Wade-Giles

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Wade-Giles (Simplified Chinese: 威妥玛拼音 or 韦氏拼音; Traditional Chinese: 威妥瑪拼音; pinyin: wēituǒmǎ pīnyīn), sometimes abbreviated Wade, is a Romanization system (phonetic notation and transliteration) for the Chinese language based on the form of Mandarin used in Beijing. It developed from a system produced by Thomas Wade in the mid-19th century, and reached settled form with Herbert Giles's Chinese-English dictionary of 1892.

Wade-Giles was the main system of transliteration in the English-speaking world for most of the 20th century, used in several standard reference books and in all books about China published before 1979.^[1] It replaced the Nanjing-based romanization systems that had been common until late in the 19th century. It has mostly been replaced by the pinyin system today, but remains in use in the Republic of China (Taiwan).

Contents 1 History 2 Technical aspects 2.1 One symbol-multiple sounds 2.2 One sound-multiple symbols 2.3 Precision with empty rime 2.4 Partial interchangeability of uo and e with o 2.5 Punctuation 2.6 Other differences with Pinyin 2.7 Comparison chart 3 Influences 4 See also 5 References 6 External links

History

Wade-Giles was developed by Thomas Francis Wade, a British ambassador in China and Chinese scholar who was the first professor of Chinese at Cambridge University. Wade published the first Chinese textbook in English in 1867. The system was refined in 1912 by Herbert Allen Giles, a British diplomat in China.[1]

The Wade-Giles system was designed to transliterate Chinese terms, for Chinese specialists. This origin has led to a general sense that the system is non-intuitive for non-specialists and not useful for teaching Chinese pronunciation.

The Republic of China (Taiwan) has used Wade-Giles for decades as the de facto standard, co-existing with several official but obscure Romanizations in succession, namely, Gwoyeu Romatzyh (1928), MPS II (1986), and Tongyong Pinyin (2000). Taiwanese place names are still being virtually written in Wade-Giles, and many Chinese Americans and Canadians also write their Chinese names in Wade-Giles.

The Hanyu Pinyin system is the official and most widely used system in the People's Republic of China. In Singapore, Pinyin is taught in national schools and widely used in official documents, although a reversal of government policy changed the requirement to register people's Chinese names in Pinyin. Wade-Giles spellings and Pinyin spellings for Taiwanese place names and words long accepted in English usage are still used interchangeably in English-language texts in both countries.

Technical aspects

One symbol-multiple sounds

A common complaint about the Wade-Giles system is the representation of the unaspirated-aspirated stop consonant pairs using apostrophes: p, p', t, t', k, k', ch, ch'. However, the use of apostrophes preserves b, d, g, and j for the romanization of Chinese dialects containing voiced consonants, such as Shanghainese (which has a full set of voiced consonants) and Taiwanese (Hō-ló-oē) whose century-old Missionary Romanisation is similar to Wade-Giles.

On the other hand, people unfamiliar with the Wade-Giles often ignore the apostrophes, even so far as leaving them out when copying texts, unaware that they represent vital information. Hanyu Pinyin addresses this issue by employing the Latin letters customarily used for voiced stops, unneeded in Mandarin, to represent the unaspirated stops: b, p, d, t, g, k, j, q, zh, ch.

Partly because of the popular omission of the apostrophe, the four sounds represented in Hanyu Pinyin by j, q, zh, and ch all become ch in many literature and personal names. However, were the diacritics to be kept, the system reveals a symmetry that leaves no overlap:

• The non-retroflex ch (Pinyin j) and ch' (Pinyin q) are always before either i or ü.
• The retroflex ch (Pinyin zh) and ch' (Pinyin ch) are always before a, e, ih, o, or u.

One sound-multiple symbols

In addition to several sounds presented using the same letter(s), sometimes, one single sound is represented using several sets of letters. There exists two versions of Wade-Giles Romanizations for each of the Pinyin syllables zi, ci, and si.

• The older version writes tsû, ts'û, and ssû
• The newer version writes:
  • tzu for tsû, but it still remains ts- before other vowels, as in tsung for the Pinyin zong.
  • tz'u for ts'û, but remains ts'- before other vowels.
  • szu or ssu for ssû, but is s- before other vowels. Note, not ss-.

