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From: deb5@midway.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Re: How to pronounce Chinese correctly in the Chinese relative NGs.
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Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 16:41:02 GMT
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In article <E3qxnv.3J0@nonexistent.com>, John Cowan  <cowan@ccil.org> wrote:
>Desiring Miracles Left wrote:
>
>> It seems to me that the Wade-Giles and Yale systems both don't
>> have ways indicating the four tones. True?
>
>False.  The Wade-Giles system, at least, uses the same accent
>marks as the Pinyin system.  It's just that they are often left out,
>but then, they are often left out of Pinyin, too.

Are these accent marks officially part of WG?  All older works and
most newer ones I've seen use postpositional numbers (1 for high [PY -], 
2 for rising [PY /], 3 for dipping [PY \/], 4 for falling [PY \]) with WG.

>The main trouble with Wade-Giles, IMHO, is that it is not very
>error-resistant.  It's just too easy for casual writers to leave
>out the all-important "'" character.  In addition, the insistence
>on using =FC (u-diaeresis) in all cases, rather than only when
>absolutely necessary, requires extra work.

I agree with you on both these points.  Furthermore, people often
criticise Pinyin for the odd values it assigns consonants (e.g. q, x, z,
etc.), but I'd like to know who came up with some of the odder WG values.
(I suppose the answer is "Wade or Giles.")  Like <tz> and <hs>.  Does any
naive speaker know how to pronounce <hs>?  If you're lucky, they'll use 
[s], but I've actually heard [h@s] and [h@S], e.g. "huh-SHAO" for <hsiao>
[PY xiao]. 

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