American speakers are fu*ked. English is not far behind because there is no consistency in the language as pointed out.
My kids are in a Bi-lingual immersion school and they first learn Zhuyin (also called bopomofo) and is popular in Taiwan. It is a phonetic representation of chinese that uses what looks like character strokes. It’s taught to the kids because it doesn’t confuse english phonetics with chinese phonetics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuyin
At the 2nd grade, they are taught Pinyin. Pinyin is a 1:1 mapping of Zhuyin. I can’t find the reference but I heard it was created by a chinese person who studied in Russia. So many of the letters chosen would have a russian bent to it. Some if it, he just had to make up to get a unique equivalent from Zhuyin.
Being American, I hated Pinyin. After understanding it from my kids, I have grown to like it as the best transliteration method. As long as you learn the alphabet (and there is a song for it), you can pronounce all Pinyin fairly accurately (you still need to get the tones). Compare that to “ghoti” which could be prounounced “fish” in english. http://www.englishclub.com/esl-articles/199909.htm
For cantonese, I always hated Yale or Wade. As a Cantonese American, I just can’t get into romanization of Cantonese. That said, for the same reason I’m liking Pinyin, I’m starting to like Jyutping: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyutping
With both Pinyin and Jyutping, I consider them foreign languages and read them like they were meant to be. Just like you wouldn’t put english phonetics on french words, the same goes for these.
No average American or English person is going to know that ‘x’ stands for ‘sh’, or that ‘zh’ stands for ‘j’. As it is written pin yin breaks regularly used rules for pronunciation in English, it’s retarded.
Buy a book… take a Chinese class… Most people can’t pronounce/understand Chinese correctly just by reading either either romanization method. Once you learn the rules, getting those little things are pretty easy. It’s getting the tones which is the hard part.
as we speak, i am sitting here practicing , like i do frequently. I realized, it really takes a lot of effort, and you cant just look at it and know it. It has to be learned. So what if you have to learn a new pronounciation guide just to learn Chinese. Everything else about the language takes a deliberate effort to learn. Anybody who isnt willing to put the time in to learn something new, will not be able to learn Chinese. I dont think i am being clear, but i guess the short of it is:
for me I don’t even try to pronounce the language, I’m really bad at it (probably because I’ve been too lazy to take classes) and I feel its pretty embarassing to destroy the Chinese Language.
I find it interesting that most of those complaining about the Pinyin vs wadegiles are not asian. Gives us the ugly american image once again, how others should change to suit us.
Alot of chinese find the english/american language just as archaic. Hell I’m teaching my 5 year old to pronounce words and more and more I find that they don’t follow the rules and are catagorized as Sight Words.
Wonder when we will change to suit others??
perhaps it will all come down to the language spoken in Blade Runner and 5th Element. A real universal language.
I just stick with reading the characters. Making index cards with short phrases gets me where I need to go with out having people laugh at my pronunciations. Actually once they weren’t laughing:eek:
Pinyin is the international standard for Mandarin. It’s easy to use, once you get the hang of it. I’ve also heard that it was developed by Russians and that’s why it has the weird ‘zh’, ‘q’, et. al. artifacts. I’ve never been able to validate that.
As for Cantonese romanization, I’m partial to jyutping, again because it’s easy to use. Wade-Giles and Yale are strangely stuffy for me. Any Cantonese system is unwieldy however. It’s a very challenging language to romanize.
There is no way you can get everyone here to agree upon anything, so asking us all to stick to one system of romanization is absurd. We are always confronting this problem at the magazine. There is no way to enforce standards. For example, if some one says that the name of their school is the Jackie Chan T’ai Ch’i school, I can’t change that to Jackie Chan Taiji school. It’s their school. They can spell it as they please. I can’t even keep consistent within an article. Another example, let’s say I’m running an article on Choy Lay Fut and I mention masters Lee Koon Hung and Li Siu Hung. They’re brothers but they spell Lee/Le differently. What am I going to do - change their names? It gets even more complicated when you bring in that absolutely random system they use in Taiwan. This is why we always try to include the Chinese character now. If you really want to know, you’ve got to go back to the character.
