[LIB-CHINESE] Taiwan officially adopts Pinyin!

["Wen, Shixing" <swen@fgcu.edu>]

News from China Times (Taiwain) reports this morning that the Executive Yuan
of the Republic of China has decided to adopt Hanyu Pinyin Fang'An that is
used in the Mainland and worldwide. The Ministry of Education will set a
standard so as to coordinate the Ministry of Transportation and local
governments to change the romanization of the street names. Some place names
that have cultural or historical background will retain their current
transliterated names. The Romanization of personal names will not be
enforced at this time. So there is no need to change all the passports.

It is acknowledged that over the past decades, Taiwan has not adopted pinyin
mainly because of ideology, for it would not share the same transliteration
system with the Mainland. It is a historic breakthrough that the Excutive
Yuan decided yesterday to adopt the Hanyue Pinyin Fang'An.

For details, please visit the URL below:

http://www.chinatimes.com.tw/news/papers/ctimes/cfocus/88072701.htm

If you can read Chinese (Big5), here is some excerpt:

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