Wade-Giles rant

[Lu]

Poor, poor Wade-Giles. It must be the most misunderstood romanization system on the planet, or at least in Greater China.

Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs writes: 'The Bureau of Consular Affairs currently accepts four systems for the romanization of Chinese names: Hanyu Pinyin, Tongyong Pinyin, the Second-type National Phonetic Symbols and the Wade-Giles system.' And, of course, Whatever Spelling Someone Comes Up With, but they leave that out, and I give them the benefit of the doubt: perhaps they really have stopped accepting that.

But then comes a long table comparing bopomofo, Tongyong, NPSII and 'Wade-Giles', and it's totally messed up, no apostrophes, no umlauts, one big mess. And I tell my co-worker, who gives me this paper, that this is wrong, this is not W-G. She insists, of course, that it is, and that 'people in Taiwan have different accents, and we respect that', and that really she knows someone who can't distinguish between ba and pa.

What a mess. Although it turns out that Ma Ying-jeou does follow at least two systems with his name, namely Tongyong and NPSII.

So I turn to Wikipedia, in the hopes that perhaps they'll tell me something that will calm me down, because I am so pissed off, about language, no, transcription of language, of all things.

But Wikipedia only makes a bigger mess, saying that 'The Republic of China (Taiwan) has used Wade–Giles for decades as the de facto standard, co-existing with several official but obscure romanizations in succession, namely, Gwoyeu Romatzyh (1928), MPS II (1986), and Tongyong pinyin (2000). With the election of the Nationalist government in 2008, Taiwan has officially switched to Hanyu pinyin. However, many signs and maps in Taiwan are still in Wade–Giles, and many overseas Chinese write their Chinese names in Wade–Giles.' If only. If only! But they don't!

And then the discussion section, which sometimes has more useful insight (or at least entertaining fights) makes it worse, with people saying things like '[學期] in Wade-Giles it's actually "hsyue2-chi1" (xué qī). And yes (...), it is a complete insult to Chinese. I wonder what they were thinking... (writing XinJiang as SinKiang, Beijing as Peiching, Guanzhou as Canton, etc., etc...) Note: And I'm not ethnic-Chinese at all...'

Really, my head is going to explode. Oh why can't the Taiwanese teach their children how to spell. Now I have to go and send my own government a letter saying that no, really, this is how the Taiwanese spell, and it will seriously pain me, because not only is that not true, but they don't even care. The Taiwanese, that is (although my government probably also doesn't care all that much, but at least it cares about its own language).

That was my rant. Thanks for listening. Does anyone here feel the same?

[jbradfor]

I DO! I DO! I DO!

I learned Wade-Giles when I was in Taiwan, so that might explain my soft spot for it. But that said, I do think Wade-Giles has gotten a bit of a bum rap.

Part of the reason, IMHO, for the anti-WG sentiment is its use of the apostrophe. Wade-Giles was developed for linguists, not really for general purpose use. In retrospect, once a system goes mainstream, requiring the use of the apostrophe is a mistake, as we all know it will get dropped and misunderstood. One could say that dropping the apostrophe is the fault of the users, not the system. However, the fact that the system includes this rule that is so likely to be misused is a strike against WG.

The other part that bothers me is when people "blame" WG for Peking. "Peking" is NOT WG, it's post-office romanization! And it's not "wrong" either, as I understand it "peking" is actually closer to how it was pronounced 200 years ago than "beijing/peiching' is. Same thing for "Canton".

I no longer have any beliefs that one system is "better" than another, I just accept them for what they are, flaws and all. That said, although I realize that neither pinyin nor WG is intended as a transliteration-into-English scheme, there are some Mandarin sounds that I think WG did better in the sense that it is easier for a native English speaker to get closer. 'C' vs 'TS' is a good example. Show a native English speaker the pinyin 'can', and they will likely pronounce it like the English word 'can', as in aluminum can. Show the same person 'tsan', and they might stumble a bit, but at least they will get somewhat close.

[rob07]

And, of course, Whatever Spelling Someone Comes Up With, but they leave that out

Maybe this is what they really mean by "the Wade-Giles System". They wouldn't be the only ones to "interpret" Wade-Giles in that way.

[Ah-Bin]

I always find it funny when people who've been learning Chinese for years complain that WG is "hard to learn". After learning hundreds of characters in an utterly foreign script, adjusting an alphabet they already know to romanise Mandarin is still too hard!

[Lu]

Ah-Bin: same when people speaking Taiwanese say that you 'can't really romanise Taiwanese', because when they see romanized Taiwanese they don't know how to read it, so only characters can do (or, alternatively, you just can't write Taiwanese at all). It's not that hard! Just sit down for an hour or so and learn the damn system!

Jbradfor: I agree that W-G is closer to English than Hanyu pinyin. And you're onto something with the apostrophe issue: pinyin requires very few, but when it does (Xi'an), it goes wrong remarkably often. Same with the ü: I have seen 吕 written as Lv, in China, on official-ish signs.

