# How should Asian names be transcribed into the Roman alphabet? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 19, 2019, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-asian-names-be-transcribed-into-the-roman-alphabet/831353 "2019-03-19T05:47:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2019, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-asian-names-be-transcribed-into-the-roman-alphabet/831353/21 "2019-05-24T02:02:37Z")
There is no way to Romanize Chinese in such a way that an English speaker will be able to just look at a word and read it correctly, with no training, because Chinese has sounds that don’t occur in English. “Peking” uses the “postal Romanization” system, while “Bejing” uses the more modern “pinyin” system. But even in pinyin there are many letters that couldn’t possibly be pronounced correctly by an English speaker without training, like Q, X, C, etc. (I once heard a US newcaster pronounce the name “Qin” as “kwin”. I think Bob Dylan wrote a song about him.) ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2019, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-asian-names-be-transcribed-into-the-roman-alphabet/831353/22 "2019-05-24T03:30:41Z")
> [@Ronald\_Raygun](#): > > I don’t know about Mumbai, but “Peking” is closer to the way the name would be spoken in the southern port cities of China, where most of Western contact took place. In Cantonese, it sounds very much like “puck-ging”, with a hard g. In Mandarin, it sounds more like “bay-jing”, jing as in jingle. The difference between a “b” and a ”p” sound is the amount of aspiration, with “p” more heavily aspirated. In Mandarin, the “b” sound is more aspirated than in English. My Taiwanese wife and I communicate in Japanese and sometimes confuse each other if we are saying a “g” or a “k” or a “t” or “d.” I don’t have problems understanding Japanese spoken by native Japanese or native English speakers and she doesn’t have problems understanding native Japanese spoken by native Japanese or native Mandarin speakers. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2019, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-asian-names-be-transcribed-into-the-roman-alphabet/831353/23 "2019-05-24T03:49:57Z")
> [@FlikTheBlue](#): > > For some names I think it’s due to tradition based on how the original transliteration was done back in the day. ISTM that the people doing the work back then did a poor job with some of the names, and it’s taken time to fix the names as rendered in English. Bombay is now Mumbai. Peking is now Beijing. Those are different enough that I wonder why the original transliteration used the former when the latter are closer to how they actually sound. Couldn’t they have started off with Mumbai, Beijing, and Tailand? If they had, it wouldn’t be as much of an ongoing issue. Mumbai is not a different Romanization of the name. Bombay is a partial anglicisation of a Portuguese name meaning “good bay”. Mumbai probably comes from the name of a Koli goddess, although that’s disputed. As far as ‘Tailand’, really? No way most English speakers are going to pronounce that correctly. ---
**Author:** ![lingyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d2c977/32.png) [@lingyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lingyi)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2019, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-asian-names-be-transcribed-into-the-roman-alphabet/831353/24 "2019-05-24T03:51:33Z")
This is Korean, but illustrates the issue with romanization of Asian languages. Native Koreans trying to read romanized Hangul. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuQEDKZpKsg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuQEDKZpKsg) ---
**Author:** ![lingyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d2c977/32.png) [@lingyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lingyi)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2019, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-asian-names-be-transcribed-into-the-roman-alphabet/831353/25 "2019-05-24T04:20:49Z")
> [@Ronald\_Raygun](#): > > I don’t know about Mumbai, but “Peking” is closer to the way the name would be spoken in the southern port cities of China, where most of Western contact took place. In Cantonese, it sounds very much like “puck-ging”, with a hard g. In Mandarin, it sounds more like “bay-jing”, jing as in jingle. “Bei jing” is the official Chinese pronunciation in the formal Northern Beijing dialect. IMO, Cantonese isn’t a dialect, but it’s own language since it’s so different (spoken and written) from Northern Mandarin. “puck ging” is at least close enough to the Mandarin pronounciation, but would a non Chinese speaker know that “Siu lam” (少林) is the Cantonese pronunciation of “Shao lin”? As for romanizing Asian languages, here’s a couple of videos that illustrates how different Mandarin dialects are and the impossibility of full romanization: Southern and Northern Chinese talking about their vacation in Mandarin. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfNbq3s\_51o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfNbq3s_51o) Southern (Shanghainese) speakers trying to speak in a Northern dialect. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I456iih6wbY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I456iih6wbY) ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2019, 10:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-asian-names-be-transcribed-into-the-roman-alphabet/831353/26 "2019-05-24T10:16:20Z")
