Danshui? Tamshui? Tamsui!

Since I started driving, I seldom take the MRT.But recently, I had a chance to take it from Shilin to Beitou.

At the station, I noticed that the way they transliterate 淡水 has been changed to Danshui! Previsously, the MRT were using its own innovative transliteration: Tanshui. Now it has become Hanyu Pinyin, the system used in mainland China and preferred by Mr Ma Ying-Jeou, then the mayor of Taipei City.

When the central government decided to use 通用拼音 instead of Wade-Giles, they made exceptions for those place names that are already well-known overseas. Such names include Taipei, Keelung and Kaohsiung. They should actually be spelt TaiBei, JiLong and GaoXiong respectively in 通用. The latter two are major international ports, and changing the names might have caused some chaos. (Compare this with South Korea, which dared to make Pusan Busan, and to change 漢城 into 首爾.)

But what about Tamsui? It was the major port in the past, and the British Consulate in China were once located there. Therefore, it is one of the very few place names in Taiwan that appear in foreign historical texts. It seems to me to be a good idea if they have retained the old spelling.

Of course, this is a matter for the Taiwanese people themselves to decide. Taipei City opted for Hanyu Pinyin, I remember, because they thought most foreigners who learnt Chinese used Hanyu Pinyin and not Wade Giles. This may be true, but the road signs in romanised alphabet are mainly for those who have never learnt Chinese and those who don't read Chinese characters.

Therefore, the main aim of the romanised signs should be clarity. As long as the non-Chinese-readers can locate themselves and make distinctions between different streets, what romanising system should be used does not really matter. But this will work only if one system is used consistently. If, on the other hand, different systems co-exist at the same time, several different ways of spelling the same place name can exist, and this will cause a great trouble for those who fail to realise Hsinchu and XinZhu are one and the same city, 新竹.

As for me, I have no preference as to which romanising system Taiwan should adopt (although 通用's habit of capitalising letters in the middle of a word needs some getting used to). After all, no system is better than any other. But what I want the authorities to make sure is to be consistent once they decide on which one system to use. Hanyu Pinyin might not be the easiest system for foreigners to get used to; but they find it useful, not because it is better than any other system, but because it is used consistently everywhere in mainland China.

注音和拼音哪個比較好？

最近有個朋友問我：「注音符號和漢語拼音，哪個比較準確？」

我回答說：「這個問題，就好比問平假名和片假名哪個比較能準確得拼出日語的發音。

他說「可是我台灣的朋友堅持注音符號比較好；但我自己覺得漢語拼音比較接近國語原來的音。」

沒錯，對大部分從來沒有接觸過漢語拼音的台灣人來說，漢語拼音就像鴨子聽雷；什麼qi啦、xu啦、還有zhi啊，根本不像人的嘴巴能發出來的音。
但也有很多先學漢語拼音的外國人（包括我自己）會說注音符號很不科學，除了已經令人頭痛的漢字外，還要學另外一套文字系統，真是麻煩。例如說「ㄇㄥ」，根本就沒有韻母，到底怎麼發音啊？

所以他之所以有這樣的疑問是可以理解的。但實際上，不管是注音或是拼音，都一樣是符號。兩種系統，各有各的遊戲規則。也就是說，大家先講好這些規則是什麼。例如說：zhi就代表「只」的音等等。只要你遵守這些規定，兩種系統都能準確得拼出國語的音。

至於為什麼一些人覺得注音好，又有另外一些人卻覺得拼音好；那純粹屬於習慣問題。讓我舉一個例子。菲律賓的亞典耀大學（Ateneo de Manila University）的華人社團做了一個調查。他們問了一些馬尼拉的華文中學，他們覺得注音好還是拼音好。菲律賓華人一直使用注音，最近才逐漸改採拼音。訪問的結果顯示，大部分人都覺得注音比較好，他們說因為注音比較準確；但是最近幾年才受教育的年輕人，則說拼音比較準確。當他們開始學習中文時，這些學校已經改採拼音。由此可見，這其是不是哪個比較準確的問題，而是自己比較習慣的是哪個系統的問題。

就我個人來說，一開始學習中文的時候我人在日本，所以所有的教材都採用漢語拼音。但當我來到台灣上中文課時，突然變成注音符號，剛開始時為我造成困擾，可是不久我就習慣了，感覺兩種系統都好。只是，現在比較常用電腦打字；因為我已經習慣英文字母的美式鍵盤，所以用拼音打字比較快一些，因為不用一個一個得找注音的字母在哪裡。我以前用的手機，輸入中文時可用漢語拼音，可是後來換了一隻新手機，因為因應台灣市場，只有筆畫和注音。所以我只好習慣用注音輸入，現在我打中文打得比一些台灣人還快。

另外一點就是當外國人學習中文時的問題。有些母語使用羅馬字母的人士，因為漢語拼音同樣是使用羅馬字母的，所以比較容易會把自己母語的發音習慣帶進中文裡，因此導致中文發音不準確。可是當他們使用注音時，因為是完全不熟悉的一套系統，要從零開始學發音，因此比較不會把母語的發音習慣帶進來。到底這是不是真的，要等到我有機會問教外國人中文的老師；也歡迎各位讀者在這裡發表看法。