Does Taiwan use Pinyin?
Such a simple question, right? After all, pinyin is the internationally recognized romanization system for Mandarin Chinese, so why would Taiwan not use it? When I set out to answer this question, I wasn't prepared for the mess I was going to find. Are you ready? Let's go!
Why use Pinyin?
Simply speaking, pinyin lets you use Latin characters (ABC) to write Chinese. This is called transliteration or romanization and pinyin is the international standard nowadays. However, there have been multiple alternatives developed over the years.
There are two reasons why a Chinese-speaking country might want to use something like pinyin:
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To teach the pronunciation of Chinese characters,
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To give some reference for foreigners who can't read Chinese.
Let's look at these two.
Teaching
For most Chinese learners pinyin is just a way of writing how a Chinese character should be pronounced. That's also one of the major reasons why pinyin was introduced in China (and even almost replaced Chinese characters). Nowadays, both Chinese children and (most) foreign Chinese learners learn how to pronounce Chinese characters through pinyin.
A Chinese children's book with pinyin above the characters
Interacting with foreigners
The second point is also really important in daily life. Most people outside of China can not read Chinese characters and have no idea how to pronounce them. If you have a company with a Chinese name and want to do business internationally, you absolutely have to come up with a name that uses the Latin alphabet. You could in theory just come up with any name you like, but most businesses choose to either translate the meaning of their name or to transliterate the pronunciation.
For example:
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华为 (Huawei) used pinyin to transliterate it's name. Reading the name as an English word comes pretty close to the original pronunciation but loses the meaning.
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腾讯 (Tencent) also transliterated it's name but didn't use pinyin, which would have been Tengxun.
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微信 (WeChat) instead chose to roughly translate its name's meaning (literally MicroMessage).
Another important use case for romanization are place and street names. Foreigners would get completely lost in Chinese cities if street and metro signs weren't always translated or transliterated.
Does Taiwan use Pinyin?
In city and street names, Taiwan uses a mixture of standard pinyin (Hanyu Pinyin), a Taiwanese variant of pinyin (Tongyong Pinyin), and other romanization systems (Wade-Giles and MPS2). For teaching, Taiwan uses a completely different system called Bopomofo.
Sounds confusing? It is. Let's break it down.
Teaching
Taiwan does not use the Latin alphabet to teach pronunciation of Chinese characters. Instead, it uses a system called Bopomofo. Bopomofo consists of symbols mostly based on archaic characters or character components. Some examples are ㄅ, ㄆ, ㄇ and ㄈ. Children in Taiwan learn how to pronounce Chinese characters through Bopomofo.
A Taiwanese children's book with Bopomofo next to the characters
Place and street names
This is where it gets complicated. One thing to keep in mind is that Taiwan was already politically disconnected from mainland China when pinyin was invented. Introducing pinyin in Taiwan has thus always been a very politically loaded discussion and was not considered as an option at all for a while.
Romanization in Taiwan was therefore basically a free-for-all for a long time. Most cities used some variation of the Wade-Giles romanization system, resulting in names like Kaohsiung, Taitung, and Hsinchu. A new system called MPS2 was introduced in the 80s but never found widespread adoption, except for some road signs that got replaced back then.
Pick your favorite way to write Hsinchu (Source)
Another effort was made to standardize romanization in Taiwan around the year 2000. Hanyu Pinyin (the pinyin) was the obvious choice because it was already the standard Chinese romanization system in mainland China, the ISO, and the UN. However, the not-very-pro-China government at the time instead decided to officially introduce a very similar but slightly different system in 2002: Tongyong Pinyin, only ever used in Taiwan.
At least things became more consistent after that, right? Right?? Not really. Tongyong Pinyin was the new nationwide system but any county could simply decide to use something else if they felt like it. And they did. For example, the city of Taichung has been using mostly Hanyu Pinyin since 2004.
I was once waiting for a train and the display on the platform said it was going to Hsinchu (Wade-Giles) but on the train it said Xinzhu (Hanyu Pinyin). This doesn't seem like a big deal to Taiwanese people but it can be very confusing for foreigners. How are they supposed to know that Xinzhu and Hsinchu are the same place?
Eventually, in 2008, a new rather-pro-China government reverted the decision to use Taiwan's own pinyin variant and introduced the internationally recognized Hanyu Pinyin as the official romanization system in Taiwan. Local governments not following this decision would lose access to funding from the central government. However, local governments are pretty much still doing whatever they want to this day. For example, the stations of Taichung's green metro line, opened in 2021, are named with a mixture of Hanyu Pinyin, Tongyong Pinyin, and some Wade-Giles.
From left to right the station names use Hanyu Pinyin, Tongyong Pinyin, and Wade-Giles
To make things even less obvious, Kaohsiung renamed one of its metro stations from 西子灣/Sizihwan (Tongyong Pinyin) to 哈瑪星/Hamasen in 2024. Hamasen is not even Chinese at all. It's the romanization of the Japanese name that the area received under Japanese colonial rule.
Hamasen metro station in Kaohsiung (Adapted from Wikipedia)
Looking up streets in Google Maps takes confusion to a whole new level. Street names in Google Maps often differ from what you will see on actual street signs. Sometimes, Google Maps even uses different transliterations for the exact same street name. I could go on about this stuff forever, but I think I've made my point.
Google Maps uses different romanization systems even for the same street name and often deviates from the name written on the actual street signs
Closing thoughts
So, does Taiwan use pinyin? Maybe. Sometimes. But it might be a Taiwanese pinyin variant. Or it might be Japanese. Or maybe someone just thought that a certain name looked cool. I don't know. It also depends on where you are. Cities in the north will use very different romanized street names compared to cities in the south.
I really appreciate that Taiwan puts in the effort to provide easier-to-remember names for us foreigners. However, the inconsistency can be frustrating for Chinese learners, who most definitely only know Hanyu Pinyin. I always enjoyed practicing Chinese characters with road signs in mainland China, but in Taiwan that's an absolute non-starter. On the other hand, I've come to embrace the chaos and just see it as one of Taiwan's quirks nowadays.
I hope you learned something new today, see you next time 🙃