[QUOTE=GeneChing;781625]There is no way you can get everyone here to agree upon anything, so asking us all to stick to one system of romanization is absurd.[/QUOTE]
If somebody is taking notes that is to be of use to themself, then any system will do. But if they are going to use something that is going to be used by others, pinyin is most useful, but wade-giles still works.
Standards are important. for example, the railroad. Before the standard gauge for the railroad in the US, people had to switch trains every few miles just to get anywhere. Money is also an example. After the Revolutionary War in the US, there were many kinds of money. It was hard to keep track of the exchange rates. But with the introduction of one kind of money, at least in the US, then commerce can flow much more smoothly. I say at least in the US, because there was a cultural hegemony in the US, with a dominant lingua franca. the EU has a single currency now, but since there are many languages, the fate of the currency is still unclear–less labor mobility, for example. But that is not important here.
The point is, we have to have standards in order to connect with eachother. Otherwise progress is impeded. Americans had to learn one alphabet, now if they want to learn Chinese, they have to learn another one. That shouldn’t be a problem for somebody who plans to learn Chinese characters, they obviously have the time and discipilne for languages.
I fully agree there has to be standards and for English speaking people the standard for translating the Chinese language should be to use English phonetics. Russian or Latin or any other language should not factor in. The reason why most westerners are always complaining about pin yin is because it simply doesn’t accurately represent the English language. So how can it be “easier”.
The audience for Kung Fu Magazine here in America speaks English and understands it in the written form as it was taught to them in grammar school. I can tell ya, almost everyone I know who reads Kung Fu Magazine has trouble with the ‘zh’, ‘x’, ‘c’, and ‘q’ letterings of pin yin. The vast majority of readers aren’t going to be Chinese scholor’s, so why impose on them a new system when you could just use the phonetically correct written versions for the words and names?
The chinese use it when learning how to pronounce their own characters. Also, it is used by Chinese people when typing. Who are we to tell them to do different. And why should we have a different system than they do. Why have so many standards?
As pointed out, phonetic system is only to help us to learn the character. And the character part is actually more important.
We learned Zhu Yin Fu Hao system in Taiwan in the 60’. Once we passed the first and second grade. We simply moved on the characters.
Because many words may sound the same. The only way to tell them apart is from the character itself.
Learning the characters is the big hurdle/challenge for every one (Chinese or non Chinese speaking alike).
A dictionary is always a big help.
I am so used to look up words by parts of characters in a Chinese dictionary.
Nowadays, the dictionary is organized “alphabetically” with Pin Yin system.
In the late 70’s, (Cultural revolution ended quietly with Mao’s passing in 1975), We started to be able to read some Chinese medicine and research from mainland. This was the first time, I was able to read the text in simplified Chinese characters. I was able to guess most of them but not every word. So I circled them and asked for help with a dictionary that has pin yin and simplified words.
Before that, they were banned in Taiwan. You needed special clearance to read stuff from mainland.
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Yes, simplified characters are standard in China. However, old characters are making a comeback from signs for bussiness on the street of Beijing, Shanghai etc. And some business or offical communciations with Chinese outside China. Both the businesse and literature circles such as movies, plays, books etc.
The audience for Kung Fu Magazine here in America speaks English and understands it in the written form as it was taught to them in grammar school. I can tell ya, almost everyone I know who reads Kung Fu Magazine has trouble with the ‘zh’, ‘x’, ‘c’, and ‘q’ letterings of pin yin. The vast majority of readers aren’t going to be Chinese scholor’s, so why impose on them a new system when you could just use the phonetically correct written versions for the words and names?
Hey, at least we convert all the metrics to standard…well, most of them… Pinyin is not ‘new’. It is the international standard. If you look at any academic research involving China, they are using pinyin. It’s the standard for the United Nations (but America’s not good about following the U.N. so that’s probably not much of an argument). We use pinyin when we can. There are obvious exceptions like our very title, the Kung Fu Tai Chi, which should be gongfu taiji in pinyin. There we must bow to popular opinion. But in other terms like quan, we’ll stick to the pinyin when possible. If a title of the school is SLF’s Tai Chi Chuan school, we’ll use Chuan, and remain consistent through the article, although we may note the pinyin for reference. Using pinyin empowers anyone doing serious research in martial arts. It may be harder on the general reader, but that’s a trade off.