You could consider uu for the /u/ sound. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2019, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-asian-names-be-transcribed-into-the-roman-alphabet/831353/27 "2019-05-28T18:58:59Z")
> [@UDS](#): > > How was it pronounced in the past? Something like La Oar. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2019, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-asian-names-be-transcribed-into-the-roman-alphabet/831353/28 "2019-05-28T19:34:04Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > there’s just a hint of an R from the vowels, as in English ‘adieu.’ This sentence is gibberish to me, a lifelong English speaker. > [@TokyoBayer](#): > > The difference between a “b” and a ”p” sound is the amount of aspiration, with “p” more heavily aspirated. In Mandarin, the “b” sound is more aspirated than in English. That’s not _the_ difference between a “b” and a “p.” In fact, in my view, it’s the wrong thing to identify as a difference. The basic difference is that one is voiced and the other is voiceless. Either one could be aspirated or unaspirated, although aspirated “b” is unlikely in English. ---
**Author:** ![Terminus\_Est](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terminus_est/32/3087_2.png) [@Terminus\_Est](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terminus_Est)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2019, 7:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-asian-names-be-transcribed-into-the-roman-alphabet/831353/29 "2019-05-29T07:28:02Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > That’s not _the_ difference between a “b” and a “p.” In fact, in my view, it’s the wrong thing to identify as a difference. The basic difference is that one is voiced and the other is voiceless. Either one could be aspirated or unaspirated, although aspirated “b” is unlikely iNn English. **TokyoBayer** is talking about the difference between the “b” and “p” in Pinyin. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2019, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-asian-names-be-transcribed-into-the-roman-alphabet/831353/30 "2019-05-29T21:09:30Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > This sentence is gibberish to me, a lifelong English speaker. In the finest tradition of insisting on writing phonetics without using a phonetic alphabet. The only thing you can expect from a transliteration is consistency, which is expressed by using spellings which conform to rules such that the original pronunciation is recoverable from the spelling. The IPA does that, but I do believe people around the world would literally burst into flame were any language to decide to use the IPA instead of some _ad hoc_ scheme, so the next best outcome is for the _ad hoc_ scheme to map to the IPA on a completely predictable basis. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2019, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-asian-names-be-transcribed-into-the-roman-alphabet/831353/31 "2019-05-29T21:12:16Z")
As a basic matter, we English speakers can’t expect to understand the pronunciation of an _English_ word based solely on its spelling without being taught it. I don’t think we deserve to expect that we will understand the pronunciation of a (transliterated or not) non-English word based solely on its spelling without being taught it. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2019, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-asian-names-be-transcribed-into-the-roman-alphabet/831353/32 "2019-05-29T21:46:13Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > As a basic matter, we English speakers can’t expect to understand the pronunciation of an _English_ word based solely on its spelling without being taught it. > > I don’t think we deserve to expect that we will understand the pronunciation of a (transliterated or not) non-English word based solely on its spelling without being taught it. Transliteration schemes are for the people educated in the language being transliterated. _They_ both need and deserve an unambiguous system. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2019, 5:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-asian-names-be-transcribed-into-the-roman-alphabet/831353/33 "2019-05-30T05:51:27Z")
I think there are standard transliteration ideas that are widespread. _Sushi_ could be pronounced correctly by most Europeans from the spelling alone. A first step for Anglophones, IMHO, is to divorce themselves from peculiar conventions unique to English. For example, my Thai friend writes his name ‘Ton’ and pronounces it to rhyme with English ‘Tone’ but without aspiration. I find it absurd to render his name as ‘Done’ but this is what a certain English teacher recommends (since the English ‘E’ terminal changes the medial vowel). There is no universal solution (except for something like IPA). Thai tones and vowels get too complicated for all variations to be transcribed easily. Some languages have weird consonants (e.g. English’s ‘THe THistle’, consonants present in VERY few languages, I think). But with a few simple rules (e.g. writing of ‘ph’ to denote aspirated P) a fair system of transliteration is obtained. ---
