page_title: Tongyong Pinyin
section_title: Adoption and use
hierarchical_section_title: Tongyong Pinyin / Adoption and use
caption_attribution_description: English: A roundabout on the road from Shuitou to Jincheng, Kinmen Island. Road signs use Tongyong Pinyin for place names.
context_page_description: Tongyong Pinyin was the official romanization of Mandarin in Taiwan between 2002 and 2008. The system was unofficially used between 2000 and 2002, when a new romanization system for Taiwan was being evaluated for adoption. Taiwan's Ministry of Education approved the system in 2002, but its use was optional. Since January 1, 2009, the Ministry of Education has officially promoted Hanyu Pinyin; local governments would "not be able to get financial aid from the central government" if they used Tongyong Pinyin-derived romanizations. After this policy change, Tongyong Pinyin has been used for the transliteration of some place names and personal names in Taiwan. Some of the romanized names of the districts, subway stations and streets in Kaohsiung, Tainan, Taichung, Yunlin County and other places are derived from Tongyong Pinyin- for example, Cijin District.
context_section_description: Tongyong Pinyin was the official romanization system in Taiwan, but its use was voluntary. The romanization system that one encounters in Taiwan varies according to the government authority that administers the facility. Street signs in most areas use Tongyong Pinyin, including the cities of Kaohsiung, Tainan, and surrounding counties. A contrast could be seen in the two entities that now make up the municipality of Taichung—Taichung County used Tongyong Pinyin while Taichung City has used Hanyu Pinyin since at least 2004. Then-mayor Ma Ying-jeou remained committed to using Hanyu Pinyin as the Romanization standard for Taipei. Taipei County (now New Taipei City) used Tongyong Pinyin, but in Taipei Metro stations, Tongyong Pinyin was given in parentheses after Hanyu Pinyin. Modified Wade–Giles spellings are popularly used for many proper names, especially personal names and businesses.
  The political impasse prevented Ministry of Education from being able to replace Zhuyin in teaching pronunciation in elementary school. Zhuyin is widely used to teach Mandarin pronunciation to schoolchildren. Children's books published in Taiwan typically display Zhuyin characters next to Chinese characters in the text.
  On September 17, 2008, the Ministry of Education announced that the government standard for romanization would be switched to Hanyu Pinyin nationwide, effective January 1, 2009. However, people in the Taiwan( Republic of China) can freely choose their foreign language names. So although Tongyong Pinyin was effectively scrapped as the romanization standard of Taiwan's central government, many today choose a romanized form of their Chinese character name which is created based on the Tongyong Pinyin, Wade-Giles, or Yale romanization systems.
  Today, districts of Kaohsiung are named by Tongyong. Districts of Tainan are mostly named by Tongyong with exceptions such as Xinying.
caption: Signs using Tongyong Pinyin (Jhaishan, Jhushan and so on) in Kinmen in 2012. Note that 金 is misspelled as jing (instead of the correct jin) in one of the signs
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