Talk:Use pinyin not Wade-Giles
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Off-Topic but .... How do you (ie the Wiki-community) propose to deal with the African glottal click, which as far as I know has no "authorised" transliteration, but is fundamental (as I understand it) to several tongues ? [From: Scriptator]
Moved here from article:
- The Wade-Giles system is seriously flawed. (One may wonder whether it was intended to be a practical joke to make fun of the Chinese language.) The B and P sounds are both transliterated to P; the D and T sounds are both transliterated to T; the G and K sounds are both transliterated to K; J and Ch sounds are both transliterated to Ch.
Let me address that briefly.
The Wade-Giles system is seriously flawed.
- POV.
The B and P sounds are both transliterated to P
- Not so. Pinyin B is Wade-Giles P, true; but Pinyin P is not Wade-Giles P but P'; the "stupid apostrophe", as you call it, is necessary. Two different sounds, two different representations.
- And it makes sense when you look at the pronunciation: Pinyin "B" is a voiceless unaspirated stop, the same as the "P" in the French word "Paris", so using "P" for that is not flawed IMO. And Pinyin "P" is a voiceless aspirated stop; using apostrophe for aspiration is also not uncommon. -- pne 15:35, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I agree with pne here. Many linguists take the view that the main distinguishing factor between the two sounds <p> and <b> (both Pinyin here) is aspiration, not voicing as it is in English. So, Wade-Giles is actually closer to the linguistic representation for these two sounds [p'] and [p], respectively, where ' adds aspiration.
Also, another point about "stupid apostrophes," they're actually required in standard Hanyu Pinyin if two sounds might be confused for one. Case in point: xi'an => xian.
So, I fail to see how apostrophes are "stupid," and your point might be better taken in the future if you refrain from generalizations such as this. -- Wulong 21:08, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)
- From Daoism-Taoism Romanization issue:
- Due to fundamental differences between Chinese and English phonology, in English neither d nor t can be considered adequate phonetic representations for the consonant at the beginning of the word Dao/Tao (in pinyin d represents the sound exactly). The Chinese pronunciation is voiceless (like t and not like d), but it is also unaspirated (without the puff of air which is normally a part of English t but which is never a part of English d). One perspective holds that both transliterations when used in English are thus in theory technically equally close to (or far from) the Mandarin pronunciation of 道. However in practice, due to partial de-voicing of "d" in English in certain situations, the only reliable phonetic difference between initial /d/ and /t/ in English is aspiration, not voicing, just as in Chinese. Therefore to the ear of most English speakers the Chinese pronunciation sounds more like an English "d" than an English "t", thus some argue that "Dao" is in that sense more accurate than "Tao". LDHan 11:23, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
# The pronunciation of Pinyin is much more intuitive for English speakers than Wade-Giles.
I find this assertion utterly ridiculous. Pinyin is not supposed to be read phonetically. For example, the letter 'q' in pinyin is pronounced 'ch', the letter 'x' is more like 'sh'.
A particular problem is that English speakers seeing Wade-Giles transliterations are likely to give widely inaccurate pronunciations; an English-speakers pronunciation of pinyin won't be perfect, but will be much closer to real Putonghua.
As a Chinese, I do find that Wade-Giles gives a better sense of the pronunciation. For example, the word 'dao' has been butchered by English speakers who use the broad 'd' sound to pronounce it. The 'd' sound doesn't even exist in Chinese. In fact, the way Westerners say 'tao' is pretty close to the actual pronunciation.
I don't understand how such an obvious mistake has gotten so out of hand.
Rilie 17:59, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
- "Westerners"?? - That is way too broad. Which bunch of "westerners" do you know? Hillgentleman 05:13, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
"Westerners"?? - That is way too broad
Exactly. I was speaking generally. Rilie 17:49, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