**Author:** ![Sleel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/73ab20/32.png) [@Sleel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sleel)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2019, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-asian-names-be-transcribed-into-the-roman-alphabet/831353/34 "2019-05-30T06:41:31Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > Transliteration schemes are for the people educated in the language being transliterated. _They_ both need and deserve an unambiguous system. No, transliteration is only useful for language learners at the most basic level, a hinderance to intermediate learners, and completely unnecessary for advanced and native speakers. The main reason for the existence of _any_ transliteration is to enable people who have no proficiency in the native writing systems, nor necessarily any familiarity with the language, to function temporarily in that country and with people from that country. The Thai people don’t need a consistent romanization system; they’ve already got their own writing system. The people who need to read transliterations are those who don’t know much, if anything, about Thai. Several years ago, I wrote [this diatribe](http://shindoisshin.net/blog/2013/9/4/vd1sulqxnjc1i6h9g9h46smtrt8tj2) about the difficulty of learning Japanese, where I touched on the various romanization systems in use in Japan. I meant to write a follow-up specifically focusing on romanization for non-Japanese speakers, disambiguating some things for those who are curious about Japan but will probably never study Japanese, but I haven’t been able to set aside enough time to do it properly, with recorded examples, pictures, etc. Japanese is phonologically pretty simple, and yet there are stil several competing versions of transliteration. The romanization system chosen as [the “official” one](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunrei-shiki_romanization) by the Japanese government is — how do I say this politely? — complete dogshit. No native speaker of a country that uses the Latin alphabet could intuitively read anything written in _Kunrei-shiki_ without butchering it beyond the comprehension of a Japanese speaker. By the time you figure out how to read things consistently and correctly using it, you could already have learned _hiragana_ and maybe _katakana_. Both only took me a few days to at most a week of sporadic practice to memorize and learn how to use them. _Kanji_ study is effectively endless, but the syllabaries are easy and consistent enough to learn in a very short time. Once you know either of them, there is zero need to write notes in “English”. What are the transliterations for? Tourists. There’s a reason the existing road signs and railway signs and maps use one flavor or another of Hepburn romanization despite the official status of a different system; non-Japanese have a fighting chance of reading it, writing it, and reproducing it in a way that might possibly be comprehensible to a Japanese speaker. ---
**Author:** ![Sleel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/73ab20/32.png) [@Sleel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sleel)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2019, 6:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-asian-names-be-transcribed-into-the-roman-alphabet/831353/35 "2019-05-30T06:58:43Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > I think there are standard transliteration ideas that are widespread. _Sushi_ could be pronounced correctly by most Europeans from the spelling alone. You put this up while I was writing my post. Actually, writing sushi with the current official transliteration would render it _susi_. The spelling of sushi came from the older Hepburn system — which I obviously prefer. IMO, once something is adopted as a word into English, it has become English, and we should just continue to use whatever rendering in English we decided to stick on it. We don’t change the name of countries like Germany to the more-correct Deutschland, for example. If you want to use a more correct form or use the original word in transliteration, we already have a convention: use _italics_, as in “There is a certain _je ne sais quoi_ to including foreign phrases in your English sentences.” ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2019, 9:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-asian-names-be-transcribed-into-the-roman-alphabet/831353/36 "2019-06-03T09:50:36Z")
> [@Sleel](#): > > Japanese is phonologically pretty simple, and yet there are stil several competing versions of transliteration. The romanization system chosen as [the “official” one](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunrei-shiki_romanization) by the Japanese government is — how do I say this politely? — complete dogshit. > > No native speaker of a country that uses the Latin alphabet could intuitively read anything written in _Kunrei-shiki_ without butchering it beyond the comprehension of a Japanese speaker. None at all? None, none, none? Your native language is one which has no internal transliteration, and whose speakers will instinctively butcher the very-simple vowels of Japanese; for other people it is possible that the system you find so incoherent is a lot easier than it is for you. For starters, speakers of Italian and Spanish would need to pronounce the vowels exactly as in our native languages; for many such people who have heard from Anglos that Japanese pronunciation is “so difficult”, those vowels are a welcome surprise. I see some consonant digraphs I’d have to ask how to pronounce, but that’s a matter of minutes, not weeks. ---
