sibling. I do not wish
your China trademark. I am Taiwan, not China. I now have freed my
conscious so I am able to use all international standards. I use volt
watt meter ASCII ..., I do not check first to see what hairstyle their
inventors had." "That I do not also choose to use simplified chars is
because I already have my own. That I chose to use hanyu pinyin is
because I have a mess and there is a current international standard
ready made for free available."

[jidanni]

Sorry, more: the "throw PRC a bone" idea is wrong if we are to sell
this idea from the "I support Taiwan independence and also support
hanyu pinyin" standpoint, as I do.

We must say that in making our resolution to support hanyu pinyin, the
PRC is not a factor; we look around and see no "PRC"...

Math proof time: Taiwan alters pinyin to be different than PRC; PRC
moves their pinyin over on the bench to sit next to Taiwan; Taiwan
moves further away; PRC slides over again to sit next to Taiwan;
Taiwan moves further away.

From this it can be seen that indeed the PRC can manipulate Taiwan's
pinyin at whim: all the PRC has to do is adopt Taiwan's pinyin, this
will force Taiwan to change Taiwan pinyin to be different. Therefore
Taiwan is dancing to the PRC music.

Under the Dan Plan, by me, Dan, Taiwan adopts hanyu pinyin, and then
sticks with it. As far as the PRC goes, they can turn blue in the
face and we don't care. They can be all smiles and we also don't
care.

That j****ff Yu Boquan says "what if the PRC changes their pinyin?"
while at the same time having changed his own pinyin so many times,
even after getting his signs erected. That lesser j****ff, Dan
Jacobson, [wait, that's me] says: Hanyu pinyin hasn't changed in the
40 years since release: stability you can invest on. But wait: won't
it get stale sooner, you know, being 40 years old? Naw, look at
English, several hundred years stale and still revision costs being
too high to afford messing with it... therefore ensuring stability you
can invest on.

By the way, Mr. Yu also has added some special bonuses because "Taiwan
Mandarin is different than Beijing Mandarin!" like Wen->Wun , [he
didn't understand the syllable chart initial/final system here.]
Feng->Fong, [this, like I told him in the restaurant, should be
changed in a set: b p m f, not just one or two, unless you want to
trap your self in mid-sound change which should affect the whole class
sooner or later. I told him: there are several places in your
tongyong pinyin that you have changed one or two members of a 3 or 4
sound class. Either change nor or change all or face even more
ridicule from professional linguistics people.][anyway, indeed, he
took my advice on many of these points --- except my main point: your
contribution of forcing the pinyin issue onto the table [by actually
hanging signs] remembered in history. Indeed, nobody had the guts
except you. OK, now your historical role is fulfilled, OK? Time to
step back.]