Chinese spelling and Romanization of the Chinese Language
With a little extra on how Chinese characters work with a round up of some current events
Greetings! Thanks for coming back. Today’s offering is sort of change of pace. I’ve been trying to stay away from “did you know_______ about China?” pieces, but as I think people will like them, I am going to try and do more in the future. Here’s a piece on the spelling of Chinese words based on a request from a friend of mine who said it was something he wanted to know about and that confused him. Quick plugs, you can find my piece on the FDNY Search and Rescue Conference here: A First-Timer’s Report at the FDNY Search and Rescue Field Medicine Symposium
They should have another piece by me soon on treatment of spider bites and scorpion stings.
Also, with the election coming up, please consider reading my book on Trump and how he does the amazing things he does, things that always take the world by surprise: Scams from the Great Beyond --The Presidential Edition: A Skeptical Look at Our 45th President Using the Tools of a Paranormal Debunker and Historian
Thanks and remember if you wish to support this publication without paying for a subscription, read it and share it with people you know. Thanks again.
ROMANIZATION OF THE CHINESE LANGUAGE
Many people with a casual or beginning interest in China or Chinese history are confused by the often inconsistent or confusing spelling of Chinese words and names when they see these names written in the Roman alphabet. And it can be confusing. Peking, Beijing, Beiping, Peiping are all the same place. Gong fu and Kung Fu. Chunking and Chongqing. Other examples could easily be found, many of them worse.
Like so many things, the key to understanding this issue is to know the country and its history. (And, yeah, it probably would be easier to understand the country and the history better if the spelling of the names didn’t pose a challenge, but like many things, life’s just not fair sometimes and sometimes things are going to get more confusing before they begin to get less confusing. Sorry about that.)
So, with that warning in mind, let’s begin the discussion of spelling of Chinese names by discussing Chinese language and Chinese writing. Without some knowledge of these, it’s impossible to really understand the spelling of Chinese names.
First, China is a large country with a large and diverse population. And even though its population has grown over the centuries, it has always had a large population when compared to other nations of its time.
And large nations with large populations inevitably have linguistic diversity, China being no exception. China has been home to a wide variety of people, some Chinese, some not Chinese.
Reason # 1 – Dialect Differences
Chinese has many dialects. This begs the question, “What, exactly, is a dialect and how, exactly, does it relate to or differ from an accent or a distinctly different language?”
The issue is complex and basically there is no exact, measurable, clearly defined distinction between accent, dialect, and distinctly different language. Accents involve differences in pronunciation and other aspects of speech that are characteristic of one community of speakers of a language. Dialects are something bigger and involve greater differences in the way a language is spoken or used. People usually understand their own language when spoken by a native speaker with a different accent, but they can’t always understand different dialects. A dialect is more than an accent, but something less than a completely distinct language.
The line between accent, dialect, and distinctly different language is often quite fuzzy and prone to interpretation. It is also often very political, rooted in historical perceptions, grounded in nationalism or political or societal needs. Therefore, while in Europe, French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese are recognized as four different languages, in China there are several ways of speaking that are labelled as dialects which are actually in many ways more different in vocabulary, pronunciation, and aspects of grammar or usage than these languages are from each other, but that are nevertheless labelled as dialects of Chinese.
For instance, take the following list of dialects and how they say “How are you?” (I have made no attempt to discuss the tones here.)
Dialect “How are you?” Chinese Characters
Mandarin Ni Hao ma? 你好嗎?
Cantonese Nay ho ma? 你好嗎?
Taiwanese (Hokkien) Lí hó-bò? 你好無?
Dongbei hua Nee za yung a? 你作樣啊?
(Dongbei Hua is a Northeastern Chinese Dialect)
Hakka Ngee hao ma? 你好嗎?
Hunanese Li haw ba? 你好吧?
Source: Lonely Planet China Phrasebook, 1st Edition, copyright 2009.
Therefore, as one can see, with a wide variety of dialects, there is a wide variety of ways to say things in China. If people say things differently, then it follows that when they or others write them down, they will spell them differently from people who are making different sounds when they speak. This explains some of the differences like the difference in spelling for the city that is known sometimes as “Chongqing” and sometimes as “Chunking.” The former spelling is an attempt to write the Mandarin pronunciation. The second spelling is an attempt to write the Cantonese pronunciation.
