Spelling and pronouncing Chinese words.

Western writing is done by means of a phonetic alphabet.  ("Phonetic" means that each letter represents a sound, and so written words represent sounds.)  Classical Chinese writing did not use a phonetic alphabet.  It is written in characters that originally represented pictures of things rather than the sounds of words.  (For example, the character for "bright" originally represented a picture of a sun and a moon, two bright objects.  The word is pronounced "ming", but this sound is not represented by the written character.)

Beginning in the 1700's, Westerners tried to devise ways of representing the sounds of Chinese words by means of Western phonetic alphabets.  Unfortunately, there were very many different attempts by scholars from various different Western countries.  This effort was also complicated by the fact that China is a very large country and people from different regions in China pronounce Chinese words very differently.  Most early attempts to write Chinese words in Western alphabets were based on pronunciations common in Southern China.  For example, people in some parts of China pronounce the name of China's capital "Peiking", but people who live in this city call it "Beijing."

In the mid-twentieth century, most English speaking scholars were using a system called "Wade-Giles" (after Robert Wade and Herbert Giles).  But in the last 30 years more and more English speaking scholars have switched over to a system sponsored by the mainland Chinese government, usually called "Pinyin."  This makes for some confusion because students today will be reading some books using the Wade-Giles system and some books using the Pinyin system.

One of the main differences concerns the use of apostrophes in the Wade-Giles system to indicate the hardening of the sounds of certain consonants, d hardened to t, b hardened to p, j hardened to ch, g hardened to k.

 

Wade-Giles Pinyin
tao = dao dao
t'ao = tao tao
pao = bao bao
p'ao = pao pao
chin = jin jin
ch'in = chin chin
kung= gung gong
k'ung=kung kong
tzu=dzuh zi=dzuh
   

 

Wade-Giles Pinyin Approximate

English Pronunciation

Chou Zhou (dynasty) Joe
Chu Hsi Zhuxi (Neoconfucian thinker) Jushee
Ching Jing (a classic book) Jing
Ch'ing Qing (dynasty) Ching

 

"Confucius" is a Latinized version of Chinese K'ung-fu-tzu, Pinyin Kongfuzi, more often referred to as K'ung-tzu, Pinyin Kongzi.

"Mencius" is a Latinized version of Chinese Meng-tzu, Pinyin Mengzi

 

 

 

 

 

The assigned readings for this class usually use the Wade-Giles system. 

If in some given writing, some words are spelled with an apostrophe, or you see dashes between words, or you see the diphthong "hs", this is a sign that the writer is using the Wade-Giles system.

Note that, especially when spelled in Western alphabets, words spelled the same may have many different meanings.  For example, two entirely different words, one meaning "a classic book" and one meaning "quiet, still" are both spelled ching/jing, but represented by different Chinese characters (written Chinese characters are much less ambiguous in their visual form than when spoken).

In general Pinyin looks more phonetic to Western readers.  In a few cases both systems still provide difficulties, sometimes due to the different character of some Chinese sounds not easily represented in Western alphabets.

Wade-Giles "Lao-tzu" is represented in Pinyin by "Laozi", both pronounced laodz' (a buzzing sound not followed by an obvious vowel, closest to the English laodzuh).

Chinese has a sound between "s" and "sh", represented in Wade-Giles by "hs", in Pinyin by "x".

Chinese has many more different consonants in the range j to s to ch, represented in Pinyin by j, zh, x, s, ch, and q.

In both systems, "ou" represents a long o, not a u.  (Wade-Giles "Chou" Pinyin "Zhou" are both pronounced like the English name "Joe")

In both systems, "en" and "eng" are pronounced like English "un" and "ung".  Meng-tzu or Mengzi is pronounced something like Mungdzuh.

In both systems, "ui" is pronounced something like "way".  Hui-neng is pronounced more like "hway nung."  "U" followed by a vowel is always pronounced like a "w."

 

"Confucius" is a Latinized version of K'ung-fu-tzu (Wade-Giles) or Kongfuzi (Pinyin)

"Mencius" is a Latinized version of Meng-Tzu (Wade Giles) or Mengzi (Pinyin)

(These Latinized names were invented by Jesuit missionaries, the first Westerners to go to China and report on Chinese thought to Western scholars.  At this time (17th century) Latin was still prominent as a language of scholars in Europe, especially among Roman Catholic scholars.)