# About the romanisation systems of Chinese



## DaveWen

Hi,
I've noticed that there are some peculiarities with the romanisation system of some Chinese dialects. In the Wade-Gale system of Mandarin romanisation, for example, voiced consonants are consistently rendered voiceless. An example would be the name "Chiang Ching-kuo". This kind of romanisation can still be seen sometimes in the names of Republic of China nationals. And for other dialects too: "Chiang Kai-shek", for instance----why isn't it spelt "Zoeng Gai-Shek" like how it's actually pronounced in Cantonese?
It seems this is very common in older attempts of romanising Chinese dialects, as seen in place names like Peking and Canton (rather than, say, Pek-Ging and Gandon). Is there a specific reason for it?


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## entangledbank

Well the simple* answer is that those consonants _aren't_ voiced. Chinese has a voiceless unaspirated [k] and a voiceless aspirated [kh]. Wade-Giles chose to render those _k_ and _k'_ respectively, while (Hanyu) Pinyin chose to use the letters _g b d z_ because they were lying around unused by Wade-Giles, so Pinyin represents those same two voiceless sounds _g_ and _k_ respectively. Neither solution is _phonetically_ better than the other, but many people feel Pinyin is a great deal more _convenient_.

* Over-simplified, in fact, because Chinese unaspirated [k] isn't exactly the same as English unaspirated [k] in _sky_ - but it isn't a fully voiced [g] either.


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## berndf

entangledbank said:


> * Over-simplified, in fact, because  Chinese unaspirated [k] isn't exactly the same as English unaspirated  [k] in _sky_ - but it isn't a fully voiced [g] either.


Nor is the English /g/.



DaveWen said:


> It seems this is very common in older attempts of romanising Chinese dialects, as seen in place names like Peking and Canton (rather than, say, Pek-Ging and Gandon). Is there a specific reason for it?



The  early transliterations of Chinese on which Wade-Giles is based was done  by French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian Missionaries. And for  speakers of those languages, the initial sound of _Beijing _sounds  like a "p" and not like a "b". For speakers of Northern European  languages it is a bit different. In my native German we distinguish "b"  and "p" almost exactly like you do, we would just pronounce the "b" a  bit less forceful than in Chinese. In English it is a bit more complicated, because it depends on the position in the word and on the dialect but in the beginning of the word, like in _Beijing_, the sound it certainly closer to the English "b" than to the English "p".


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## DaveWen

berndf said:


> The  early transliterations of Chinese on which Wade-Giles is based was done  by French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian Missionaries. And for  speakers of that languages, the initial sound of _Beijing _sounds  like a "p" and not like a "b".


Oh right that makes a lot more sense now. It seems I've always sub-consciously assumed the romanisation was English, and have been reading them out as if they were English words. No wonder. Thanks a lot


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## berndf

By the way, the "k" in _Pe*k*ing_ and _Nan*k*ing _rather than "ch" or "tch" as you would expect from a French or Spanish influenced transcription, has a special reason: These transcriptions are from the time of the late Ming dynasty (16th century) and reflect the Standard Mandarin pronunciation of that time which, as you certainly know, differed from the modern pronunciation.


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## Hulalessar

I think that the point behind the Wade-Giles system is that since there are no voiced stops in Mandarin it was felt that the unvoiced stops should be represented by the roman alphabet symbols used for unvoiced stops with the difference between aspirated and unaspirated stops being shown by the presence or absence of an apostrophe. (This ignores the fact that the unaspirated stops are partly voiced and indeed may be perceived as voiced by speakers of some languages.) Apart from that, the intention was that the roman alphabet symbols for voiced consonants could be used to represent fully voiced stops in varieties of Chinese which had them.


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## berndf

Hulalessar said:


> This ignores the fact that the unaspirated stops are partly voiced


Why? This is so in some languages (it is, e.g., free variation in English). But there is no reason why unaspirated stop should per se be partly voiced.


Hulalessar said:


> Apart from that, the intention was that the roman alphabet symbols for voiced consonants could be used to represent fully voiced stops in varieties of Chinese which had them.


