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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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References: <5b1th5$f91@news.iastate.edu> <E3qxnv.3J0@nonexistent.com> <E3r2CE.M3x@midway.uchicago.edu> <5b3tqa$t1f@chronicle.concentric.net>
Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 16:04:18 GMT
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In article <5b3tqa$t1f@chronicle.concentric.net>,
H Andrew Chuang <Chuanga@cris.com> wrote:
>In article <E3r2CE.M3x@midway.uchicago.edu>,
>Daniel von Brighoff <deb5@midway.uchicago.edu> wrote:
>>
>>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]. 
>
>You're right.  My first name is Hsin, and I have been called "huh-sin"
>quite a few times.  I have to explain to others that it is pronounced
>like <sh> but not exactly the same.  That's probably why WG inverted
><sh> to <hs> (because it's not exactly <sh>).

Personally, I think <h> alone would have sufficed.  In most languages, <h> 
before <i> is much closer to the actual Chinese sound ([C], the so-called
"Ich-Laut" in German) than [S] (which is what less naive speakers
substitute for <hs>).  <h> is also the etymological spelling in many
cases.

I hadn't thought of that before, but Ch. [C] (WG <hs>, PY <x>) is the
result of a merger of /h/ and /s/ before /i/.  Could <hs> have been picked
partly to reflect this fact?

>Personally, I don't think <ts> and <dz> are odd.  The <ts> sound is not
>too far off from the final consonant of the English word "its".

I never said I had a problem with <ts> and <dz> (the latter is not WG,
btw).  These are reasonable and common to other alphabets.  But what's
with <tz> and (ack!) <sz>?  Yes, I know that the <s> in <szu> (imagine a
little breve over the <u>--another thing I hate about WG) is not the <s>
in <san>--but the <ch> in <chin> is not the <ch> in <chan> either and WG
ignores this (although PY does not).  Naive speakers have no more idea
what to do with this than they do with <hs>.  (You should hear some of the
pronunciations of <Szechuan> I've been subjected to!)

>I think
>all romanization systems have their own flaws; they all need some
>getting used to.  It's just a matter of degree.  IMO, Pinyin is a good
>system for foreigners to learn Chinese.  However, it's not very good for
>general romanization usage by people who don't know anything about
>Chinese.

Oh, I agree.  I'm just trying to point out that some of the so-called
"flaws" of PY are shared by WG as well.  I prefer PY as much on aesthetic 
grounds as anything else. I get into arguments about it all the time with
one of my best friends, who prefers WG--also, I think, on aesthetic
grounds, since it obviously doesn't help him pronounce Chinese any better.
(He once drove me absolutely crazy by pronouncing the name <K'an> as
[kh@!'an]!  That's right--in two syllables with a glottal stop where thh
apostrophe is.)
-- 
	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