Precision with empty rime

On the other hand, Wade-Giles shows precisions not found in other major Romanizations in regard to the rendering of the two types of empty rimes (Simplified Chinese: 空韵; Traditional Chinese: 空韻; pinyin: kōngyùn):

• -u (formerly û) after the sibilant tz, tz', and s (Pinyin z, c, and s).
• -ih after the retroflex ch, ch', sh, and j (Pinyin zh, ch, sh, and r).

These empty rimes are all written as -i in Hanyu Pinyin (hence undistinguishable from true i as in li), and all written as -ih in Tongyong Pinyin. Zhuyin, as a non-Romanization, does not require the representation of any empty rime.

Partial interchangeability of uo and e with o

What is pronounced as a close-mid back unrounded vowel is written usually as -e as in pinyin, but sometimes as -o. This vowel in an isolate syllable is written as o or ê. When placed in a syllable, it is e; except when preceded by k, k', and h, when it is o.

What is actually pronounced as -uo is virtually always written as -o in Wade-Giles, except shuo and the three syllables of kuo, k'uo, and huo, which already have the counterparts of ko, k'o, and ho that represent pinyin ge, ke, and he.

Punctuation

In addition to the apostrophes used for distinguishing the multiple sounds of a single Latin symbol, Wade-Giles uses hyphens to separate all syllables within a word, whereas Pinyin only uses apostrophes to separate ambiguous syllables. Originally in his dictionary, Giles used left apostrophes (‘) consistently. Such orientation was followed in Sinological works until the 1950s or 60s, when it started to be gradually replaced by right apostrophes (’) in academic literature. On-line publications almost always use the plain apostrophe ('). Apostrophes are completely ignored in Taiwanese passports, hence their total absence in overseas Chinese's names.

If the syllable is not the first in a word, its first letter is not capitalized, even if it is a proper noun. The use of apostrophes, hyphens, and capitalization is frequently not observed in placenames and personal names. For example, the majority of overseas Chinese of Taiwanese origin write their given names like "Tai Lun" or "Tai-Lun", whereas the Wade-Giles actually writes "Tai-lun". The capitalization issue arises partly because ROC passports indiscriminately capitalize all letters of the holder's names (beside the photograph). It is also due to the misunderstanding that the second syllable is a middle name. (See also Chinese name)

Wade-Giles uses superscript numbers to indicate tone, and official Pinyin uses diacritics. The tone marks are ignored except in textbooks.

Other differences with Pinyin

• Wade-Giles chose the French-like j to represent a Northerner's pronunciation of what now is represented as r in Pinyin.
• Ü (as in 玉 "jade") always has a diaresis above, while Pinyin only employs it in the cases of nü and lü, while leaving it out in -ue, ju-, qu-, xu-, -uan and yu- as a simplification because u cannot otherwise appear in those positions.
• The Pinyin vowel cluster ong is ung in Wade-Giles. (Compare Kung Fu to Gong Fu as an example.)
• After a consonant, both the Wade-Giles and Pinyin vowel cluster uei is written ui. However, both Romanizations, unlike some others, use iu and un instead of the complete syllables: iou and uen.
• Single i is never preceded by y, as in pinyin. The only exception is in placenames, which are hyphenless, so without a y, syllable ambiguity could arise.
• The isolated syllable eh is written as ê, like in Pinyin. (Schwa is occasionally written as ê as well.) But unlike Pinyin, which uses -e if there is a consonant preceding the sound, Wade-Giles uses -eh. (See circumflex)
• In addition to being the schwa, ê also represents the Pinyin er as êrh.

Comparison chart

Vowels

IPA	a	ɔ	ə	ai	ei	au	ou	an	ən	aŋ	əŋ	aɻ	ʊŋ	ji	iɛ	iou	iɛn	jɪn	jiŋ
Pinyin	a	o	e	ai	ei	ao	ou	an	en	ang	eng	er	ong	yi	ye	you	yan	yin	ying
Tongyong Pinyin	a	o	e	ai	ei	ao	ou	an	en	ang	eng	er	ong	yi	ye	you	yan	yin	ying
Wade-Giles	a	o	o/ê	ai	ei	ao	ou	an	ên	ang	êng	êrh	ung	i	yeh	yu	yen	yin	ying
zhuyin	ㄚ	ㄛ	ㄜ	ㄞ	ㄟ	ㄠ	ㄡ	ㄢ	ㄣ	ㄤ	ㄥ	ㄦ	ㄨㄥ	ㄧ	ㄧㄝ	ㄧㄡ	ㄧㄢ	ㄧㄣ	ㄧㄥ
example	阿	哦	俄	艾	黑	凹	偶	安	恩	昂	冷	二	中	一	也	又	言	音	英

Vowels

IPA	wu	uɔ	uei	uan	uən	uʊn	uəŋ	uʊŋ	y	yɛ	yɛn	yn	yʊŋ
Pinyin	wu	wo	wei	wan	wen		weng		yu	yue	yuan	yun	yong
Tongyong Pinyin	wu	wo	wei	wan		wun		wong	yu	yue	yuan	yun	yong
Wade-Giles	wu	wo	wei	wan	wên		wêng		yü	yüeh	yüan	yün	yung
zhuyin	ㄨ	ㄨㄛ	ㄨㄟ	ㄨㄢ	ㄨㄣ		ㄨㄥ		ㄩ	ㄩㄝ	ㄩㄢ	ㄩㄣ	ㄩㄥ
example	五	我	位	完	文	文	翁	翁	玉	月	元	云	用

Consonants

IPA	p	pʰ	m	fəŋ	fʊŋ	tiou	tuei	tʰ	ny	ly	kəɻ	kʰ	xə	tɕiɛn	tɕyʊŋ	tɕʰɪn	ɕyɛn
Pinyin	b	p	m	feng		diu	dui	t	nü	lü	ger	k	he	jian	jiong	qin	xuan
Tongyong Pinyin	b	p	m		fong	diou	duei	t	nyu	lyu	ger	k	he	jian	jyong	cin	syuan
Wade-Giles	p	p'	m	fêng		tiu	tui	t'	nü	lü	kêrh	k'	ho	chien	chiung	ch'in	hsüan
zhuyin	ㄅ	ㄆ	ㄇ	ㄈㄥ		ㄉㄧㄡ	ㄉㄨㄟ	ㄊ	ㄋㄩ	ㄌㄩ	ㄍㄜㄦ	ㄎ	ㄏㄜ	ㄐㄧㄢ	ㄐㄩㄥ	ㄑㄧㄣ	ㄒㄩㄢ
example	玻	婆	末	封	封	丟	兌	特	女	旅	歌儿	可	何	件	窘	秦	宣

Consonants

IPA	tʂə	tʂɚ	tʂʰə	tʂʰɚ	ʂə	ʂɚ	ʐə	ʐɚ	tsə	tsuɔ	tsɨ	tsʰə	tsʰɨ	sə	sɨ
Pinyin	zhe	zhi	che	chi	she	shi	re	ri	ze	zuo	zi	ce	ci	se	si
Tongyong Pinyin	jhe	jhih	che	chih	she	shih	re	rih	ze	zuo	zih	ce	cih	se	sih
Wade-Giles	chê	chih	ch'ê	ch'ih	shê	shih	jê	jih	tsê	tso	tzŭ	ts'ê	tz'ŭ	sê	szŭ
zhuyin	ㄓㄜ	ㄓ	ㄔㄜ	ㄔ	ㄕㄜ	ㄕ	ㄖㄜ	ㄖ	ㄗㄜ	ㄗㄨㄛ	ㄗ	ㄘㄜ	ㄘ	ㄙㄜ	ㄙ
example	哲	之	扯	赤	社	是	惹	日	仄	左	字	策	次	色	斯

Tones

IPA	ma˥˥	ma˧˥	ma˨˩˦	ma˥˩
Pinyin	mā	má	mă	mà
Tongyong Pinyin	ma	maˊ	maˇ	maˋ
Wade-Giles	ma1	ma2	ma3	ma4
zhuyin	ㄇㄚ	ㄇㄚˊ	ㄇㄚˇ	ㄇㄚˋ
example (traditional/simplfied)	媽/妈	麻/麻	馬/马	罵/骂

Influences

Chinese Postal Map Romanization is based on Wade-Giles, but incorporating a number of exceptions that override the systematic rules.

See also

• Cyrillization of Chinese from Wade-Giles
• Daoism-Taoism Romanization issue
• Legge romanization

References

1. ^ Krieger, Larry S.; Kenneth Neill, Dr. Edward Reynolds (1997). "ch. 4", World History; Perspectives on the Past (in English). Illinois: D.C. Heath and Company, p. 82. ISBN 0-669-40533-7. “This book uses the traditional system for writing Chinese names, sometimes called the Wade-Giles system. This system is used in many standard reference books and in all books on China published before 1979.” 

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