The real problem is that there is no “phonetically correct written versions” of Chinese. It’s a different language and you simply cannot describe all of the sounds using our alphabet. Let’s go back to Kung Fu/gongfu. The voice onset time of the word ‘gong’ is right smack in between a ‘g’ and a ‘k’ (you make the same motion with your mouth for either letter, but you voice a ‘k’ earlier than a ‘g’). So how do you spell it phonetically correct? You can’t really. Even in America, it’s ambiguous. The term ‘gung ho’ has been with us for a long time. That ‘gung’ is the same character as in Kung Fu.
The bottom line is that Chinese is not easy stuff. Translation is very difficult. If you’ve done any work in language translation, you know that X does NOT equal X. But then again, if you want easy martial arts, you’d be better off trying something different that Kung Fu. The very definition of the word Kung Fu implies that it’s going to be work - hard work. You want the ‘real’ Kung Fu? Work hard.
[QUOTE=Siu Lum Fighter;781958]I fully agree there has to be standards and for English speaking people the standard for translating the Chinese language should be to use English phonetics. Russian or Latin or any other language should not factor in. The reason why most westerners are always complaining about pin yin is because it simply doesn’t accurately represent the English language. So how can it be “easier”.
The audience for Kung Fu Magazine here in America speaks English and understands it in the written form as it was taught to them in grammar school. I can tell ya, almost everyone I know who reads Kung Fu Magazine has trouble with the ‘zh’, ‘x’, ‘c’, and ‘q’ letterings of pin yin. The vast majority of readers aren’t going to be Chinese scholor’s, so why impose on them a new system when you could just use the phonetically correct written versions for the words and names?[/QUOTE]
It’s easier because it is foreign and allows someone who wants to get the correct pronounciation and willing to put in a little effort to get it. We don’t require French, Spanish or German words to be spelled phonetically. Why should we reqire Chinese? PinYin is not just a nice idea for the convenience of Americans. It is how Chinese can type and read using the modern english alphabet.
It’s also not Russian phonetics. The creater studied in Russia (I believe) so he chose characters that were familiar to him but I doubt a Russian would have a much easier time then an American in sounding things out without some training.
On top of that, what is the phonetic language of America? There isn’t one. At least Pinyin/Jyutping is consistent. Take the chinese in your screen name. Siu Lum. In Jyutping, it is Siu2 Lam4. Given that, you can go to a site like http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/lexi-can/main.php and ge the pronounciation. According to Webster representation, if we were to use a real English phonetic, it would be Syoo Luhm.
No one is forcing anyone to learn Pinyin but asking that we just use the correct phonetic spelling is naive or self centered.
The real problem is that there is no “phonetically correct written versions” of Chinese. It’s a different language and you simply cannot describe all of the sounds using our alphabet. Let’s go back to Kung Fu/gongfu. The voice onset time of the word ‘gong’ is right smack in between a ‘g’ and a ‘k’ (you make the same motion with your mouth for either letter, but you voice a ‘k’ earlier than a ‘g’). So how do you spell it phonetically correct? You can’t really. Even in America, it’s ambiguous. The term ‘gung ho’ has been with us for a long time. That ‘gung’ is the same character as in Kung Fu.
I see your point about ‘g’ and ‘k’, Gene. It’s the same with ‘t’ and ‘d’. It’s hard to know which letter to use when it sounds like it’s somewhere in the middle. But ‘x’ for ‘sh’? ‘C’ for ‘ts’ and ‘q’ for ‘ch’?
I think, at the very least, pin yin should be revised. There just doesn’t seem to be any reason to spell certain words like that. Of course, I’m in the camp that believes the French language should be revised as well. If something is broken, fix it. That’s what I always say. I guess I’m just one of those radical linguists:cool:
