I felt that your editorial "Drowning in Alphabet Soup" (Monday, Oct. 25, p 8) conveyed a negative message to the public; the tone was unfortunately a "we couldn't care less" attitude.
If Tongyong Pinyin is to be regarded as a formal system for spelling Mandarin Chinese, the editorial should have advocated a strong push to make A-Bian's government carry out its responsibility for the standardization of the system. After the long dispute of the past years, the rival, poorly designed Hanyu Pinyin should now be seen in a different light.
The cliched mention of Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou's (
This is a strategy Taiwan has not yet learned. And please don't ridicule the Taiwanese people about their "Taiwan Guoyu" any more. I believe that if they can articulate the English "th" sound, they can distinguish the Chinese "f" and "h." You only need to remind them to pronounce "f" and "h" correctly.
It is not for your newspaper to perpetuate such discouragement to the Taiwanese simply due to the lack of an "f" sound in their mother tongue.
Taitzer Wang
Cincinnati, Ohio
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