Pinyin used in Taiwan?

[Jose]

Following Roddy's suggestion, I've started a new thread ( http://www.chinese-forums.com/showthread.php?p=42070 ) to reply to wix and atitarev's comments about the possible Russian origin of the pinyin q.

[xiaocai]

My personal experience:

The only use of Pinyin, for me, is just a kind of input method coz I was too lazy to remember those Wubi codes...

I do have difficulty in writing traditional characters, but reading or typing is much easier that I can say that there's no problem for me. By the way, my Chinese teacher can write traditional ones very well.

Not all the taiwan domains are blocked in mainland, at least I can access to kimoyahoo and pchome from my computer.

[lpascoe]

On Kaohsiung road signs - yes, this city is green, thus the switch to tongyong pinyin on road signs. I shouldn't complain about this because not so long ago you could travel along one road and see a variation of spellings as you went along (eg., Dashun, Taschun, Dashuen) which led to a lot of confusion amongst the expat community. At least now, the road signs are consistent, even if I'm not sure how to pronounce the pinyin without looking at the Chinese characters. My latest laugh came from Xintian road, which has turned into Sintian road.

On simplified characters - my Taiwanese housemate professes not to understand any simplified characters at all, but I have to say I find this hard to believe since I can guess my way through really easy stuff using simplified characters and my Chinese is not that hot. I suspect her complete lack of comprehension is partly willful.

A lot of my friends here in Taiwan use some simplified characters while taking notes because the traditional ones take too much effort to write. Sure you can live here without having to learn any, but you'll come across heaps on web pages. Will Taiwan convert to simplified characters? My guess is not while there is a DPP government. Having said that, some of my Chinese teachers think the change is inevitable because the traditional characters take too long to learn to write. Don't know what I think about that.

Gato is right. Lots of Taiwanese travel to and live in the PRC. Mainland Chinese travel to Taiwan as well. I bumped into a huge group of them the last time I went to Alishan. But I think most have to travel as a part of a group, there is a lot of paperwork involved and a travel agent I know said they have to pay a heap of money if anybody goes missing. Hurm.

[gato]

Having said that, some of my Chinese teachers think the change is inevitable because the traditional characters take too long to learn to write.

Less of a problem probably as more people use computers for writing. By the way, do many people in Taiwan learn pinyin in order to do keyboard entry? I saw people with zhuyin overlays on their keyboards, but I would think that it'd take longer to learn zhuyin typing than to just learn pinyin.

[bhchao]

Will Taiwan convert to simplified characters? My guess is not while there is a DPP government. Having said that, some of my Chinese teachers think the change is inevitable because the traditional characters take too long to learn to write. Don't know what I think about that.

It is very unlikely that Taiwan will convert to simplified characters under a KMT government either. Traditional characters were standardized in Taiwan by the Chiang regime in response to PRC standardizing simplified characters.

[in_lab]

An average online gamer computer user in Taiwan knows the zhuyin keyboard layout better than the the letters, so it doesn't take him extra time to learn the zhuyin so much as it takes extra time to learn the letters. If a person can type in English faster than in Chinese, then he will just type in English, which also gives more face. I've tried to get a few people interested in typing in pinyin, but haven't been successful.

[gato]

An average online gamer computer user in Taiwan knows the zhuyin keyboard layout better than the the letters, so it doesn't take him extra time to learn the zhuyin so much as it takes extra time to learn the letters.

How much time does it take to learn to type touch in zhuyin once you've learned QWERTY (i.e. the regular Western keyboard layout)? I would guess that they know how to type zhuyin because they've practiced it.

What do you mean they know zhuyin typing better than letters? Do you mean that they learn zhuyin typing before QWERTY?

[bhchao]

On Kaohsiung road signs - yes, this city is green, thus the switch to tongyong pinyin on road signs.

Tainan probably made the switch too. I would guess Taipei is the city most resistant to Tongyong Pinyin since the city attracts the most foreigners in Taiwan, and Hanyu Pinyin is the standard taught to foreigners overseas.

Also Hanyu Pinyin has its support from Mayor Ma, who strongly opposes the usage of Tongyong Pinyin due to the reason mentioned above.

[in_lab]

What do you mean they know zhuyin typing better than letters? Do you mean that they learn zhuyin typing before QWERTY?

Most people, Chinese or non-Chinese, haven't totally "learned" the keyboard layout. They have to look at the keyboard while they type. I mean that for a lot of Taiwanese (my guess is most) they are more familiar with zhuyin than QWERTY. They can't type either one without looking, but they know zhuyin layout better. It seemed strange at first, but what need do most Chinese people have for typing quickly in English?