I have never heard this. Do you have a source for it? I would be very interested.


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## CapnPrep

berndf said:


> Hulalessar said:
> 
> 
> 
> Apart from that, the intention was that the roman alphabet symbols for voiced consonants could be used to represent fully voiced stops in varieties of Chinese which had them.
> 
> 
> 
> I have never heard this. Do you have a source for it? I would be very interested.
Click to expand...

I don't know if this was Thomas Wade's original intention; all of his work seems to have focused on the "Peking Dialect". But Herbert Giles's _English-Chinese Dictionary_ contained romanized pronunciations for several dialects ("Cantonese, Hakka, Foochow, Wênchow, Ningpo, Peking, Mid-China, Yangchow and Ssŭch'uan"), and some of these dialects have voiced stops that are transcribed with ‹b›, ‹d›, ‹g›. This is true at least for Wenzhou and Ningbo dialects, and you can see an example in the entry for 荳 "bean" on p. 1412 (1912 edition).


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## berndf

CapnPrep said:


> I don't know if this was Thomas Wade's original intention; all of his work seems to have focused on the "Peking Dialect". But Herbert Giles's _English-Chinese Dictionary_ contained romanized pronunciations for several dialects ("Cantonese, Hakka, Foochow, Wênchow, Ningpo, Peking, Mid-China, Yangchow and Ssŭch'uan"), and some of these dialects have voiced stops that are transcribed with ‹b›, ‹d›, ‹g›. This is true at least for Wenzhou and Ningbo dialects, and you can see an example in the entry for 荳 "bean" on p. 1412 (1912 edition).


Thanks. The lack of <b>, <d> and <g> in Wade's system obviously comes in handy for Wu dialects which as far as I know all have the 3-way phonemic contrast voiced-unaspirated-aspirated, not only the two you mentioned.

As to Wade, what I had read was that he worked on the languages in use at the imperial court, Manchu and the Beijing and Nanjing dialects of Mandarin and that he was fluent in Cantonese and he is said to have spoken Mandarin with a heavy Cantonese accent. All of these only have the two way phonemic contrast unaspirated-aspirated. Of course, he must have known about Wu which includes the Shanghai dialect. I would be really interested to find out how he motivated his choice of letters for plosives. I don't have access to his works. If some of have, especially _The Peking Syllabary_, 1859, I would appreciate some quotes.


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## Hulalessar

That the roman alphabet symbols for voiced consonants were reserved to represent fully voiced stops in varieties of Chinese which have them is asserted here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wade_Giles#Multi-sound_symbols

I have to say that, having done some research, I find the various descriptions of the phonemes of Mandarin contradictory. When it comes to stops the possibilities seems to include:

1. that aspirated unvoiced stops are contrasted with unaspirated unvoiced stops

2. that aspirated unvoiced stops are contrasted with unaspirated partly voiced stops

3. that aspirated unvoiced stops are contrasted with unaspirated voiced stops

not to mention other permutations which may or may not involve the use of the words "aspirated", "unaspirated", "voiced" or "partly voiced" or bring in "palatal" and/or "retroflex". According to one source the phoneme inventory includes sounds represented in the IPA by symbols indicating voiced consonants but with a dot underneath, the dot indicating that the sound is voiceless; I confess I am having difficulty coming to grips with the concept of a voiceless voiced consonant. Another source suggests there are differences between the way individuals may articulate the consonants, with differences between men and women being especially noted.


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## berndf

Hulalessar said:


> That the roman alphabet symbols for voiced consonants were reserved to represent fully voiced stops in varieties of Chinese which have them is asserted here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wade_Giles#Multi-sound_symbols


Yes, that has become clear from CapnPrep's contribution. The question here is what motivated Wade's original choice: continuity with previous transcriptions or deliberate choice for lease b, d and k for dialects with truly voiced plosives.



