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I would suggest that everyone should use pinyin to transliterate Chinese names, not Wade-Giles. There are several reasons for this: # Most Putonghua (more commonly known as Mandarin) speakers today (i.e. those in China) use pinyin, not Wade-Giles. Pinyin has been officially approved by the Chinese government. # The pronounciation of Pinyin is much more intuitive for English speakers than Wade-Giles. # Most current scholarly work on China is done with pinyin, not Wade-Giles, and in the long run the use of pinyin at Wade-Giles' expense will only increase. # Most English speakers forget to write the apostrophes in Wade-Giles, which completely changes the meaning of the text. Pinyin, by contrast, doesn't have any stupid apostrophes. # The Wade-Giles system is seriously flawed. (One may wonder whether it was intended to be a practical joke to make fun of the Chinese language.) The B and P sounds are both transliterated to P; the D and T sounds are both transliterated to T; the G and K sounds are both transliterated to K. # (Repeat the above in Wade-Giles) The Wate-Kiles system is seriously flawet. (One may wonter whether it was intentet to pe a practical joke to make fun of the Chinese lankuake.) The P ant P sounts are poth transliteratet to P; the T ant T sounts are poth transliteratet to T; the K ant K sounts are poth transliteratet to K. (toesn't it sount funny?) Even where a name is more commonly known with Wade-Giles (e.g. Tao), I would recommend still writing it in pinyin, and then adding the Wade-Giles transliteration after it in brackets. Where an article title is a Chinese name, use pinyin as the article name, and create a redirect from the Wade-Giles to the pinyin. Hopefully that way we can help wean the public of the Wade-Giles system :) A particular problem is that English speakers seeing Wade-Giles transliterations are likely to give widely inaccurate pronounciations; an English-speakers pronounciation of pinyin won't be perfect, but will be much closer to real Putonghua. The only exception to this rule is in quotes; if you quote another source, do not change its transliteration system, though you may add the pinyin after it in brackets. Changing other people's quotes is bad. I disagree with this strongly. While less common names and words might be better to use in pinyin, because it has been emerging as a scholarly consensus, familiar words which are well-known in English should retain their spelling and (more importantly!) pronunciation. There's no reason to run after every fashion in transliteration and try to change language doing so. :But the transliteration is outdated, and the pronounciations are down right incorrect. And if, as I have proposed, always use REDIRECTS, and put the Wade-Giles in brackets, anyone unfamiliar with pinyin names should quickly understand what we are talking about. -- Simon J Kissane ::There is no "incorrect" in language, there's just usage. At least that's the point of view of the science in question, linguistics. If you use scientific arguments to promote pinyin over other schemes, then the same science will tell you that calling a well-established and recognised form "incorrect" is simply wrong and has no scientific basis. --AV :::I know I said I was going to relent, but I've just got one more thing to add: Linguistics won't tell you that a well-established and recognized form is incorrect; but it won't tell you it is correct either. I agree that linguistics doesn't say the form is correct; but you seem to be saying that it says the most commmon and well-established form is correct, which it doesn't say either. Linguistics cannot say anything about correctness; it is descriptive, not prescriptive. But it does not therefore follow that we should not follow any prescriptions, just because linguistics doesn't make any. :::There are at least two different reasons if any language which lead people to consider a form correct or incorrect. Firstly, the frequency of its use. Secondly, the logic behind its use. Now the logic behind the use "Taoism" is bad. But on the other hand it is more commonly used. Linguistics is absolutely irrelevant in choosing which reason to follow. -- Simon J Kissane ::::I agree that linguistics doesn't say anything one way or the other (although great many linguists would actually disagree with this, but that's a topic for another debate). But my original point was that you shouldn't rely on the science being on your side here. That is, if you use the authoritative force of science (linguistics) to argue for the benefit of the pinyin versions, I will counteract with the argument from the same science to say that it has no justification at all for trying to force a prescriptive change in the language. That was my argument: that you have a blessing from linguistics to argue that pinyin is better than Wade-Giles, but you have no blessing at all to continue from that to desirability of changing existing English words to conform to pinyin. ::::As for logic, well, language evolution eschews it, as any quick glance into any random etymological dictionary proves beyond doubt. --AV The purpose of the encyclopaedia is not to educate readers about benefits of the new, it is to inform readers about the wonders of the existing. With Taoism/Daoism?, for instance, it suffices to Google both words (not to mention survey a few