By the way, not only does China have a wide variety of dialects of Chinese. It also is home to many people who do not speak Chinese dialects of the Chinese language as their native language. It is a diverse country with many native minority groups who speak a variety of languages. Some of these languages are varieties of Chinese. Some are completely different languages that are unrelated or very distantly related to Chinese. Examples would be Korean, Mongolian, Tibetan, Uighur, Manchu, as each of these peoples live in China and speak their own language. Other examples of non-Chinese languages spoken in China, would be the many languages of the many other minority peoples who are less known in the West. For a well done book on this subject, I would recommend “The Languages of China,” by S. Robert Ramsey ( 1989, Princeton University Press). It’s an excellent introductory text on the subject of Chinese and non-Chinese languages of China.
Reason #2 -Different systems of spelling and transcription of sounds
The second reason why Chinese spelling often seems irregular and difficult to understand lies in the fact that Chinese, of course, is not normally written using the Roman Alphabet. Instead it is written in Chinese characters.
A very brief introduction to Chinese characters
Chinese is not normally written in the Roman alphabet. It is written in Chinese characters, of which there are two sets. The older style characters used in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and most overseas communities and the newer ‘simplified’ characters created by the Chinese Communist Party and used in China and Singapore.
While a complete description of Chinese characters is far outside the scope of this brief essay, basically they are symbols composed of parts that have evolved over thousands of years from squiggly little drawings and become both stylized and formalized. These parts, which are known in English as “radicals,” can be used alone to represent words, but are usually are matched together to compose full characters. So for instance, there is a character for horse and it can be used alone to represent the word for “horse.” (“Horse” in Mandarin is pronounced “Ma.”)
Source: https://www.interesteng.org/january/answers-to-chinese-quiz.html
There is a character for “woman” and it can used alone to represent the word for “woman.” (In Mandarin, the world for woman is pronounced “Nu” which rhymes with “boo.”) Below you can see the evolution of the character for woman. (When searching for such a chart, the best one I found also included a similiar chart for the word for “gate.” Therefore, the chart below also shows the evolution of thtat character as well.)
But while these symbols (radicals) can often be used alone to represent words, they can also be used in combination. Sometimes these combinations are based on abstract relationships. For instance, the Chinese needed a character to represent the word for “good,” an abstract concept that cannot be easily depicted with a drawing. Therefore, they put the radical for “woman” together with the radical that represents a child. Having done so, when the radicals for woman and child are put together, it represents something “good.” So that’s one way to represent something using multiple radicals. Group them to abstractly represent a concept.
Source: https://www.chinese-word.com/
A second way to represent something difficult to represent is by grouping a couple of radicals together, with one representing the category of thing and the other representing the sound of the thing when spoken. So for instance, if the Chinese want to write the word for “mom” or “Mama” -and mother is pronounced “ma” in Chinese very similarly to English, then one way to do it is to use the radical for “woman” combine with something that sounds like “Ma,” and one word that sounds like “ma” in Chinese is the word for “horse” which is also pronounced as “ma."
Source: https://www.chinese-word.com/
Now interestingly enough, while the different dialects generally use the same Chinese characters to represent the same words, they pronounce them differently, as can be seen in the chart above. Also when these characters are used in Japanese, or when they were historically used in Korea or Vietnam, they were usually the same characters with the same meaning but were pronounced completely differently.
Romanization or Alphabetization
The first system for writing Chinese with the Roman alphabet seems to have been created by Matteo Ricci during the late Ming Dynasty. Matteo Ricci ( 1552-1610 ) was an Italian Jesuit Priest, missionary, and scientist who was one of the first Westerners to reside in China where he made a very positive impression on the Chinese and the Chinese ruling class and spread Roman Catholicism. His system was intended to be used for teaching foreign students of Chinese language. (see Norman, Chinese. p. 257)
In the nineteenth century several missionaries of that time developed their own systems of writing several dialects of Chinese. (see Norman, Chinese. p. 257)
It should be mentioned that during the late 19th and early 20th century, a period in which China, Chinese culture, and Chinese civilization felt under assault from the West and Colonialism, one area of concern was balancing the needs to increase literacy and education among the Chinese people to better equip them to face these challenges against the desire to preserve Chinese culture and tradition from change. This proved controversial, as not only was Chinese written with the complicated system of characters described above, but it was also written almost exclusively using archaic grammar and phrasing that dated from centuries ago. (The near exclusive use of archaic grammar for writing Chinese began to change in 1919.)
