Wade-Giles Transcription

  
[ 2005-06-15 19:55:35 pm | Author: Admin ]
                                  Wade-Giles Transcription

The first persons to create a standard transscription of Chinese were T.F. Wade (d. 1895) and H.A. Giles (d. 1935). Their system called Wade-Giles (chin.: Wei Tuoma shi pinyin 威妥瑪式拼音) is quite correct in reflecting the vowels (like "yüen" for [jy n]), but is very complicated in the manner of reflecting consonants. Wade and Giles saw the hard sound "k" as a soft one and added an apostroph to express hard pronunciation: [g an] is written "kuan", [k an] is written k'uan. The sound [ ] (the french "j") is written "j", the sound [ç] is "hs". A great problem to find a word in an index is that the Wade-Giles system makes no difference between the consonants [tç] and [t ] - both "ch'", [d ] and [dj], both "ch". Only in their syllable context, these sounds are recognizable as two different sounds: the vowel-less syllables are added by an "ih", like "ch'ih" for [t ] and "chih" for [d ]. The syllables [tçi] and [dji] are written "ch'i" resp. "chi". The syllables [dz] and [dzu] are written "tzu" resp. "tsu".
The tone pitches are marked by one of four numbers added to the transsciption, like hsiao3. In spite of these shortcomings, the transscription system Wade-Giles has been used for a long time and has been very widespread, especially in the United States where it is still used today by Sinologists.
The table below gives an overview over the Wade-Giles transscription of the Chinese sounds, the brackets include the pronunciation according to the international sound transscription, after the brackets Wade-Giles.

[b] p

[d] t

[g] k

[dj] ch

[d ] ch

[dz] ts, tz

[p] p'

[t] t'

[k] k'

[tç] ch'

[t ] ch'

[ts] ts', tz'

[m] m

[n] n

[x, h] h

[ç] hs

[ ] sh

[s] s

[f] f

[l] l

 

 

[ ] j

 

The vowel-less syllables [d ][t ][ ][ ],[dz][ts][s] are written chih, ch'ih, shih, jih, tzû, tz'û, szû. The simple vowels [i][u][y] are written i, wu, yü. The syllables of two-syllable words are separated by a dash: "Chung-kuo".

 

[a]
a

[o]
o

[ə]
o

[ε]
eh

[ai]
ai

[ei]
ei

[aω]
ao

[ou]
ou

[an]
an

[ən]
en

[aŋ]
ang

[əŋ]
eng

[uŋ]
ung

[ər]
erh

[-i]
i

[-ja]
ia

 

 

[-jε]
ieh

 

 

[-jaω]
iao

[-jou]
iu

[-jεn]
ien

[-in]
in

[-iaŋ]
iang

[-iŋ]
ing

[-juŋ]
iung

 

[-u]
u

[-ωa]
ua

[-ωo]
uo

 

 

[-ωai]
uai

[-ωei]
uei

 

 

[-ωan]
uan

[-un]
un

[-ωaŋ]
uang

[-ωəŋ]
eng

 

 

[-y]
ü

 

 

 

[-yε]
üeh

 

 

 

 

[-yεn]
üan

[-yn]
ün

 

 

 

 

 

  Chinese silk embroidery painting art from Suzhou




[Last Modified By Admin, at 2006-01-05 09:04:57]


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