**Author:** ![Rysto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ecccb3/32.png) [@Rysto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rysto)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2019, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-asian-names-be-transcribed-into-the-roman-alphabet/831353/37 "2019-06-03T14:42:08Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > None at all? None, none, none? Your native language is one which has no internal transliteration, and whose speakers will instinctively butcher the very-simple vowels of Japanese; for other people it is possible that the system you find so incoherent is a lot easier than it is for you. For starters, speakers of Italian and Spanish would need to pronounce the vowels exactly as in our native languages; for many such people who have heard from Anglos that Japanese pronunciation is “so difficult”, those vowels are a welcome surprise. I see some consonant digraphs I’d have to ask how to pronounce, but that’s a matter of minutes, not weeks. It’s the consonants he’s complaining about, and they’re awful and can only be understood if you have background in the hiragana. The troublesome points: - Syllables starting with an “s” are pronounced as expected, except for “si” which is pronounced “shi” - Syllables starting with a “z” are pronounced as expected, except for “zi” which is pronounced “ji” - Syllables starting with “h” are pronounced as expected, except for “hu” which is pronounced something like “fu” (the consonant does not have an exact analogue in English) - “ta”, “te” and “to” are pronounced as expected, but “ti” is pronounced “chi” and “tu” is pronounced “tsu” - “sya”, “syu” and “syo” are pronounced “sha”, “shu” and “sho” - “tya”, “tyu” and “tyo” are pronounced “cha”, “chu” and “cho” - “zya”, “zyu” and “zyo” are pronounced “ja”, “ju”, and “jo” Other romanizations of the language use the same vowels, making it no more difficult for speakers of romance languages, without this unnecessarily convoluted system of recording consonants. Kunrei-shiki (shouldn’t that be Kunrê-siki, actually?) pretends that Japanese phonology is significantly simpler than it is in reality, making it significantly more difficult for beginners to pick up. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2019, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-asian-names-be-transcribed-into-the-roman-alphabet/831353/38 "2019-06-03T15:21:30Z")
> [@Rysto](#): > > - Syllables starting with an “s” are pronounced as expected, except for “si” which is pronounced “shi” > - Syllables starting with a “z” are pronounced as expected, except for “zi” which is pronounced “ji” > - Syllables starting with “h” are pronounced as expected, except for “hu” which is pronounced something like “fu” (the consonant does not have an exact analogue in English) > - “ta”, “te” and “to” are pronounced as expected, but “ti” is pronounced “chi” and “tu” is pronounced “tsu” > - “sya”, “syu” and “syo” are pronounced “sha”, “shu” and “sho” > - “tya”, “tyu” and “tyo” are pronounced “cha”, “chu” and “cho” > - “zya”, “zyu” and “zyo” are pronounced “ja”, “ju”, and “jo” Which “j”? Which “z”? Which “ch”? ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2019, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-asian-names-be-transcribed-into-the-roman-alphabet/831353/39 "2019-06-03T15:48:40Z")
> [@Rysto](#): > > Kunrei-shiki (shouldn’t that be Kunrê-siki, actually?) pretends that Japanese phonology is significantly simpler than it is in reality, making it significantly more difficult for beginners to pick up. Wikipedia (unsubstantiatedly!) claims that the main users of Kunrei-shiki are native speakers of Japanese and linguists studying Japanese. Indeed, it doesn’t seem as popular outside Japan as Hepburn. As for beginners, when I was a beginner there was no Romanization system used at all; why would there be? It doesn’t help you read and write. ---
**Author:** ![Rysto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ecccb3/32.png) [@Rysto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rysto)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2019, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-asian-names-be-transcribed-into-the-roman-alphabet/831353/40 "2019-06-03T16:20:52Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Which “j”? Which “z”? Which “ch”? That’s not at all germane to the point. The point is that they could have picked consonants from basically any major West European language and it would have been understandable to most speakers of Western languages. Instead they use a system that: a) Is not consistent in the pronunciation of consonants (e.g. ta vs. ti vs tu) b) Has invented its own system of digraphs unnecessarily (e.g. zya) c) Is inconsistent in how certain consonant sounds are represented (e.g si vs sya) Now, of course, you can make similar complaints about the orthography of European languages. I certainly won’t claim that there is any consistency in English. However English orthography was established over 400 years ago and much of the present difficulties in divergences between spelling and pronunciation come down to shifts in English pronunciation over that time period. Kunrei-shiki was established less than 100 years ago and the irregularities come down to its inventors not making consistent orthography a priority. > [@DPRK](#): > > Wikipedia (unsubstantiatedly!) claims that the main users of Kunrei-shiki are native speakers of Japanese and linguists studying Japanese. > > As for beginners, when I was a beginner there was no Romanization system used at all; why would there be? If you’ll recall, this discussion began because **Sleel** was complaining about the use of Kunrei-shiki in cases where the primary consumers are tourists – i.e. precisely the type of people who are less likely to have the necessary background in the language to be able to pronounce the romanization properly. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-asian-names-be-transcribed-into-the-roman-alphabet/831353.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-asian-names-be-transcribed-into-the-roman-alphabet/831353.md?page=3)