Rob: If I could somehow resign myself to that idea, perhaps I could cope with this all :-/

[Shi Tong]

Meh ;)

Right, my opinion on this is the Wade Giles, Pinyin, Tongyong.. etc, etc, etc, are basically foreign systems for people from Taiwan or who have Chinese as a first language.

So why should they consider or care about how they spell something in what they consider to be a foreign language?

That's not to say that it's NOT easy to learn, but IMO, if you ask someone in Taiwan to spell something in bopomofo, they will always* get it right, but that's because bopomofo is 1 "symbol" per phonetic sound, and they're taught to read it next to Chinese characters from a young age.

So while I totally agree that having massively confusing mixtures of names and road signs is frustrating for foreigners, all Taiwanese are doing is ignoring the English stuff and reading the Chinese characters.. (isn't that what you would do?). If they need to know how to say it, they'd ask, and people would reply in bopomofo.

So yeah-- seeing someone's name spelled in "English" as; for example "Xiu kwun-lern" which is supposed to be pronounced as 修坤轮 is totally non sensicle, but their language is Chinese, not phonetic, not Romanised.. just Chinese.

(*= people speaking bad Mandarin who get some things mixed up might STILL pronounce the bopomofo wrong!)

[renzhe]

What you say about bopomofo is true for Hanyu Pinyin in the PRC. At least, I've yet to meet anyone who cannot use it. Of course, this will depend on the education level and other factors.

The problem in Taiwan is not that they use characters, it's that there is no widely accepted standard for Romanisation.

So why should they consider or care about how they spell something in what they consider to be a foreign language?

They shouldn't care AT ALL.

So why not switch all the passports and traffic signs and city names to Hanyu Pinyin if nobody cares? At least it will make sense to those who DO CARE.

As a matter of fact, any sane Romanisation system is fine (as long as you know which one it is). Although at this point in time, there is very little reason to use anything other than Hanyu Pinyin.

[Shi Tong]

I totally agree that having massively confusing mixtures of names and road signs is frustrating for foreigners.

The point is how they introduce Romanisation to children in Taiwan, how it's taught and explained and since they already learn zhuyin fuhao, it's another system to add to those two. I personally feel it could be a bit much to learn for children (zhongwenzi, bopomofo and pinyin), plus we also have the problems with pinyin which are mentioned above with standard keyboard configurations and the inability to put an umlout over a u to make it an ü.

So.. while I agree that one system would work better- most definately- than having several mished and mashed together, and people spelling things however they want to style writing, I wonder weather or not it genuinely makes that much difference... even for foreigners.

Can you explain how it makes a difference in every day use?

[renzhe]

It makes a practical difference in that I can pronounce a Mainland colleague's name, and I can't pronounce a Taiwanese colleague's name. Same with Taiwanese towns, municipalities, mountains, etc. It could be anything, depending on how creative the person's "English" is. It's just that Lu is more angry since she gets to deal with it much more often, due to her ties to Taiwan.

If you are visiting Taiwan and want to take a train, you have NO IDEA where that train is going, because it's quite likely that the train station, the city itself, and whoever printed the ticket all used completely different made up systems. There was a real thread about this somewhere, with real signs. In Taipei, a street will change its name several times, depending on who is in charge of the sign (some of them use Tongyong, some use Hanyu Pinyin).

What's the point of writing it in Latin, when it doesn't actually mean anything? Use anything, just make it consistent and correct (i.e. don't use "ch" to mean 15 different sounds which the foreigners can't pronounce anyway).

And while I'm ranting, the Mainland signs should include tones with their Pinyin. Pinyin standard includes tones, which are an intrinsic part of the language. So write them.

[skylee]

Show a native English speaker the pinyin 'can', and they will likely pronounce it like the English word 'can', as in aluminum can. Show the same person 'tsan', and they might stumble a bit, but at least they will get somewhat close.

Show it to a Turk and he might pronounce it perfectly. [English is important, but it is not the only language in the world.]

[Shi Tong]

hahahhaha.. I do know what you mean! ;)

I suppose my point is that "you" should be able to read the Chinese in order to function in a Chinese speaking/ written country.

I do agree that they should just stick to one thing though, because it IS annoying! ;) I can *kind of see* why they dont.. if you get my drift :rolleyes:

PS, in reply to this:

Show a native English speaker the pinyin 'can', and they will likely pronounce it like the English word 'can', as in aluminum can. Show the same person 'tsan', and they might stumble a bit, but at least they will get somewhat close.

I dont think you can use the "c doesn't sound like c" argument in translitteration, because no matter how close you can get using something "English", it still isn't ACTUALLY the sound, which is why I personally like zhuyin in a lot of ways.