While some Chinese of the late 19th, early 20th Century, did discuss discarding the traditional characters all together, and replacing them with something else such as a phonetic system of some kind, the idea was too controversial to gather much support. And note only were the Chinese very attached to writing with Chinese characters, but there was a practical matter that Chinese, even keeping in mind the tonal differences between words, is full of homophones or words that sound exactly alike. (Some English homophones would be “sea” vs “see” or “pane” vs “pain” or “wait” vs “weight.” Chinese has many more homophones than English.) And while most of these proposed alphabetic writing systems used non-Western symbols either based on Chinese characters or either completely original in design, in the 1920s, there was an attempt by Chinese intellectuals to develop and promote a system of writing Chinese using the Roman Alphabet. It was called Guoyu luomazi, and never got much of a following. There were other Romanization systems that were created and advocated, and most of these are of little interest except as historical curiousities. ( For more of these things See Norman, Chinese. p. 257– 263)
Today when it is desired to write Mandarin Chinese words using the Roman alphabet, this is normally done using a system rooted in one of the two different transcription systems for converting Chinese sounds into Roman letters.
The older one of these is called the Wade-Giles system, and was named after the two nineteenth century English men who invented it. These were Thomas Francis Wade and Herbert A. Giles, two British diplomats who were active in the early modern Western study of China and who translated many Chinese works into English making them available to a non-Chinese audience over a century ago. First released in 1892, it was a very popular system although it had quirks, one of which was widespread use of apostrophes to distinguish between similar sounds. For this and other reasons, there are a lot of variants of the Wade-Giles system in use.
The Wade-Giles system was a very popular system, and many historical documents were written using it. Therefore, people reading about China should have some familiarity with it.
The Communist Chinese created a system that used Roman letters called Pinyin. It was released in 1957, and has become very popular, being used not only as an aid to teaching Mandarin Chinese but also as the standard way for most Western people to spell the names of Chinese places and personalities including high level politicians.
The two have some distinct differences. For instance, the sound written in Pinyin with an “X” is written with an “HS” in Wade-Giles. (It represents a sound that we don’t really have in English, sort of a “sh” sound with the tongue further back along the roof of the mouth. Another source of confusion is the use of the letter “Q” to represent a sound that is similiar but not exactly like the English “CH.” If you want details or examples, there are several internet sources out there including a wide variety of YouTube videos.
Partial Bibliography
Norman, Jerry. Chinese. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge UK. 1988.
Weekly News Offerings
TRUMP and China
Although I have been trying to avoid mentioning Trump here, with the election coming up and it looking like a close one, let me repeat last week’s message. In my opinion, if you are concerned about China as a geo-political rival, Donald Trump is NOT the man you want. (Yes, Biden does not look healthy. Nevertheless, containing China’s unhealthy push for dominance in the South China Sea and elsewhere will require consistency, good relationships with our allies in the region, and calls to and support of the concept of international law. Team Biden can provide these things. Most likely a traditional Republican presidency could too. But the chaos and inconsistency of another Trump presidency with its MAGA flunkies and self serving, come and go sycophants and random unpredictability definitely cannot.
Please read the article below. I agree with everything it says:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trump-china-tariff-adviser-admits-trade-deal-failed.html
Alice Guo, mysterious Mayor of Bamban and Human Trafficker has been identified
As I hope readers recall, in the Philipines there is a network of phone centers intended to offer gambling opportunities to people overseas. These centers, called POGOs —Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators— are licensed and loosely monitoried by the government of the Philipines. A while back, the authorities raided one and discovered a few hundred people imprisoned against their will and forced under threat of torture or death to make scam phone calls and try to trick people out of their savings. Many of these people were Filipinos, others were Chinese citizens, and about a hundred others were of other nationalities.
