Wade-Giles . Way of naming Thomas Francis Wade and the system created by him known as the Wade-Giles System or Wade-Giles for short .
Summary
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- 1 The man
- 2 The System
- 3 History of the system
- 4 System Features
- 5 List of differences with the hanyu pinyin system
- 6 References
- 7 Sources
The man
Thomas Francis Wade was a British diplomat in China, serving as a Cantonese interpreter and as a vice consul in Shanghai . In 1859 , he published his Peking Syllabary1, a work in which he compiled a list of the syllables of the Pekingese dialect of Mandarin in the transcription system that he himself had designed.
After retiring from the diplomatic career and returning to England in 1883 , Thomas Francis Wade inaugurated the chair of Chinese language at the University of Cambridge . His successor in that position would be Herbert Allen Giles, another diplomat who in 1892 had published a bilingual dictionary in Shanghai , 2 which in 1912 would be republished in London, in a revised and expanded version.
The system
Giles’s dictionary used a modification of Wade’s method of transcription. It is this second version of the system, due to Giles, that would become the main Chinese transcription system used in the West during the 20th century.
Known as the Wade-Giles System ; It is a method of romanization (transcription into the Latin alphabet ) of Mandarin Chinese . The system was devised by the British Thomas Francis Wade in the mid- nineteenth century , and was modified by the also British Herbert Allen Giles , author of an influential Chinese-English dictionary published in 1892 in China, and Wade’s successor in the chair of language. China at the University of Cambridge .
The Wade-Giles method was the most widespread system for the transcription of Chinese names in the West throughout the 20th century, until the 1980s, when the use of the hanyu pinyin system, or simply pinyin, developed and promoted by the state became widespread. Chinese. In France there was a modified version of this system. In the Spanish-speaking world there has never been a proper transcription system for Mandarin Chinese, so the use of Wade-Giles was practically universal until the recent generalization of pinyin.
Examples of names transcribed in Wade-Giles are ” Mao Tse-Tung “, ” Chu En-Lai ” or ” Teng Chiao-Ping “, whose pinyin spellings are Mao Zedong , Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping respectively.
System history
Since the beginning of the 20th century , the Wade-Giles system was also used by the Chinese themselves to transcribe their names into the Latin alphabet. Even today, in Taiwan and among Chinese communities abroad, names transcribed according to this method are frequent, as manifested in surnames such as “Chang”, “Chu” or “Hsiang”. In mainland China, however, the use of Wade-Giles has been totally abandoned, using only the official pinyin system for personal names and place names, so the previous surnames have become “Zhang”, “Zhu” and “Xiang” today.
In Taiwan, the unofficial use of Wade-Giles is manifested, in addition to many personal names, in toponymy, as in the case of the cities of Taipei or Kaohsiung. In Taiwanese usage, as was the case on the Continent before the spread of pinyin, the omission of apostrophes and umlauts of the system is frequent, which introduces ambiguity in the representation of syllables. Thus, the names “Taiwan” and “Taipei” themselves should be “T’aiwan” and “T’aipei”, with the apostrophe indicating the aspirated condition of the consonant. The habitual omission of diacritical marks has made these names have consolidated as “Taiwan” and “Taipei”, introducing phonological ambiguity, one of the main criticisms that have been made of this system. The use of Wade-Giles has declined in Taiwan in recent years due to the promotion of other official romanization systems, since 1928) and today the tongyong pinyin.