Hulalessar said:


> I have to say that, having done some research, I find the various descriptions of the phonemes of Mandarin contradictory. When it comes to stops the possibilities seems to include:
> 
> 1. that aspirated unvoiced stops are contrasted with unaspirated unvoiced stops
> 
> 2. that aspirated unvoiced stops are contrasted with unaspirated partly voiced stops
> 
> 3. that aspirated unvoiced stops are contrasted with unaspirated voiced stops.


And there are languages with 3-way contrasts, like Wu-Chinese or Ancient Greek.


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## CapnPrep

berndf said:


> I don't have access to his works. If some of have, especially _The Peking Syllabary_, 1859, I would appreciate some quotes.


These are from the second edition (1886) of Wade's _Tzŭ êrh chi_ (Vol. 1, pp. 5f):


> _ch_. Before any of the above finals except _ih_, simply as in _chair_, _chip_; before _ih_ it is softened to _dj_; _chih_ being in many cases pronounced _djih_.
> _ch'_. A strong breathing intervening between the initial _ch_ and the vowel-sound […] The _ch'_ does sometimes soften like the unaspirated _chi_ before _ih_, but much more rarely.
> […]
> _k_. As _c_ in _car_, _k_ in _king_; but when following other sounds, often softened to _g_ in _go_, _gate_. In the word _ko_, for instance, the Numerative proper to many nouns, when this is preceded by _na_, that, or _chê_, this, the _k _is softened, the two syllables being pronounced almost _nago_, _chêgo_.
> _k'_. The aspirate as in _ch'_. Drop the italicised letters in _kic_k-h_ard_ and you will have_ k'a_ […]
> _p. _As in English.
> _p'_. The aspirate as in _ch'_, _k'_. Observe the manner in which an Irishman pronounces _p_arty, _p_arliament; or drop the italicised letters in _sla_p-h_ard_, and you will retain _p'a_.
> […]
> _t_. As in English.
> _t'_. As in _k'_, _p'_, etc. Observe an Irishman's pronunciation of _t_ in _t_error, _t_orment; or drop the italics in _hi_t-h_ard_, and you have _t'a_.
> _ts_. As in _jetsam_, _catsup_; after another word, often softened to _ds_ in _gladsome_.





berndf said:


> he is said to have spoken Mandarin with a heavy  Cantonese accent.


He seems to have spoken English with a strange  accent, too… Or maybe I speak with a heavy Irish accent?


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## berndf

Thank you.


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## Hulalessar

berndf said:


> The question here is what motivated Wade's original choice: continuity with previous transcriptions or deliberate choice for lease b, d and k [g]? for dialects with truly voiced plosives



The question is whether he decided the letters were not appropriate and then conveniently found he had them left over, or decided at the outset that he needed them to be reserved for other varieties. Whichever it was, he was faced with the difficulty of how to show the distinction between the pairs. If he regarded the most important distinguishing feature as aspiration then his choice makes some sort of sense. Assuming his system was aimed at English speakers, it is possible he decided not to use <h> to show aspiration to avoid the possibility of reading <th> as /θ / and <ph> as /f/. Sanskrit scholars took the risk of using <h> because they more or less had to since Sanskrit has aspirated and unaspirated voiced and unvoiced consonants - a four way contrast.


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## CapnPrep

Hulalessar said:


> Assuming his system was aimed at English speakers, it is possible he decided not to use <h> to show aspiration to avoid the possibility of reading <th> as /θ / and <ph> as /f/.


Yes, he says exactly that (_op. cit., _p. 7):


> The aspirate which intervenes between the initials _ch_, _k_, _p_, _t_, _ts_, _tz_ and the vowels following them, is indicated, as will have been seen above, by an inverted comma, in preference to an _h_, lest the English reader, following his own laws of spelling, should be led to pronounce _ph_ as in _triumph_, _th_ as in _month_, and so on, which would be a serious error.


So this is one case where he deviates from a more general principle (p. xvii):  


> for the sake of both printer and student, I have always, where I could, employed alphabetic symbols in preference to diacritic marks.