[skylee]

Most people, Chinese or non-Chinese, haven't totally "learned" the keyboard layout. They have to look at the keyboard while they type.

I don't think this is true. Many people type without looking at the keyboard. But maybe this doesn't mean that they have "totally learned the keyboard layout". Or maybe "many" is not as many as "most".

[in_lab]

My statement was based on the journalistic principal of "generalize wildly based on personal experience." It's ten minutes before I go home, so I don't have time to look for any respectable statistics, so how about this suspicious statistic.

"... Only 5% ... of keyboarders know a touch system - everyone else is in the "hunt and peck" category." ... Teleprint.com. "... That's a great idea, catering to hunt and peck typists, since most people type that way these days" ... Friends Don't Let Friends Type Qwerty

http://www.xpertkeyboard.com/peck.htm

I was lucky enough to learn to touch type at school in 7th grade, but I still have to look at the keyboard to use the top number keys.

[lpascoe]

Less of a problem probably as more people use computers for writing. By the way, do many people in Taiwan learn pinyin in order to do keyboard entry? I saw people with zhuyin overlays on their keyboards, but I would think that it'd take longer to learn zhuyin typing than to just learn pinyin

.

People are using computers more, so the fact that the traditional characters are more complicated to write should be neither here nor there, as long as you can recognize the appropriate character when typing, to be able to pick it out from others that sound the same. But I think some people are starting to worry that as people rely on typing as opposed to writing, they forget how to write a lot of characters because the two tasks use different skills (recognition/recall, I'm not sure if these are appropriate terms to use or not).

The keyboard I'm using at the moment has got both zhuyin and bushou. I doubt there are too many people around who'd bother learning pinyin only for the sake of typing. Having said that, a few of my Chinese teachers (who are already familiar with hanyu pinyin) use pinyin when typing on their computers, or sending text messages using their cell phones.

[Taibei]

Wow, this thread is all over the place.

OK, first things first. Taiwan's national government has proclaimed Tongyong Pinyin to be the country's official romanization scheme for Mandarin and Hakka (but not for Taiwanese/Minnan); at the same time, however, the government left the choice of implementation up to local governments.

A lot of people put the Hanyu/Tongyong debate in terms of KMT=Hanyu and DPP=Tongyong. But it's not quite that simple. Certainly Tongyong exists only because of political considerations: another way of distinguishing the two sides of the strait. Indeed, when the Chen administration's first minister of education, the renowned psycholinguist Ovid Tzeng, announced he would recommend Hanyu Pinyin, political watchers knew his days in office were numbered.

A lot of people within the DPP don't like Tongyong, especially the Tongyong scheme for Taiwanese. (It's important to point out that the tale that Tongyong can handle all the languages of Taiwan is a myth. No one romanization system could do that, because of different sounds in the different languages. And no Tongyong schemes have been developed for the languages of Taiwan's tribes.) But, seeing what happened to Tzeng, no one is going to speak out against this national embarrassment.

Moreover, for those who associate Hanyu with the KMT, keep in mind that the KMT was very much opposed to Hanyu Pinyin -- which was the reason behind the creation of the MPS2 romanization system. Of course, the KMT also used to be opposed to China; and that's not exactly the case anymore.

Taipei, which is under a KMT adminstration, adopted Hanyu Pinyin upon the near-unanimous recommendation of the city's foreign businesspeople and consultants. Taipei's mayor, Ma Ying-jeou (Ma Yingjiu), loves anything that can be associated with "internationalization." I think his support for Hanyu Pinyin is a genuine reaction to the calls of the foreign community rather than a kneejerk political stance. So, Taipei has its signage in Hanyu Pinyin. (Unfortunately, that signage also uses InTerCaPiTaLiZaTion, which is one of my pet peeves.)

The highway signs, which are under a national agency, are now mostly in Tongyong. Some cities under DPP control are switching their signage to Tongyong. But most street signs throughout the country remain in MPS2.

Xinzhu/Hsinchu and Taizhong/Taichung, both of which are under KMT administrations, have some signs in Hanyu. Keelung, which is also under the KMT, doesn't. (Amazingly, I've even seen signs there in romanized Taiwanese!) Hualian County is under the KMT; but I recently saw signs there in Tongyong. And some of the new signs going up in Banqiao are in Hanyu, though most are going up in Tongyong.

Basically, most people handling signs in Taiwan don't know what they're doing and aren't especially careful. Even so, there are fewer errors than previously, when sign painters seemed to have random-letter generators.