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From: deb5@midway.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Transliteration [was: Re: Pinyin
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References: <7fybe9ur4n.fsf@phoenix.cs.hku.hk> <19970105013600.UAA06472@ladder01.news.aol.com> <7fhgkvvffy.fsf@phoenix.cs.hku.hk>
Date: Mon, 6 Jan 1997 05:29:29 GMT
Lines: 66

In article <7fhgkvvffy.fsf@phoenix.cs.hku.hk>,
Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~} <sdlee@cs.hku.hk> wrote:
>>>>>> "Feiscreen" == Feiscreen  <feiscreen@aol.com> writes:
>                                                                          
>    Feiscreen> Lie4Gen1(HK?)  Since we do distinguish between R and L
>    Feiscreen> in standard Mandarin, why is it not "Rei4gen1", which
>    Feiscreen> is closer to the really sound.  Is it because most
>    Feiscreen> translators are from the south (Shanghai in
>    Feiscreen> particular).
>
>But the Mandarin "r" is different from the English "r".

	Of course.  The question is simply, which Mandarin sound more
closely resembles English "r", 'r' or 'l'?  As a native speaker of
American English, I would pick 'r'.

	A similar case obtains in Russian:  English [h] is transliterated
as <g>, even though <x> is closer to [h], IMHO.  I've often wondered why
this is.  Perhaps, as in Chinese, it is due to a precedent established in
a different dialect.  In Cantonese, which generally has [j] in place of
Mandarin 'r', [l] is obviously the closest sound to English 'r'.
Similarly, in Ukrainian, Cyrillic <g> is pronounced [h]; in southern
dialects of Russian, <g> is usually [G].  So if English borrowings
originally came to Eastern Slavic through Ukraine or southern Russia, <g>
might be a better choice than <x>.  

	Once the pattern like this becomes established, tradition tends
to outweigh accuracy.  That's what's happened with, for instance, Greek
loans in English.  We spell names like 'Circe' with c's instead of k's,
leading people to pronounce them soft (['sIrsi]) instead of hard, as they
invariably are in Greek (['kirkE:]).  This is a holdover from the heyday
of Classical Latin, when <c> was always [k].  Despite two thousand years
of phonological change, we haven't changed our transliteration method.
>
>    Feiscreen>   Another example: Washington --> Hua2Sheng4dun4 better
>    Feiscreen> translation (IMHO): Wa1sheng1tun2 or Wo1sheng1tun2
>
>The transliteration from "ton" to "dun4" clearly shows that the "t" in
>"ton" is [t] (not [t']), which is the same sound as PY "d".  

But it *is* [t'], at least on the lips of every native speaker I've ever
heard.  It's more likely that a transliterater just screwed up some time
in the past (perhaps he was misled by Wade-Giles).  Or maybe the word
didn't come directly from English.

>Hau2Sheng4dun4
>may be an earlier transliteration which is based on other dialects, perhaps
>Cantonese:  "Wa4sing6duen6".
>
>    Feiscreen>   We certainly can do better in name tranlations.
>
>Why not find 26 Chinese  characters and map them to  the 26 letters in
>the Latin alphabet?

And saddle Chinese speakers with learning English orthography?  The whole
point of transliteration is to give someone an aid to pronounciation;
you're filtering the unfamiliar through the familiar.  I think using
Bopomofo for transliteration is a great idea.  It would produce more
accurate results, would avoid unfelicitous interpretations (think of the
original transliteration of Coca Cola, for instance), and would introduce
Chinese speakers to using a non-logographic system.

-- 
	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
