The furor over Taiwan's adoption of some system by which Chinese characters can be represented in the Roman alphabet has raged periodically over the last few years, bursting out most recently with the replacement of Ovid Tzeng (
The form of spelling which is to represent Chinese characters in Taiwan is the source of violent political passions and had boiled down to a duel between the Hanyu (漢語) and the Tongyong systems, the former developed in China and now adopted as an international standard, the latter a system developed in Taiwan by a group of scholars led by Yu Po-chuan (余伯泉), a social psychologist working out of the Academia Sinica.
PHOTO: IAN BARTHOLOMEW, TAIPEI TIMES
Yu claims that Tongyong is superior to the Hanyu system primarily in its extensibility. Not only is it able to cope with Mandarin Chinese, but also Taiwanese and Hakka, which are seen by many as important elements in Taiwan's cultural identity. This identity issue is countered by supporters of the Hanyu camp by saying that if Taiwan wants international recognition, it must adopt the international standard. "But why must we blindly adopt something that is inferior," Yu says. "We are part of the Chinese community and our attitude should be one of engagement and cooperation. There is no reason why we shouldn't have our own input."
Explaining his system, Yu could not resist a note of academic belligerence when pointing out the "?" with umlaut that has been a major stumbling block in the Hanyu system because of the problems representing this character in computer and other publishing systems. Tongyong abjures such diacritical marks, "so on this issue at least, I am sure Tongyong's representation will take over from Hanyu," Yu said with pride. This academic engagement is very much at odds with public criticism of the system, which tends to take the attitude that since there is a perfectly adequate system currently available in China's Hanyu system, why bother developing another.
Yu is at pains to emphasize the fact that his system does not differ radically from Hanyu, and that the two are "compatible." According to a comparative study of romanization systems by Tsai Chih-hao (
"It is a question of benefits," Yu said. "If the benefits of adopting Hanyu outweigh those of using Tongyong, then I have no problem with it. But that is simply not the case." What is benefit and what disadvantage of course depends on the individual, and much of the debate of the use of Tongyong is about the price Taiwan will pay in integration with international norms of Chinese language usage, currently largely defined by China.
As Yu expounds the basics of the Tongyong system, it is easy to lose sight of the political issues that are at the center of the furor. As a linguist, he delights in its simplicity. "I can give anyone a working knowledge of this system in just one hour," he says. In relation to the romanization of Taiwanese, the complex system of tone changes, which is the bane of a beginning student, has been simplified to something much more accessible. "It really is a beautiful system," Yu says.
But even as a linguist working on his "beautiful system," Yu cannot avoid the political issues. "The issue has become so politicized," he says, admitting that in the course of the last three years in which the debate has raged, "I have been forced further and further towards a strong `Taiwanese identity' position." He laments the fact that what should be the work of producing a rational system of romanization for Taiwan has become a conflict between Greater China identity and Taiwan identity.
"It has become a question of sovereignty," Yu said. "Why should we, for example, spell place names according to the Hanyu system. A sovereign nation can spell city names as it chooses." The shift from Peking to Beijing and from Bombay to Mumbai reflect this trend and Yu feels that Taiwan should follow suit. And for locations like Wanhua, which is also commonly known by its Taiwanese name of Manka, "this simply cannot be romanized under the current Hanyu system."
"I am not against the Hanyu system," Yu insists, and has gone out of his way to reduce the number of differences between the two systems to a minimum. "I think the two can exist side by side ... but there should be a system that takes Taiwan's history into consideration."
But sometimes it is this very history that gets in the way. While Hanyu is Tongyong's biggest rival in Mandarin Chinese, in Taiwanese, which Tongyong champions, it faces resistance from an entrenched system developed by the Presbyterian Church, which complex and unintuitive as it is, currently dominates the Taiwanese language educational establishment.
"Tongyong is about being coherent within the Taiwanese context," said Yu, adding that he has put considerable effort to offer "ease of access," simplifying and rationalizing wherever possible. He is the first to admit that some problems still exist within the Tongyong system, but believes that "the slow process of standardization is taking place."
It has been five years since the standardization of street signs using the Roman alphabet was first mooted and little has been achieved in the interim. Even now, the Taipei City Government is standing out against the adoption of Tongyong, so that standardization across the island may still be someway off, and it still remains to be seen what level of acceptance Yu's "beautiful system" will achieve.
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