# Why did early transliterations of Chinese use unnaturally hard sounds?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-early-transliterations-of-chinese-use-unnaturally-hard-sounds/488283>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [March 4, 2009, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-early-transliterations-of-chinese-use-unnaturally-hard-sounds/488283 "2009-03-04T16:13:21Z")\
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**Author:** ![No\_Wikipedia\_Cites](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/94ad74/32.png) [@No\_Wikipedia\_Cites](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/No_Wikipedia_Cites)\
**Post date:** [March 4, 2009, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-early-transliterations-of-chinese-use-unnaturally-hard-sounds/488283/1 "2009-03-04T16:13:21Z")

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The earlier transliterations (Wade Giles?) seems to have universally made Chinese Mandarin read harsher than it is. So “CHung” instead of the proper “Jiang” (with a french style ‘J’ on that).

Did Mandarin change, or were the early ‘foreign devils’ like Wade-Giles hard of hearing? Peking (PEE - KING) sounds distinct and much more constanant-al than the softer Beijing.