Tongyong Pinyin

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Tongyong Pinyin (Chinese: 通用拼音; pinyin: Tōngyòng pīnyīn; literally "Universal/General Usage Sound-combining") is the current official romanization of the Chinese language approved by Taiwan's Ministry of Education in 2002. It is not mandatory for people to use it. Like all previous ROC official romanizations, it is based on the national language of China, Mandarin Chinese.

Contents 1 History 2 Features 2.1 Spelling 2.2 Punctuation 3 Adoption 4 Controversy 4.1 Arguments in favor of Tongyong Pinyin 4.2 Arguments against Tongyong Pinyin 5 Comparison chart 6 See also 7 External links

[edit] History

The impetus behind the invention of Tongyong Pinyin came from the need for a standardized romanization system in Taiwan, which for decades had haphazardly applied various systems. Wade-Giles had widely been applied, but incorrectly. Another system, MPS II, became standard, but was not widely promulgated.

For reasons such as rivalry with mainland China, Hanyu Pinyin is not favored by many pro-independence government officials in Taiwan as a standardized system. In 1998, Yu Bor-chuan (余伯泉) drafted a new system — Tongyong Pinyin — which has been modified several times since.

In November of 2000, former Education Minister Ovid Tzeng suggested that the government use Hanyu Pinyin with some modifications for local dialects, but the proposal was rejected. Many people, including the mayor of Taipei, Ma Ying-jeou, thought that Taiwan should use Hanyu Pinyin because it is the international standard of romanization.

On July 10, 2002, Taiwan's Ministry of Education held a meeting for 27 members. Only 13 attended. Two left early, plus the chairman could not vote, so the bill for using Tongyong Pinyin was passed by only ten votes. Because the use of Tongyong Pinyin is not mandatory, the Taipei City government considered using Hanyu and Tongyong concurrently. It was then decided by the Mayor Ma that only Hanyu Pinyin would be used for road signs. By the end of 2002, 161 street signs were changed to Hanyu Pinyin. At the end of 2003, all 659 streets had signs in Hanyu Pinyin.

[edit] Features

[edit] Spelling

Notable features of Tongyong Pinyin are:

• Hanyu zh becomes jh (Wade-Giles uses ch).
• Hanyu x and q are completely unused in Tongyong Pinyin: they become s and c (Wade-Giles uses hs and ch') before i, but sy and cy before u (to avoid confusion with su and cu).
• The Hanyu i not represented in Zhuyin — the empty rime (空韻) — are shown as ih (partially like Wade-Giles), i.e, those in Hanyu as zi (資), ci (慈), si (思), zhi (知), chi (吃), shi (詩), and ri (日) all end in -ih in Tongyong.
• eng becomes ong after f- and w- (奉、瓮)
• wen (溫) becomes wun
• iong becomes yong, e.g. syong instead of pinyin xiong (兇)
• Ü used in Pinyin is replaced by yu.
• Unlike Wade-Giles and Hanyu, iu and ui [e.g., liu (六) and gui (鬼)] contractions can be optionally written out in full as iou and uei. However, according to the Ministry of the Interior, in romanizations of names of places that is at township-level or below township-level, the letters must be written in full.

[edit] Punctuation

• Tongyong syllables in the same word (except placenames) are to be separated by hyphens, like Wade-Giles. Except that, in Ministry of the Interior's romanizations, placenames have no spaces between the syllables.
• Tongyong uses tone marks like Zhuyin, and not like Hanyu, i.e., Tongyong has no mark for the first tone, but a dot for the neutral tone (which is optional on computers).
• The optional syllable disambiguity mark is apostrophe (like Hanyu), e.g., ji'nan vs. jin'an. The mark may also, as in the Ministry of the Interior placenames, be a hyphen.

[edit] Adoption

Even though in early October 2000, the Mandarin Commission of the Ministry of Education proposed to use Tongyong Pinyin as the national standard, Education Minister Ovid Tzeng (曾志朗) submitted a draft of the Taiwanese Romanization in late October to the Executive Yuan, but it was rejected.

[edit] Controversy

The adoption of Tongyong Pinyin has also resulted in political controversy. Much of the controversy centered on issues of national identity, with proponents of Chinese reunification favoring the Hanyu Pinyin system which is used in the People's Republic of China, and proponents of Taiwan independence favoring the use of Tongyong Pinyin.