System caracteristics
The Wade-Giles system uses fewer letters of the Latin alphabet than other Chinese romanization systems. There are two main reasons for this. First, pairs of consonants that differ only by being aspirated or not aspirated are written with the same letter, to which an apostrophe is added in aspirated versions. Thus, while pinyin uses the consonantsb, p, d, t, g, k, z, c, zh and ch, in Wade-Giles the corresponding series is p, p ‘, t, t’, k, k ‘, ts, ts’, ch, ch ‘. This notation has the advantage of revealing the similarity between the two versions of these pairs of consonants. The major drawback of this feature of the system is the frequent omission of these apostrophes, either by mistake or for typographical convenience, which causes ambiguities in the syllables. The second reason why Wade-Giles uses fewer consonants than other transcription methods is that it uses ch and ch ‘to also represent the palatal j and q consonants of pinyin. This eliminates the distinction that pinyin makes between j and zh on the one hand and q and ch on the other. This absence of distinction does not detract from the coherence of the system, since the palatal versions are always combined with the vowels i and ü, which never follow the retroflexes. For this reason, both pairs of consonants, differentiated in systems such as pinyin or bopomofo, can be considered as allophone varieties of the same sounds. In pinyin this fact is less apparent due to the double use of the letters i and u, the first of which can be used for the so-called “empty rhyme”, as in shi (shih in Wade-Giles), and the second of which is used instead of ü with those consonants that cannot be combined with the / u / sound, as in the case of xu (hsü in wade-Giles). The Wade-Giles method, on the other hand, always uses ü for the sound of the French u or German ü, and the digraph ih for the empty rhyme. both pairs of consonants, differentiated in systems such as pinyin or bopomofo, can be considered as allophone varieties of the same sounds. In pinyin this fact is less apparent due to the double use of the letters i and u, the first of which can be used for the so-called “empty rhyme”, as in shi (shih in Wade-Giles), and the second of which is used instead of ü with those consonants that cannot be combined with the / u / sound, as in the case of xu (hsü in wade-Giles). The Wade-Giles method, on the other hand, always uses ü for the sound of the French u or German ü, and the digraph ih for the empty rhyme. both pairs of consonants, differentiated in systems such as pinyin or bopomofo, can be considered as allophone varieties of the same sounds. In pinyin this fact is less apparent due to the double use of the letters i and u, the first of which can be used for the so-called “empty rhyme”, as in shi (shih in Wade-Giles), and the second of which is used instead of ü with those consonants that cannot be combined with the / u / sound, as in the case of xu (hsü in wade-Giles). The Wade-Giles method, on the other hand, always uses ü for the sound of the French u or German ü, and the digraph ih for the empty rhyme. In pinyin this fact is less apparent due to the double use of the letters i and u, the first of which can be used for the so-called “empty rhyme”, as in shi (shih in Wade-Giles), and the second of which is used instead of ü with those consonants that cannot be combined with the / u / sound, as in the case of xu (hsü in wade-Giles). The Wade-Giles method, on the other hand, always uses ü for the sound of the French u or German ü, and the digraph ih for the empty rhyme. In pinyin this fact is less apparent due to the double use of the letters i and u, the first of which can be used for the so-called “empty rhyme”, as in shi (shih in Wade-Giles), and the second of which is used instead of ü with those consonants that cannot be combined with the / u / sound, as in the case of xu (hsü in wade-Giles). The Wade-Giles method, on the other hand, always uses ü for the sound of the French u or German ü, and the digraph ih for the empty rhyme.
The four-tone system of Mandarin was often represented in Wade-Giles by numerical superscripts, used only in dictionaries and reference works on the Chinese language, but never in name transcriptions.
List of differences with the hanyu pinyin system
The differences between the two systems are listed below. To avoid confusion when mentioning sounds, the letters in the hanyu pinyin system are shown in italics, and those corresponding to the Wade-Giles in bold.
- The consonants b, d, and g are represented in Wade-Giles by p , t, and k , respectively, while their corresponding aspirates p , t, and k are p ‘ , t’ , k ‘ , with an apostrophe indicating aspiration.
- zhis represented by ch , while z is ts , except for the syllable zi (see below). The corresponding aspirated versions, ch and c , are represented, as in the previous case, by adding an apostrophe: ch ‘ and ts’ .
- jand q are represented by ch and ch ‘ respectively, the same as zh and ch . This does not introduce ambiguity into the system, since these two groups of consonants always appear with different vowels, so they can be considered allophones .
- xis represented by hs .
- ris represented by j (the Mandarin r has a sound that is similar to that of the French j ), except in its use at the end of the syllable to indicate the phenomenon of rotation, typical of the Pekingese dialect.
- ongis written ung (the sound in Mandarin is intermediate between the / o / and the / u / of Spanish).
- ianis written ien (closest to the actual pronunciation).
- The syllables zhi, chi , shi, and ri are represented by chih , ch’ih , shih, and jih , respectively.
- The syllables zi, ci, and si are represented by tzŭ (or tsŭ ), tz’ŭ (or ts’ŭ ), and ssŭ (or szŭ ).
- The vowel eis written ê when it represents a schwa sound, as in ên or pên .
- The vowel eis written eh at the end of diphthong. For example, lie is written lieh , jie is written chieh .
- uis also written u when it represents the sound of the Spanish u , but it is always written with umlauts, ü , when it represents the sound of the French u . For example, syllables qu , ju , xu and yu are written ch’ü , chü , hsü and yü
- youis represented as u (the syllable yu of the pinyin is yü , according to the above).
- uois simply written like or in some syllables, like zuo , cuo , ruo , that become tso , ts’o and jo , respectively.