Following this, people began looking at local Mayor Alice Guo and checking her background. Basically, it turned out she did not have a background, and no one could determine where she was born, went to school, or who her family was. Although she insisted she was a local Filipina, claiming to have been born illegitimate, hidden from the public while a child, and then homeschooled, people wondered if she was actually a member of the Chinese crime syndicate that ran the phone center despite her increasingly unlikely denials.
Recently the authorities have run her fingerprints and determined she is in fact a Chinese national who came to the Philipines when she was 13 years old and is living and working under someone else’s name.
Below are a group of random news stories about the current developments but there are many others out there as well.
https://philstarlife.com/news-and-views/636732-osg-petition-cancel-birth-certificate-alice-guo
https://philstarlife.com/news-and-views/636732-osg-petition-cancel-birth-certificate-alice-guo
https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1952662/guo-hua-ping-real-alice-guo-gatchalian
https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1952662/guo-hua-ping-real-alice-guo-gatchalian
If you want to see something really creepy, she even has her own YouTube Channel telling people what a great mayor she was. You can watch a video where she cooks Chicken in a Filipino style.
https://www.youtube.com/@AliceLealGuo
For something lighter and nicer and just plain more fun, as well as representing women in a better way, I watched another Cynthia Rothrock film, Lady Reporter. (AKA “The Blonde Fury.)
Cynthia Rothrock was, and remains, a talented American martial artist, who was invited to Hong Kong to make movies. This was her first starring vehicle, and while I would rate it PG-13, it is a lot of fun with lots of martial arts action, awesome stunts, and silly humor. If you like this kind of thing I recommned it highly. If you don’t like this kind of thing, well . . . sorry to hear that. Please go watch something else and never mind.
Finally, I stumbled acrosst this recently, and although it spoke of history that was new to me, it seems to check out. Just after the very end of World War Two, after Japan had surrendered but its troops had not left Vietnam, and the allies had determined that the southern half the nation would be returned to France, there was a period when the French were not able to provide enough troops to govern and control the southern half of the nation. For that brief period, the British controlled it, and they did come into conflict with Ho Chi Minh’s forces during that time. The YouTube video below shares that story.
Appendix, Wade-Giles vs Pinyin Conversion Table
Wade-Giles to Pinyin Conversion Table
Wade-Giles on left, Pinyin on the right
a a
ai ai
an an
ang ang
ao ao
cha zha
ch`a cha
chai zhai
ch`ai chai
chan zhan
ch`an chan
chang zhang
ch`ang chang
chao zhao
ch`ao chao
che zhe
ch`e che
chen zhen
ch`en chen
cheng zheng
ch`eng cheng
chi ji
ch`i qi
chia jia
ch`ia qia
chiang jiang
ch`iang qiang
chiao jiao
ch`iao qiao
chieh jie
ch`ieh qie
chien jian
ch`ien qian
chih zhi
ch`ih chi
chin jin