As for your other point:


Hulalessar said:


> I have to say that, having done some  research, I find the various descriptions of the phonemes of Mandarin  contradictory.


From a phonemic point of view, I'm not sure if these contradictions are that meaningful. There could be phonological processes that reveal whether the relevant feature is aspiration or voice (or both), but I can't think of any. It could be that the only essential phonological fact is that there are simply two series of stops (and affricates), and any reasonable symbolic representation of the distinction will do.

Of course you may also be interested in phonetic realization and perception, in which case you will drown in a deep ocean of non-categorical quantitative variation.


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## Rethliopuks

The reason why Mr. Chiang used "Chiang Kai-Shek" is somehow mysterious, for it is a mixture. "Chiang" is from a Mandarin system (at least non-cantonese) while "Kai-shek" is transcripted from Cantonese.
The reason why they use unvoiced letters like p,t,k instead of b,d,g is that most varieties of Chinese lack such voiced consonants. They are only preserved in Wu, Old Shiang and perhaps somewhere in Gan and possibly (but I'm unsure) a small dialect of Cantonese(Yue), and in other places they were lost and became unvoiced. Afterwards Some of Min changed its m,n,ng to b,d,g when the syllable is not nasalized, so you may also find voiced letters used there.
As you may notice, most common Western languages distinguish consonants by whether they are voiced or not, and this is especially true in the Romance languanges. The latin letters are also designed thus, so it's not strange that people followed such a way. 
The current Pinyin and Jyutping system start to use voiced letters perhaps for efficiency and simplisity, because they are systems designed to spell the pronunciation for native people, as indicated in their names. There is no need to follow some rules as best as can be achieved so that most foreigners can understand, so in these systems some "innotivations" or "special features" are completely OK.
Therefore you can see why some people (esp. in Taiwan, in Hong Kong or being foreign Chinese) still tend to use romanized names in a different fashion from their pinyin spellings. Those are for foreigners. (P.S. such names also do not necessarily reflect Standard Mandarin or Cantonese pronunciation.)


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## fdb

My understanding is that in Northern (Mandarin) Chinese /k/ and /g/ are in complementary distribution with /q/ and /j/. This means that one could, if one wanted, regard /q/ and /j/ as allophones of /k/ and /g/ (Wade-Giles: k’ and k). There is thus a logic for writing “Pei king” instead of “Beijing”.


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## CapnPrep

fdb said:


> My understanding is that in Northern (Mandarin) Chinese /k/ and /g/ are in complementary distribution with /q/ and /j/. This means that one could, if one wanted, regard /q/ and /j/ as allophones of /k/ and /g/ (Wade-Giles: k’ and k).


It's a little more complicated than that: The three palatal initials corresponding to pinyin ‹q›, ‹j›, and ‹x› could be considered allophones of ‹k›, ‹g›, ‹h› (as you suggest), but they could also be allophones of the alveolar series ‹c›, ‹z›, ‹s› or (technically, but not historically) of the retroflex series ‹ch›, ‹zh›, ‹sh›. I guess you can arbitrarily choose one series to be "basic", or assume either an underlying velar or alveolar depending on the history of each word.

As far as romanization goes, I think all of the major systems adopt a phonetic approach, so the user doesn't have to know about this aspect of Mandarin phonology (and historical phonology).


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## Rethliopuks

fdb said:


> My understanding is that in Northern (Mandarin) Chinese /k/ and /g/ are in complementary distribution with /q/ and /j/. This means that one could, if one wanted, regard /q/ and /j/ as allophones of /k/ and /g/ (Wade-Giles: k’ and k). There is thus a logic for writing “Pei king” instead of “Beijing”.



Indeed, but the logic was not exactly that. It was that before i and yu, historical c/k, z/g, s/h merged, and the choice of letter in such spelling was in accordance with historical source. The "j" in beijing was originally "g", so it was Peking. Similarly the "ts" in Tsinghua University was due to its origin "c" (which now, of course, has become "q"). You would also observe such obeyance a lot in French and English, such as français and amaze.


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