Hi!
I understand what you mean ... I think however that "we" westerners have a quite similar way of thinking. More similar than Western compared to Asian thinking ...
But there is one thing I found out about this:
We European non-english speakers are used to the fact that latin letter's pronounciation is different in different languages. Most Germans would be able to read french, italian, spanish texts - just read, not understand. Definitely not being able to read it correct but we have a rough idea about how letters change.
It seems to me that Americans have more difficulties with that concept. That is one reason why I found lots of Americans in Taiwan who appreciate bopomofo - since it is a completely different way of writing. We Germans would definitely prefer pinyin cause it is quite close to German and we do not have difficulties in learning another way of reading the same letters. Of course people more in touch with China do not feel like that since they do not have the option ... and since nobody tells them that bopomofo is way better...
Another reason why people learning Chinese in Taiwan prefer bopomofo is:
In Taiwan there are lots of street signs and other public things that use other ways of writing chinese than pinyin cause the officials try to write the way that an english-speaker would read it his way and the chinese would be able to guess what it means. The problem is that these systems do not have a standard. That means - speaking in pinyin: z, c, ts can not be distinguished in the way it is written in Taiwan. Because of that wrong spelling Americans who try to study chinese in Taiwan believe that Pinyin is not correct because they think the public transcription in Taiwan is Pinyin.
And - of course: in Taiwan locals do only know bopomofo, in China they only know pinyin ...
BTW: wasn't PD2 supposed to support bopomofo?
regards
Daniel