【Reported by Jing-ya Su, Tamkang Times】“Taiwan is illiterate to Roman Pinyin,” said Boquan Yu, inventor of the |Tong Yong pin yin” Chinese typing system. Last November 28th Boquan Yu was invited to give a lecture on Language and Society. The lecture and 60-minute Chinese typing seminar was pertaining to the typing systems used for Chinese, Taiwanese and Hakka. After handouts and instructions of the different typing methods were given out, the Chinese typing seminar began.

The lecture began with Bo-quan Xu discussing the importance of Chinese Language in the world today. He remarked that students spend 6 years in elementary school learning Taiwanese, but don’t understand how to decipher Taiwanese phonetic symbols.

The 60-minute instructional typing course that took place after the lecture introduced the three major systems used for typing. He used the Taiwanese phonetic symbols to describe the different sounds and phonetics of the English alphabet. After 58 minutes, all of the students were able to successfully use the various typing systems to write Chinese.