ch`in qin
ching jing
ch`ing qing
chiu jiu
ch`iu qiu
chiung jiong
ch`iung qiong
cho zhuo
ch`o chuo
chou zhou
ch`ou chou
chu zhu
ch`u chu
chü ju
ch`ü qu
chua zhua
chuai zhuai
ch`uai chuai
chuan zhuan
ch`uan chuan
chüan juan
ch`üan quan
chuang zhuang
ch`uang chuang
chüeh jue
ch`üeh que
chui zhui
ch`ui chui
chun zhun
ch`un chun
chün jun
ch`ün qun
chung zhong
ch`ung chong
en en
erh er
fa fa
fan fan
fang fang
fei fei
fen fen
feng feng
fo fo
fou fou
fu fu
ha ha
hai hai
han han
hang hang
hao hao
hei hei
hen hen
heng heng
ho he
hou hou
hsi xi
hsia xia
hsiang xiang
hsiao xiao
hsieh xie
hsien xian
hsin xin
hsing xing
hsiu xiu
hsiung xiong
hsü xu
hsüan xuan
hsüeh xue
hsün xun
hu hu
hua hua
huai huai
huan huan
huang huang
hui hui
hun hun
hung hong
huo huo
i yi
jan ran
jang rang
jao rao
je re
jen ren
jeng reng
jih ri
jo ruo
jou rou
ju ru
juan ruan
jui rui
jun run
jung rong
ka ga
k`a ka
kai gai
k`ai kai
kan gan
k`an kan
kang gang
k`ang kang
kao gao
k`ao kao
ken gen
k`en ken
keng geng
k`eng keng
ko ge
k`o ke
kou gou
k`ou kou
ku gu
k`u ku
kua gua
k`ua kua
kuai guai
k`uai kuai
kuan guan
k`uan kuan
kuang guang
k`uang kuang
kuei gui
k`uei kui
kun gun
k`un kun
kung gong
k`ung kong
kuo guo
k`uo kuo
la la
lai lai
lan lan
lang lang
lao lao
le le
lei lei
leng leng
li li
liang liang
liao liao
lieh lie
lien lian
lin lin
ling ling
liu liu
lo luo
lou lou
lu lu
lü lü
luan luan
lüan luan
lüeh lue
lun lun
lung long
ma ma
mai mai
man man
mang mang
mao mao
mei mei
men men
meng meng
mi mi
miao miao
mieh mie
mien mian
min min
ming ming
miu miu
mo mo
mou mou
mu mu
na na
nai nai
nan nan
nang nang
nao nao
nei nei
nen nen
neng neng
ni ni
niang niang
niao niao
nieh nie
nien nian
nin nin
ning ning
niu niu
no nuo
nou nou
nu nu
nü nü
nuan nuan
nüeh nue
nung nong
o e
ou ou
pa ba
p`a pa
pai bai
p`ai pai
pan ban
p`an pan
pang bang
p`ang pang
pao bao
p`ao pao
pei bei
p`ei pei
pen ben
p`en pen
peng beng
p`eng peng
pi bi
p`i pi
piao biao
p`iao piao
pieh bie
p`ieh pie
pien bian
p`ien pian
pin bin
p`in pin
ping bing
p`ing ping
po bo
p`o po
p`ou pou
pu bu
p`u pu
sa sa
sai sai
san san
sang sang
sao sao
se se
sen sen
seng seng
sha sha
shai shai
shan shan
shang shang
shao shao
she she
shen shen
sheng sheng
shih shi
shou shou
shu shu
shua shua
shuai shuai
shuan shuan
shuang shuang
shui shui
shun shun
shuo shuo
so suo
sou sou
ssu si
su su
suan suan
sui sui
sun sun
sung song
ta da
t`a ta
tai dai
t`ai tai
tan dan
t`an tan
tang dang
t`ang tang
tao dao
t`ao tao
te de
t`e te
teng deng
t`eng teng
ti di
t`i ti
tiao diao
t`iao tiao
tieh die
t`oeh tie
tien dian
t`ien tian
ting ding
t`ing ting
tiu diu
to duo
t`o tuo
tou dou
t`ou tou
tu du
t`u tu
tuan duan
t`uan tuan
tui dui
t`ui tui
tun dun
t`un tun
tung dong
t`ung tong
tsa za
ts`a ca
tsai zai
ts`ai cai
tsan zan
ts`an can
tsang zang
ts`ang cang
tsao zao
ts`ao cao
tse ze
ts`e ce
tsei zei
tsen zen
ts`en cen
tseng zeng
ts`eng ceng
tso zuo
ts`o cuo
tsou zou
ts`ou cou
tsu zu
ts`u cu
tsuan zuan
ts`uan cuan
tsui zui
ts`ui cui
tsun zun
ts`un cun
tsung zong
ts`ung cong
tzu zi
tz`u ci
wa wa
wai wai
wan wan
wang wang
wei wei
wen wen
weng weng
wo wo
wu wu
ya ya
yai yai
yang yang
yao yao
yeh ye
yen yan
yin yin
ying ying
yo yo
yu you
yü yu
yüan yuan
yüeh yue
yün yun
yung yong