Does Wade-Giles romanization look old-fashioned to any of you?

I’ve been researching a project on World-War-II-era China, so naturally many of the older documents use the Wade-Giles method of romanising the Chinese characters, rather than the newer pinyin system. Since I’m so used to the pinyin system, seeing all of the hyphens and apostrophes looks strange to me. Am I alone in this?

I sort of get this, but I don’t have enough exposure to either system to really be like: “whoah, that’s wierd”.

I first learned Chinese history from slightly older sources, so no it isn’t much of an issue for me. Qing, Ch’ing - it’s all good. In fact if anything I have an unfortunate habit of being inconsistent and mixing the two freely on those rare occasions I write something having to do with China.

  • Tamerlane

I think Pinyin looks new and modern and up-to-date to me, although Wade-Giles isn’t so old school as to be strange, yet, except maybe in place names.

It is to me, though I’m an ABC born in the late 80s. W-G just looks weird and unphonetical.

the w-g makes more sense to me. not happy with the new style.

Wade-Giles does look old to me. It has a faintly musty, Victorian air. Pinyin makes me think of freeways, soaring multicoloured towers, and factories: the China of the early 21st century.

Wade-Giles reminds me of the months that I spent on a steamer in my linen suit and straw hat laying cable for the newest generation of telegraph-machine on the route from Siam to Formosa, learning the Oriental tongue from my hand-cranked Victrola.

I am more accustomed to WG, so it seems more normal to me. Pinyin seems more like Esperanto (artificial, invented). But that’s just my impression. I don’t speak Chinese and I assume neither system is too accurate.

I’m Chinese and I was taught to read Pinyin. I can’t read Wade-Giles. Those darn apostrophes get me every time. But yeah, Wade-Giles brings to mind those murky days from Before I Was Born, Victorian England, or like reading something written in the 50s - you can understand perfectly what they’re saying, it just seems… old.

wg is good for linguists but since i’m not one it looks goofy.

for writing chinese on the computer, pinyin is much easier since you don’t have to type in the apostrophe.

other thing about wg, is that many records are written in a bastardized form without the apostrophe, thus making it even more difficult to guess the correct characters and pronunciation.

i learned pinyin in 1980.

Anyone have a link to show us both, side by side?

You asked for it!

thanks ratatoskk. that really helps.

how on earth (or china) does chen and zhen sound the same?!

i have no clue what to do with the z in the pinyin. the c of the w-g, not a problem, just fine.
i figure it is just one of the weird wires in my brain.

At least it’s not Vietnamese, with all those really weird accent marks.

P.S.: Yes, I KNOW that Vietnamese is an easier language than the various Chinese dialects. I’m referring only to all of those funny accent marks. Those just gotta be hell to keep straight.

I learned Mandarin Chinese using Zhuyin Fuhao. I think its best because it doesn’t use Roman letters at all. The pronunciation symbol "ㄚ"stands for a sound that is similar to ONE of the sounds that the English letter “a” stands for. The sound is the one your dentist asks for when he says, say “Ah”. The “a” in English, however, has a few different sounds, so when you use it to describe a particular sound in Chinese, the English (or German, Spanish, etc.) speaker can’t be sure which sound the letter is representing.

I prefer Wade-Giles. Pinyin just looks ugly and, well, compressed somehow.

Empress Dowager Tz’u-Hsi sounds dignified and formidable. But Cixi – looks like it rhymes with Trixie!

I like them both. Wade-Giles for the hyphens and apostrophes, pinyan for the smoother look.

I’m no linguist or Chinese expert –

My opinion is that a Wade-Giles type system is more suitable for documents that are entirely in English. If linguists want their own system, that’s fine. If Chinese speakers want their own system for Chinese-centric purposes, that’s fine. But, in my view, something like “Peiching” is much more useful for an English context than “Beijing.” The W-G apostrophes are a little weird – my choice would be to go with p/ph for the unaspirated/aspirated pairs rathern than b/p (Pinyin) or p’/p (W-G).