In August 2002, the ROC government adopted Tongyong Pinyin but through an administrative order which local governments can override. Localities with governments controlled by the Kuomintang, most notably Taipei City, have overridden the order and are using Hanyu Pinyin for local signs in accordance with the wishes of various groups representing foreign businesses. This creates the odd situation in which adjacent signs have different pinyin based on which government controls them.

In part because of the lack of agreement of which pinyin to use, the goal of the Ministry of Education to replace Zhuyin with pinyin to teach pronunciation in elementary school remains stalled as of 2003.

Tongyong Pinyin also has a Taiwanese phonetic symbol version (台語音標版) which lacks the letter f but adds the letter v (for 万). On September 28, 2006, the Ministry of Education rejected the use of Tongyong Pinyin for the Taiwanese dialect in favor of Pe̍h-ōe-jī (台羅版拼音).[1]

[edit] Arguments in favor of Tongyong Pinyin

• Tongyong spelling is more intuitive to non-native Chinese speakers than Hanyu Pinyin. For example, it avoids q, a letter that is confusing to many non-native speakers as to its proper pronunciation.[2]
• Tongyong strikes a balance between the need for internationalization and the need for Taiwanese national identity.[3]
• Approximately 80% of the Tongyong Pinyin syllables are spelled identically to those of Hanyu Pinyin, and so it is compatible with Hanyu Pinyin.
• It has been claimed that Tongyong is well suited for romanizing other dialects of Chinese. However, the same claim can be made about most pinyin systems; all that's required is modification.
• Tongyong eliminates the need for diacritics for the umlauted-u sound.
• The spellings "fong" and "wong" more accurately reflect the sounds of 風 and 翁 as pronounced in Standard Mandarin in Taiwan, as compared to "feng" and "weng".

[edit] Arguments against Tongyong Pinyin

• The standard romanization system of the PRC and the internationally accepted ISO and United Nations romanization is Hanyu Pinyin. Furthermore, Hanyu Pinyin is the favored romanization in educational systems outside of Taiwan. If Taiwan wishes to internationalize, Hanyu Pinyin is the logical choice. For those who have studied Mandarin outside Taiwan and for those who are accustomed to doing business in China, Hanyu Pinyin may be quite indispensable.
• In Tongyong Pinyin the letters c and s both represent two distinct, non-allophonic sounds.
• The exceptional spelling of "wun" does not fit in with the "ben", "pen", "men", "fen" series which rhyme with 文 in Standard Mandarin, whether spoken in Taiwan or the mainland.
• Every single Mandarin syllable can be expressed in equal or fewer keystrokes in Hanyu Pinyin compared to Tongyong Pinyin [4].
• Despite the fact that 19.47% of Tongyong syllables are spelled differently from Hanyu Pinyin, if measured according to average frequency of word use in everyday life, the percentage of different spellings is 48.84%.[5]
• Rather than simplifying matters, the creation of an entirely new system of romanization, rather than applying standardized use of an existing one, makes matters more confusing by adding yet another system to the mix.
• Tongyong was created for political rather than practical purposes, and its implementation has been forceful and rapid while not being well thought out. Romanization in a region is liable to change when party control of that region changes.
• People can and do misapply the system to fully established spellings, such as spelling "Qing Dynasty" ("Ch'ing Dynasty") as "Cing Dynasty" or "Zhou Dynasty" ("Chou Dynasty") as "Jhou Dynasty".

[edit] Comparison chart

Vowels

IPA	a	ɔ	ə	ai	ei	au	ou	an	ən	aŋ	əŋ	aɻ	ʊŋ	ji	iɛ	iou	iɛn	jɪn	jiŋ
Pinyin	a	o	e	ai	ei	ao	ou	an	en	ang	eng	er	ong	yi	ye	you	yan	yin	ying
Tongyong Pinyin	a	o	e	ai	ei	ao	ou	an	en	ang	eng	er	ong	yi	ye	you	yan	yin	ying
Wade-Giles	a	o	o/ê	ai	ei	ao	ou	an	ên	ang	êng	êrh	ung	i	yeh	yu	yen	yin	ying
zhuyin	ㄚ	ㄛ	ㄜ	ㄞ	ㄟ	ㄠ	ㄡ	ㄢ	ㄣ	ㄤ	ㄥ	ㄦ	ㄨㄥ	ㄧ	ㄧㄝ	ㄧㄡ	ㄧㄢ	ㄧㄣ	ㄧㄥ
example	阿	哦	俄	艾	黑	凹	偶	安	恩	昂	冷	二	中	一	也	又	言	音	英

