chris@grkermit.UUCP (Chris Hibbert) (09/21/83)
Something that has bothered me for some time, starting when all the newspapers and magazines switched transliteration systems a few years ago: How are we supposed to pronounce the chinese names and words that we read? The switch from "Peiking" to "Beijing" for the spelling (in English) of the name of the capital city was accompanied by much hoopla, and I even remember seeing a long list of the equivalent terms under the old and new systems. The thing that struck me most was that the two systems never came up with the same spellings, and so I no longer had any guide as to how the words were probably supposed to be pronounced. The change was apparently made to give us a more consistent system, but no one ever explained how to pronounce the resultant words. Are the words to be pronounced the way they would if they were American English? (Whatever that is.) Or is it the case (as seems much more likely) that the new system is supposed to be completely internally consistent, but only externally consistent with Spanish or Japanese or even something like Esperanto? What I'm looking for is some kind of a guide indicating what letters in the transcriptions correspond to what sounds. Does anyone know what the correspondence is?
stanwyck@ihuxr.UUCP (Don Stanwyck) (09/22/83)
The originally accepted method of Romanization of Manderin was the Wade-Giles
method, named after one each of a French and a British missionary. The
technique does not come close to modern English prounciation. The Wade Giles
system uses apostrophes ("'") for asperation marks, such that the syllable
Pei is unasperated, while P'ei is asperated. The actual pronounciation of
those two syllables is very close the the English "bay" and "pay", resp.
The new system is called PinYin. It is the official PRC method of trans-
literation. It is used in the English language papers in the PRC, as well
as in all PRC releases. The new spellings are much closer to English, with
a few exceptions for things that don't really come across. Example:
The Manderin language has, in addition to a "shi" (as in she) and a "si"
(as in see), an intermediate sound. The romanization of this is now "xi",
or in the Yale romanization technique "syi". It is not as harsh as "sh",
but more asperated than "si".
don stanwyck : 312-979-6667 : ihnp4!ihuxr!stanwyck : bell labs @ napervillemmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor) (09/23/83)
============================== What I'm looking for is some kind of a guide indicating what letters in the transcriptions correspond to what sounds. Does anyone know what the correspondence is? ============================== Usually there is no one-to-one correspondence between the sounds of two languages. The only reasonably accurate way to do a transcription is to use the International Phonetic Alphabet, and this doesn't really help unless the reader already has a pretty good idea of what the language sounds like. As for Chinese, the tones have to be included to give even a chance of having an intelligible transcription. That's pretty hard using English alphabetic characters. Just pronounce the words as seems reasonable to you, and they will probably seem reasonable to your (English-speaking) listener. If you are more concerned to get them near the original sounds, there exist some lists of approximations, but I don't know where to find them. But why worry? How do you pronounce Pontefract or Cockburnspath? (Hint: try "pumfry" and "coepth"). Martin Taylor
bill@utastro.UUCP (09/25/83)
Short guide to the Pinyin Romanization of Chinese ------------------------------------------------- This system was introduced on the mainland in the Fifties, and has replaced the other romanizations in use up to that time there The system was "home brewed" by the Chinese themselves, and generally is very satisfactory; however, in several respects it does not adhere to any of the rules of other languages and must be considered in its own right. It is not used on Taiwan. Earlier systems when pronounced according to English rules gave pronunciations which are quite different from the way things are pronounced in "Standard" Chinese (supposed to be similar to Beijing pronounciation). Therefore the new Romanization is likely to give a more reasonable rendition (even using English rules) once you know the special consonants z, zh, c, x, q. Each syllable consists of an initial (Consonant or NULL) and a final (vowel or diphthong with optional n, ng or r at the end). Most of the initial consonants are pronounced close enough to the English equivalent that there would be no point in describing the subtleties. The following initials can be considered close to the corresponding English consonants: NULL, b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, h, ch, sh, j, s For most practical purposes, the following initials should be pronounced as in the following table: Initial Pronounciation ------------------------------ zh English "j" z similar to "dz" in "adze" c like the "t's H" in "it's Hal" (unvoiced equivalent of "z" q English "ch" x English "sh" r This sound is midway between "r" and the sound of the s in "pleasure". You will notice that (j, zh), (q, ch) and (x, sh) seem to duplicate. Actually there are some subtle differences between the two consonants in each pair due to the fact that the first listed of each pair is actually palatal, while the second is retroflex (pronounced with the tongue curled way back). The consonant "r" is also pronounced as a retroflex. "ch" is pronounced with a generous expulsion of air. The palatal consonants always appear before a front vowel, and the retroflexes and sibilants (z, c, s) before a back vowel. The majority of the vowels and diphthongs are pronounced similarly to English. "w" and "y" are considered vowels after a null initial and have the English values. Vowel Pronounciation ------------------------------- a a in "father" an, ang same vowel with the indicated final consonant ai ai in "aisle" ao au in "sauerkraut" o like wa in "wall" - it is labialized e like u in "lung" en, eng same vowel with the indicated final ei ei in "eight" ou ou in "soul" ong ung in German "jung" u u in "rule" ua, wa wa in "wander" uai, wai wi in "wide" ui, wei wei in "weigh" uan, wan wan un woon with the oo pronounced as in "book" - it is labialized uang, wang wang with the a pronounced as above in "father" ueng, weng starts with "w" and ends with ung as in "lung" i before a retroflex or sibilant (zh, ch, sh, r, z, c, s) The closest vowel I can think of in English is the "i" in "chirp"; it is pronounced way in the back (mandatory because of the position of the tongue in the previous consonant). i before other consonants: like i in "machine" yi like i in "machine" ia, ya ya in "yacht" iao, yao yow in "yowl" ie, ye ye in "yet" iu, yu you ian, yan "yen" in, yin ine in "machine" - palatalized. iang, yang i in "machine + "ang" above - palatalized ing, ying i in "machine" + ng in "sing" - palatalized iong, yong i in "machine" + "ong" above - palatalized u after y, j, q, x is umlauted (not written). u may be umlauted (written as such) after n and l Finally, a final "r" is pronounced similar to an English "r" final, but with the tongue in a retroflex position. There is a lot of local variation in the way individual speakers pronounce things. In southern China (near Shanghai) zh, sh become z, s respectively. In parts of northeast China, initial n becomes l, and there is in general a lot of variation in the pronunciation of certain vowels. This makes it difficult for someone who learned Chinese as a foreign language, and has only heard "standard" pronunciation, to understand it when spoken; it takes getting used to. Also, it means that you may be corrected in your pronunciation if you use the rules above (which are not perfect). However, it should give reasonably close results, certainly better than the average TV newscaster! 8-) Bill Jefferys 8-% Astronomy Dept, University of Texas, Austin TX 78712 (Snail) ihnp4!kpno!utastro!bill (uucp) utastro!bill@utexas-11 (ARPA)