http://taiwanjournal.nat.gov.tw/ct.asp?CtNode=122&xItem=23323

And I quote:

“HP supporters, through, often argue that using tongyong pinyin would be no more useful an expression of national identity than requiring people to wear their underwear on the outside of their clothing. Difference for its own sake makes Taiwan look petty and ridiculous. Taiwan does not benefit from looking ridiculous.

It is hard to see this concern for Taiwan as genuine. More likely it belongs in the same category as the we-know-what’s-best-for-you mentality of Christian missionaries proselytizing their religion, and “English teachers” qualified with nothing more than a white face telling Taiwanese they need native-speaker pronunciation.”

As a hanyu supporting colonialist missionary style whiteface lacking in genuine concern for Taiwan, I think you might enjoy a good blog on this….

Michael

That’s true, they could just rename them. Indeed, when the streets in Hong Kong are named, it did painstickingly to avoid naming something which sound too similar, since not only tones are not noted, but also at some cases, aspiration are not noted (rendering p and p’ as p), this has to be done with care.

景華街 Jǐnghuá Street and 景化街 Jǐnghuà Street
同安街 Tóng’ān Street and 通安街 Tōng’ān Street
萬慶街 Wànqìng Street and 萬青街 Wànqīng Street
五常街 Wǔcháng Street and 武昌街 Wǔchāng Street

which are only diffrentiable with tone marks! (In Tong’an Street(s) case, apostrophe is another likely casualty in signs)

Unfortunately, due to improper usage of pinyin even in China (omission of tone marks), no one care adding these vital signs when printing pinyin (unlike Quốc ngữ of Vietnamese where these things are usually dealt with more care). So I propose a half-way solution for them (ensuring Latin-1 character set safe!), that is to signify the differences only rather than adding tone marks for all roads. Under my proposal, macron for the first tone is NOT noted as in Zhuyin (so it’s perfectly Latin-1 safe. :P)

So 景華街 is Jinghuá Street whereas 景化街 is Jinghuà Street; 同安街 is Tóng’an Street whereas 通安街 is Tong’an Street; 萬慶街 is Wanqìng Street whereas 萬青街 is Wanqing Street; and finally, 五常街 is Wucháng Street whereas 武昌街 is Wuchàng Street.

The Taipei City Government must ensure such ‘minimal’ proper spelling in all Latin characters correspondence so that no one would complain getting lost as they are confused by these similar spelling.

This is intended to be a practical stop-gap solution for Taipei rather than my own preference. Personally, I think that full pinyin (with tone marks) must be used in all street signs above the characters themselves as well as romanised (or translated) street name below the Chinese name.