Vowels

IPA	wu	uɔ	uei	uan	uən	uʊn	uəŋ	uʊŋ	y	yɛ	yɛn	yn	yʊŋ
Pinyin	wu	wo	wei	wan	wen		weng		yu	yue	yuan	yun	yong
Tongyong Pinyin	wu	wo	wei	wan		wun		wong	yu	yue	yuan	yun	yong
Wade-Giles	wu	wo	wei	wan	wên		wêng		yü	yüeh	yüan	yün	yung
zhuyin	ㄨ	ㄨㄛ	ㄨㄟ	ㄨㄢ	ㄨㄣ		ㄨㄥ		ㄩ	ㄩㄝ	ㄩㄢ	ㄩㄣ	ㄩㄥ
example	五	我	位	完	文	文	翁	翁	玉	月	元	云	用

Consonants

IPA	p	pʰ	m	fəŋ	fʊŋ	tiou	tuei	tʰ	ny	ly	kəɻ	kʰ	xə	tɕiɛn	tɕyʊŋ	tɕʰɪn	ɕyɛn
Pinyin	b	p	m	feng		diu	dui	t	nü	lü	ger	k	he	jian	jiong	qin	xuan
Tongyong Pinyin	b	p	m		fong	diou	duei	t	nyu	lyu	ger	k	he	jian	jyong	cin	syuan
Wade-Giles	p	p'	m	fêng		tiu	tui	t'	nü	lü	kêrh	k'	ho	chien	chiung	ch'in	hsüan
zhuyin	ㄅ	ㄆ	ㄇ	ㄈㄥ		ㄉㄧㄡ	ㄉㄨㄟ	ㄊ	ㄋㄩ	ㄌㄩ	ㄍㄜㄦ	ㄎ	ㄏㄜ	ㄐㄧㄢ	ㄐㄩㄥ	ㄑㄧㄣ	ㄒㄩㄢ
example	玻	婆	末	封	封	丟	兌	特	女	旅	歌儿	可	何	件	窘	秦	宣

Consonants

IPA	tʂə	tʂɚ	tʂʰə	tʂʰɚ	ʂə	ʂɚ	ʐə	ʐɚ	tsə	tsuɔ	tsɨ	tsʰə	tsʰɨ	sə	sɨ
Pinyin	zhe	zhi	che	chi	she	shi	re	ri	ze	zuo	zi	ce	ci	se	si
Tongyong Pinyin	jhe	jhih	che	chih	she	shih	re	rih	ze	zuo	zih	ce	cih	se	sih
Wade-Giles	chê	chih	ch'ê	ch'ih	shê	shih	jê	jih	tsê	tso	tzŭ	ts'ê	tz'ŭ	sê	szŭ
zhuyin	ㄓㄜ	ㄓ	ㄔㄜ	ㄔ	ㄕㄜ	ㄕ	ㄖㄜ	ㄖ	ㄗㄜ	ㄗㄨㄛ	ㄗ	ㄘㄜ	ㄘ	ㄙㄜ	ㄙ
example	哲	之	扯	赤	社	是	惹	日	仄	左	字	策	次	色	斯

Tones

IPA	ma˥˥	ma˧˥	ma˨˩˦	ma˥˩
Pinyin	mā	má	mă	mà
Tongyong Pinyin	ma	maˊ	maˇ	maˋ
Wade-Giles	ma1	ma2	ma3	ma4
zhuyin	ㄇㄚ	ㄇㄚˊ	ㄇㄚˇ	ㄇㄚˋ
example (traditional/simplfied)	媽/妈	麻/麻	馬/马	罵/骂

[edit] See also

• Pinyin

[edit] External links

• Linguistic analysis
• Hanyu-Tongyong comparison chart
• Formal documents (in Traditional Chinese): from Academia Sinica
• Toponomastic Rules (in Traditional Chinese): from Wikisource
• Pinyin.info