Here in Taiwan, we write Guoyu, Taigi, and Hakka with traditional Chinese characters. But nowadays, the characters aren't enough: we also need a phonetic alphabet to spell pronunciation, for text entry, for sorting and lookup, and to write foreign words and names.

Over the years, we've tried many romanizations, ranging from Wade-Giles through Latinxua Sin Wenz, Gwoyeu Romatzyh, Yale, MPS II, Tongyong Pinyin, Pe̍h-ōe-jī, Tâi-lô, and Pha̍k-fa-sṳ to Hanyu Pinyin. They all have their strengths and weaknesses, some are better or worse, but none is as good as we deserve. For example, in Chinese, diu and you rhyme, but they don't in Pinyin, while zi zhi ji all rhyme in Pinyin, but not in Chinese!

The main problem is the shortcomings of the Roman alphabet, which doesn't offer all the letters we need, not even for English or French. Zhuyin Fuhao solves this problem, effectively if not elegantly. The Bopomofo symbols are spare and widely spaced, which makes them legible when used as ruby characters, but we never use them to write text, or even names on signs. With the extensions, Zhuyin could theoretically be used to write Min, Hakka, and Yue, and some people have even written it in syllable blocks, like Hangeul. But it can't write Formosan languages or English, or even foreign names, so we still need to learn and use romanizations - it's not a complete solution.

I'm writing today to call your attention to a new alternative called the Musa Alphabet. Musa is a very large universal phonetic alphabet, but it uses only 26 shapes, shown here on a standard keyboard:

Those shapes combine to form all the letters we need for Guoyu, Hokkien, Hakka, Teochew, Cantonese, English, Formosan, and all the other languages of the world. There's a trick: Musa is featural, which means that the shape of a letter indicates its sound. As a result, Musa is much easier to learn, to use, and to remember.

Here's a quote respelled in Zhuyin, Pinyin, and Musa:

													
懂	得	两	种	语	言	的	人	抵	得	上	两	个	人
ㄉㄨㄥˇ	ㄉㄜˊ	ㄌㄧㄤˇ	ㄓㄨㄥˇ	ㄩˇ	ㄧㄢˊ	ㄉㄜ˙	ㄖㄣˊ	ㄉㄧˇ	ㄉㄜˊ	ㄕㄤˋ	ㄌㄧㄤˇ	ㄍㄜˋ	ㄖㄣˊ
Dǒng	dé	liǎng	zhǒng	yǔ	yán	de	rén	dǐ	dé	shàng	liǎng	gè	rén

OK, so the Musa Alphabet is easy to learn, practical to use, and it's not ugly. But that's not enough justification for making such a big change: it has to be part of something bigger.

For the first 50 years since coming to Taiwan, the ROC was a conservative force, focused on going back to the previous situation. This attitude was reflected in its linguistic policy, with traditional characters, a preference for guoyu over taigi, and a phonetic notation invented in China in 1913.

But with the passage of time, and the success and prosperity that Taiwan now enjoys, the newer generations don't want to go backwards, and their perspective is more internationalist than nationalist. And while the PRC has also experienced success and prosperity, its young people have very high expectations, ones that will be very difficult for the CCP to satisfy. In my opinion, Taiwan's goal should be to make sure that young Chinese see Taiwan and its institutions as a model for all of China going forward.

Language policy is a very public demonstration of progress, and two goals seem obvious to me. The first is to find a more equal balance between the national language and the regional languages. Forcing people to learn a different language in order to read, write, or deal with their government makes them feel that it isn't their government, that they have been conquered. Enabling people to read and write their own language in daily life will encourage literacy and loyalty, and they can still be bilingual in the national language.

Second, it's time to transition from characters to an alphabet, as favored by 孫中山 Sun Yat-Sen, 趙元任 Yuen Ren Chao, 胡適 Hu Shih, 魯迅 Lu Xun, 毛泽东 Mao Zedong, and many others. An alphabet will save many years of education, and make the use of an auxiliary alphabet unnecessary.

Pinyin is not a good choice for the new Chinese national alphabet: it can't write the regional languages, it doesn't even do a good job with the national language, and it's an obvious admission of Western cultural superiority. Zhuyin isn't much better - if it were, it would be used more widely within the PRC.

The Musa Alphabet would be an excellent choice. Not only can it write all the regional languages - the Musa website has pages for Sichuanese 成渝, Cantonese 粵, Taiwanese 閩, and Shanghainese 吳 - but it can write all the non-Chinese languages of the PRC, as well as foreign languages (and so foreigners can learn it, too). And it looks like Chinese, just like Hangeul does.

The transition wouldn't have to be abrupt. It's easy to start using Musa as ruby characters, to teach pronunciation, as an input method, and where romanization is now used, for instance for foreign names. Then people who want can use the alphabet instead of characters when the meaning is clear from the sound, while others can keep using the characters - there's no need to force anybody to make either choice. Over time, people will use characters less and less, but there's no hurry; we can let the change happen at its own pace, even if it takes a generation. Most people will probably switch within a year, but the others will never switch - that's OK, too.

If this sounds like something worth studying, let's ask a few scholars to investigate Musa deeply and report back. They can verify that Musa is as good as claimed, and point out any potential problems in advance. Meanwhile, work can begin on tools like fonts, IMEs, transcribers, and educational material. And we can let Musa percolate into public view, on signs, in ads, in print.

Why not take a look?

Musa for Taiwanese