What do you think is the MORE correct way to write "Taiwan" in traditional characters ?

a. 臺灣
or
b. 台灣

Nick just suggested for me to start a thread about this. Currently, the traditional characters for "Taiwan" on Skritter are : 台灣， even though the character "臺" is on Skritter by itself.

So which do you think is MORE correct ?

I'm mostly used to 台灣, that's how I've learned it, the other version 臺灣 , I only discovered it later on. I think it's good to be aware of it.

For pratical purpose 台灣 is better (my opinion), but if we want to be really anal with 繁體字, then 臺灣 it should be.

And if I am not wrong, even in Taïwan, you mostly see 台灣 written and not the more traditional version of it.

FWIW, 台灣 is what's used on Taiwanese government websites and on the Wikipedia for Taiwan.

I agree that it is good to know 臺, since it is used by a lot of schools and organizations, but 台 is much more commonly seen and written.

Cool, good stuff guys. Thanks for sharing your opinions. It seems unanimous,other than me, that 台灣 is the prefered way to write it, so that's how it will stay.

@Balsa I spent over a year in Taiwan and I remember seeing 臺灣 just as often as 台灣, and I even remember seeing 臺 in other characters such as 櫃檯 as well as in 臺北.

It's okay though, I'll just be one of the few foreigners who can write out 臺灣 from memory

@Grandpoohblah 臺灣 is written on the top-right side of Taiwan's wiki page, just above the satellite picture of Taiwan

@Grandpoohblah Also, if you look at Taiwan's wiki page in Chinese, you'll see that the first thing that's written is 正繁體字寫為臺灣

www.zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/台灣

I only use 台灣 for the good reason that it's the first choice that my chinese input system is giving me when I type "t+w" it is just a matter of efficiency :)

As I'm living in Taiwan, I'm of course aware of the 臺 variant (that you mostly see on official documents) and I've learned it during my first lessons when we had to learn countries name 什麼什麼的。

@Bohan, I clicked on your link and I saw a whole lot of 台灣. The only instance of 臺灣 was a parenthetical in the first sentence of the article to indicate that both forms are okay. I think you are mistaken, or else you posted the wrong link.

I don't I have any preference or bias for one form over the other, but I just want to make sure we're on the same page here...

@grandpoohblah Did you see what's written before 臺灣 ? It says : 正繁體字寫為臺灣. It means "correct traditional characters written 臺灣 .

I don't know about you or anyone else, but I'm of the belief that if the very first thing written on Taiwan's Chinese-language wikipedia page is "Correct traditional characters written 臺灣" , then the correct way to write Taiwan in traditional characters is 臺灣. I'm sure a ton of people will still disagree, but that's just how life goes

I see your point. A combination of misreading your post (I thought you were arguing that 臺灣 is preferred over 台灣 because it's the preferred form on the wiki page that you linked) and forgetting that 正 means "correct" or "proper" (I always think of 正在 when I see 正) led me to my previous post.

By the way, what's with the occasional simplified character on that wiki page?