As Skylee said, there are places in the world where they WILL pronounce "c" as "ts", or ㄘ.. and while I agree that English pronunciation of ts is closer to ㄘ then c, as Skylee said, English isn't the only language in the world.. so I suggest that if you want a system to be strictly phontic, you could argue that you dont use Romanisation, it's confusing in essence unless you have a single symbol for every single sound made, and that takes us back to zhuyin, which foreigners cant read anyway ;)

[renzhe]

A Turk would pronounce "can" as pinyin "zhan". Slavic people in general will get it right.

As for the phonetic story, a German does not give a squat if an English speaker reads ß as "beta", and a French does not care if a Turk reads ç differently in his own language. Neither would decide to introduce a completely new alphabet because of this. For the same reason, I don't think that Chinese should care. It's a phonetic transliteration system and the important thing is that it can represent the language correctly. It only takes 20 minutes to learn, just like German or French or Spanish orthography, which are all very different from each other, despite using the same letters.

Even though it's written using Latin characters, it's still Chinese. It should be used in a way that makes sense in Chinese. Just like Mongolian is written using Cyrillic, and it's still Mongolian, not Russian. And how Farsi is written using Arabic script, but it's still Persian, not Arabic.

[skylee]

A Turk would pronounce "can" as pinyin "zhan".

Good to know this. I met a girl of this name in Turkey (Konya) and she asked if I could pronounce her name and I pronounced it as if it were Hanyu Pinyin and she said I was right so I always thought that was how it should be. So she was just being polite. haha. Turkish people are really nice.

[renzhe]

That's interesting. It could be dialectal, or a minority name, or maybe she was being polite. I did learn Turkish for a while but that was quite a while ago.

"C" is very common in Turkish names. Cemal is the Turkish version of Jamal, for example. A friend of mine had the surname "Afacan", and the "can" was like 站

[jbradfor]

@ Shi Tong

I suppose my point is that "you" should be able to read the Chinese in order to function in a Chinese speaking/ written country.

If that is the case, they why bother have any romanization system?

renzhe's point, and I agree fully, is that if you are going to romanize things for the benefit of foreigners, do it in a way that is actually beneficial to foreigners! It's more than "annoying", it can make things useless.

Any why not bopomofo for signs? Because for people not familiar with bopomofo, it's much harder for them to remember and match up a bunch of random symbols with which they are not familiar (i.e. bobopofo), then a bunch of random symbols with which they are familiar (i.e. latin alphabet).

@skylee

Show it to a Turk and he might pronounce it perfectly. [English is important, but it is not the only language in the world.]

I knew someone would call me on this

I did say "I realize that neither pinyin nor WG is intended as a transliteration-into-English scheme". That said, I am a native English speaker, so feel free to look down on me for saying this, but frankly all I care is close the system is to English.

[Shi Tong]

Well.. I think a system which WORKS phonetically for English speakers IS a really good benefit, TBH, since MOST people in the world's second language is English, so they'll be used to the pronunciation of English versions of Romanised script.

However, as we all know, there aren't enough accurate phonetic letters in the English alphabet to be able to represent Chinese sounds properly, and compounds of these "sounds" end up getting messy.

As for the idea of not bothering with a romanisation system, TBH, I dont see why not? Though, if you're going to have one- I agree, it should be uniform. Not so sure about people's names.. I mean, it's not like they're even uniform in Western countries, and people do call themselves whatever they like.

The most pointless thing I think about Taiwan is the train stuff when they say "zhongxiao fuxing", then everything else in lots of different Chinese dialects (Taiwanese, ke-jia etc) then in "English" which comes out as "zhongxiaofuxing station".

What's the difference appart from the station bit at the end?! ;)

hahahah.

[renzhe]

Well.. I think a system which WORKS phonetically for English speakers IS a really good benefi

Nothing works phonetically for English speakers. English is about as phonetic as Chinese.

It makes far more sense to make a phonetic system which works, than a phonetic system which works as poorly as English ;)

However, as we all know, there aren't enough accurate phonetic letters in the English alphabet to be able to represent Chinese sounds properly

But English has about 5 times as many syllables as Mandarin. And it is still written using 26 letters.

[Shi Tong]

Totally.. the English alphabet is rubbish, what with all the random making it up as you go along style spelling etc. It's one of the reasons I dont like Romanisation at all.

[renzhe]

I don't think that you dislike Romanisation, I think that you dislike the English spelling, and seem to confuse the two.

Latin alphabet in Polish or even Italian is actually very straightforward.

[Lu]

Also there is no such thing as the 'English alphabet', just the Latin alphabet that the English language happens to use.

I agree that W-G is closer to English spelling than pinyin, which makes sense as it was designed by two English speakers, if I'm not mistaken. There is actually a modified version of W-G for Dutch speakers, it's called Duyvendak and looks terrible. But if you're looking for a romanisation really designed for English speakers, Yale is the best option I know of.

(The original issue that prompted me to post the rant has been resolved: I managed to stay calm & explain to the co-worker that there was a problem, and could she please change 'Wade-Giles' to 'modified Wade-Giles'. To which she readily agreed.)