Meaning of Tongyong Pinyin | Babel Free

Definitions

A system of romanization for Mandarin Chinese developed and implemented in the Republic of China (Taiwan) in the 1990s.

Examples

“With regard to romanization, several different systems are concurrently being used in Taiwan, including Wade-Giles, Tongyong Pinyin 通用拼音, Hanyu Pinyin 漢語拼音, and Gwoyeu Romatzyh.”

“By now, you may be as puzzled as most American visitors to Taiwan are. And there is more confusion to come. For the purpose of this book, keep in mind that we are using Tongyong Pinyin throughout, with Hanyu Pinyin in parentheses when the spelling is different.”

“Rickshaw Magazine is a Tainan-based publication targeting expats, and free in many hotels and bars, while FYI South also has decent Tainan listings. The city has opted to use the Tongyong Pinyin system, with streets well marked in English and Chinese.”

“Taiwan’s still official but probably-not-long-for-this-world romanization system for Mandarin is Tongyong Pinyin.”

“Although a few authors, long familiar with Wade-Giles or other older systems (or Tongyong Pinyin, a more recent system still used by some in Taiwan), have not switched to Pinyin in their writings, Chicago joins librarians in urging that Pinyin now be used in all writing about China or the Chinese language.”

“This promotion of Tongyong pinyin reflects Taiwan-identifying political elites seeking to supplant Guoyu with Taiwan-accented Mandarin as the prestige language variety in Taiwan.”

“The Taichung City Council on Monday (Aug. 24) gave initial approval to station names on the Taichung Mass Rapid Transit's (TMRT) green line, which is set to begin operation by the end of this year. After a preliminary inspection of the 16.71-km line Monday, the city council gave a nod to the 18 station names on the green line. The English station names were converted using Tongyong pinyin (通用拼音) while four of the stations will also have alternate names, according to CNA.”

“Kaohsiung City Government said Wednesday that it will continue using the Tongyong Pinyin Mandarin romanization system on its street signs, passing on plans by the city's previous mayor to transition to the more widely-used Hanyu Pinyin system. In a press release, Kaohsiung's Research, Development and Evaluation Commission said the city adopted Tongyong Pinyin in 2004 amid a push toward national spelling standardizaion by the central government, and later established an advisory committee to promote an English-friendly living environment in Kaohsiung.[…] Taiwan's Ministry of Education adopted Tongyong Pinyin as the country's official romanization system in 2002, before switching to Hanyu Pinyin in 2008, though a number of Democratic Progressive Party controlled municipalities including Kaohsiung and Tainan have continued to use the former.”

“Some use romanization to make a political statement, a legacy of the “Great Tongyong-Pinyin Wars” of the 2000s. Here's a useful trick: if you notice someone is using the Hanyu Pinyin system that is standard in China for their name, they are likely pan-blue (pro-KMT), and if they use Taiwan’s Tongyong Pinyin, they are probably pan-green (pro-DPP).”

“For instance, while many DPP-led localities had favoured the locally designed Tongyong Pinyin system for the purpose of Mandarin transliteration (notably for toponyms), the incoming[…]”

“Even within the Taigi community, there's the Pe̍h-ōe-jī, there's the Tongyong pinyin, there's the Tai lo, there's people who don't agree on kanji as orthography, there's people who don't use kanji at all, there's people who think you use kanji for everything except for these prepositions.[…] What we did is that we held monthly, and later on bimonthly, MoeDict hackathons, where we invite the people of all these different schools to come together. Also, because it's software, so I wrote some programs that automatically turned the Taiwan romanization form to Tongyong or Peh oe ji or whatever form that people prefer.”

“Around twenty years ago, during Taiwan’s romanization wars (when President Chen wanted to impose Tongyong Pinyin upon Taiwan and a great many foreigners and others reacted with dismay and disgust), a popular claim of the Tongyong supporters was, “If Taiwanese use Hanyu Pinyin for their names, no one will be able to tell Taiwanese from Chinese anymore.””

CEFR level