Recommended website #3: Pinyin.info
Pinyin.info is undoubtedly the best resource available to understand the romanisation of Mandarin Chinese. This is especially important in Taiwan where romanisation is used inconsistently and there are several different systems in use.
I am sure most readers of this blog will have read Pinyin News at some time or another. The blog section of the website comments on news related to pinyin and also more general news related to languages and linguistics in Northeast Asia.
The readings section of the website contains a list of recommended books related to romanization in English. There are sample chapters of some of the books and these are well worth reading to better understand some of the issues related to romanization and Chinese languages.
Some other pages of the website that are essential for reference include:
- list of Taiwan place names in Hanyu Pinyin, Tongyong Pinyin and "old forms"
- Taipei street names in Chinese characters and Hanyu Pinyin
- Romanization comparison chart (compares Hanyu Pinyin with Zhuyin Fuhao, Wade-Giles, MPS2, Yale, Tongyong Pinyin, and Gwoyeu Romatzyh)
- Rules for writing Hanyu Pinyin
There is an older version of this website, romanization.com, which also contains some useful information. One page there worth bookmarking is Taipei MRT stations–with tone marks.
Please note: This website has a controversial side that seems to promote a lot of passionate debate. I have recommended it primarily because it contains a lot of useful information as noted above.
Recommended website #1: Central Weather Bureau
Recommended website #5: Wild at Heart
Recommended website #2: Taipei Times
Recommended website #4: Teaching English in Taiwan
Reading about Taiwanese History
Posted: October 6th, 2006 under Blogs & websites, Languages in Taiwan, Pinyin & romanisation.
Tags: recommended website
Comments
Comment from Mark
Time 8 October 2006 at 5:00 am
Interesting… I found a different side to be controversial. Pretty much all of the readings he puts up are from De Francis and a number of other academics from an extreme anti-character group.
His opinions are clearly well informed, but he keeps saying things like “as long as Chinese characters are the sole accepted script for the vast majority of people in China, they’ll have terrible illiteracy problems[sic]“. He also seems quite sure that the Japanese and Taiwanese have a lot of literacy problems, too. It’s clear that he wants to see Chinese people using our orthography to write their language. And that is the part of his site I found controversial. That some assertions about post WWII Japanese Ocupation history.
http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/ideographic_myth.html
http://pinyin.info/news/2006/chinese-literacy/
http://pinyin.info/news/2006/more-claims-on-eliminating-illiteracy-in-china/
http://pinyin.info/news/2006/campaign-poster-zhuyin-and-the-color-purple/
Comment from Charlie
Time 7 October 2006 at 12:55 am
Yes, I also think that pinyin.info has a controversial side, speciall against bopomofo, Taiwan and some taiwanese romanization issues, I recognize that pinyin is useful, but if taiwanese use bomopofo is totally correct, “when in Rome, do as romans do”…
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