why did the spelling change?

[xuechengfeng]

i'm confused. my grandfather gave me a learn chinese audio cassette he found, which was made in 1975.

words are spelled different, when was the change made?

for example,

Xiansheng = Syansheng

Qing = Ching

Hui shuo = hwei shwo

[shibo77]

I think that is the Yale romanisation system for Mandarin. It was created in the 1950's by scholars at the Yale University. It is mainly for American students of Mandarin. The popular romanisation system used today is Hanyu Pinyin, based on French pronunciations and the International Phonetic Alphabet.

I hope this helped!

- Shibo

[geek_frappa]

Xiansheng = Syansheng

Qing = Ching

Hui shuo = hwei shwo

xiansheng (hanyu pinyin) [left side]

syansheng (yale) [right side]

hanyu pinyin is the official, more widely taught romanization in mainland China now...

good site to visit ----> http://www.pinyin.info/

[benotnobody]

You're right, the change in spelling was due to a change in Romanisation. Btw, one of the other common romanisation methods was Wade-Giles, which I think was responsible for the name "Peking."

Personally I think Wade-Giles was a failure: Taipei was actually written as Tai p'ei meaning that the p was aspirated and became a b sound (hence the hanyu pinyin "taibei.")

[ala]

Btw' date=' one of the other common romanisation methods was Wade-Giles, which I think was responsible for the name "Peking."

Personally I think Wade-Giles was a failure: Taipei was actually written as Tai p'ei meaning that the p was aspirated and became a b sound (hence the hanyu pinyin "taibei.")[/quote']

Wow, so much misinformation in two sentences.

First, Peking was from the Chinese Imperial Postal System, not from Wade-Giles. Beijing/Peking is spelled as Pei-ch'ing in Wade-Giles.

If p were aspirated, it would never become a b sound. It would be an aspirated p. Taibei/Taipei in Wade-Giles is T'ai-pei. There is no ' on the p, because the p is not aspirated in T'ai-pei. The t is aspirated (becoming [th]), and hence T'ai. Hanyu Pinyin's b is not equivalent to the English b sound unless you are whispering, Hanyu Pinyin b is instead equivalent to the French p (except before r). Hanyu Pinyin using b for what is actually [p] is of convenience in avoiding the systematic use of the ' in Wade-Giles; nearly all other languages write the sound in Hanyu Pinyin's b as a p.

With such misconceptions and the tendency to drop the ', Wade-Giles is indeed a failure for popular consumption. But WG has great linguistic merit, while Hanyu Pinyin was designed using whatever Roman letters were available (b for [p], d for [t], g for [k], x for [c.], q for [tc.h], j for [tc.])

[benotnobody]

ok, ok, ala. Notice that the emphasis was on "I think." Obviously I'm not as informed as you are...

[geek_frappa]

was Hanyu Pinyin chosen for political reasons? because it had French influence? would it appear the government wanted to seem sophisticated with Hanyu Pinyin?

[ala]

Hanyu Pinyin is not similar to French at all.

I said that Hanyu Pinyin's b is like the French p.

[geek_frappa]

Hanyu Pinyin is not similar to French at all.

are you sure?

[gwun gwun]

i thought...hong kong people do it the simpler way with no x's and use c's and stuff!

[Yuchi]

Vietnamese is more like french, is it not?

I've never heard of much french influence on chinese..

[ala]

No, Vietnamese writing is actually not very much based on French orthography strangely. Perhaps nnt can explain why the French missionary did not design a system more similar to his native French. Were there other competing romanization systems? For Mandarin alone, there are half a dozen systems. Mandarin systems have a German influence, although tsch and sch became simplified to q and x in pinyin.

[shibo77]

I had thought that Hanyu Pinyin was based in part on French pronunciations because the first generation of CPC leaders studied in France? Or have I mistaken. I also know that Hanyu Pinyin was originally used by Chinese students in the USSR?

-Shibo

[sfr@rcn.com]

I read (somewhere, some time ago) that pinyin was based partially on cyrillic. (Thus the x for xiao, xi, etc.)

[shibo77]

I don't know about Hanyu Pinyin being based on Russian Cyrillic.

Do you mean Cyrillic "Х", it is pronounced "ha".

Hanyu Pinyin "X" is pronounced "si".

-Shibo

[sfr@rcn.com]

Well, more like the ch in German (ich) or Yiddish, but you're right. The sounds don't correspond with pinyin. There was something about just the choice of glyphs, not the transferring the sounds across one to one. But I'm going to see if I can track this down. Right now, it's more and more sounding like hogwash.