dictionaries) to see what is the accepted word in the English (sic! not Chinese!) language. --AV That's why we have redirect!! It doesn't matter what they say they're looking for as long as they wind up on the "right" page. Another way of looking at this. It's possible that the "traditional" spelling of a word should be considered obsolete. :We are not in business of trying to change the language! I don't know how I can articulate this more clearly. We are in the business of explaining to people what there is, not what we think should be. "Daoism" may be more correct in your opinion, and "Taoism" may be worth abolishing, but it has not been abolished in the English language and is in fact the known and accepted form, while "Daoism" is a freaky variant. The encyclopaedia should reflect this undeniable fact. --AV I don't necessarily agree with you here :-), but Simon J Kissane is apparently trying to come up with a good compromise. Hats off to all Wikipedians trying to do the Right Thing. :-) I am sympathetic to your point here, AV, but shouldn't an encyclopedia reflect what is current practice among experts of the field, rather than among the general public? A dictionary should reflect public usage, but Wikipedia is not a dictionary--it's an encyclopedia. It's where people come to learn about things in more depth than mere definitions and descriptions of common usage. Since "Taoism", etc., are common use, I'd expect a search for that to turn up something--and it will. It will redirect to the page "Daoism", which will begin with a line that says something like "Daoism (or Taoism)..."; the article will tell me about the subject, and also give me the impression that the "D" version is preferred among experts, which is correct. --Lee Daniel Crocker :I am sympathetic to your point here, AV, but shouldn't an encyclopedia reflect what is current practice among experts of the field, rather than among the general public? In knowledge, yes, but not in language usage. Experts in Chinese are not expers about English language usage! They are no more privileged to dictate "correct" form of English words than you and I. In fact, the experts on the issue are philosophers, not specialists in Chinese linguistics. In my experience, philosophers which refer to the religion/philosophy in question continue to call it "Taoism" with rare exceptions. I agree that Wikipedia should point out that some people consider "Daoism" to be the more correct form. This doesn't mean that Wikipedia should go against prevailing usage and with transliteration fashions. I tried to achieve some first approximation of the NeutralPointOfView with my latest edits. --AV I agree that pinyin should be used for Chinese transliteration, but many words in English have been assimilated from other languages and now make up part of the English vocabulary. The word "Taoism" is an English word, not transliterated Chinese. -- STG I think the spelling of scholars of things Chinese, especially scholars of Chinese religion, should be more normative than the average persons. I do not actually know which one they prefer, though I'm pretty sure that they probably use "Daoism" more than average (even if it is only used by a minority even of scholars, which it may be.) -- Simon J Kissane Look at the US government website [[Library of Congress Pinyin Conversion project]] on this issue and all those consequences after the switch over. As a native Chinese speaker, I can tell you the Wade-Giles system sucks. It bastardized the Chinese language for a century and half and created a hugh disconnection between the original Chinese language and what the English language tries to refer to. I am glad the US government and Library of Congress abandoned the Wade-Giles system. I understand that it was a system that a wealth of knowledge was built on (and may I add, with incorrect pronounciations learned by millions and billions of English speaking scholars over the century.) The Wade-Giles system failed because it could not accurately reproduced the pronounciation. We cannot blame them because they were not native Chinese speakers. Wade-Giles was adopted because there were no significanly different alternative nor a driving force for a better standard. The western world didn't care one way or the other because as long as they can communicate among themselves is okay. With the Chinese government behind it, pinyin becomes a better way to transliterate Chinese. Does the English language really needs it? Probably not. Just like Deutschland is called Germany in the English language for centuries with no problem, it works as long as the system is consistent. However, should Wikipedia use pinyin? You bet. If the Library of Congress is switching over, it becomes the standard at least in the US. :I'm sure this is all quite true, but the point is that Taoism and words like it are now part of the English language, even if sounds like nonsense to a Chinese speaker, and as I understand things we try to call it as we see it, not how we'd like it to be. --Robert Merkel I don't disagree that Taoism should stay (at least for a cross reference). Because the western knowledge base was built upon the Wade-Giles system, it is just silly to drop the word Taoism entirely. However you must consider that all publications coming out of China will be using pinyin hence you will expect to see Daoism more than Taoism from the Chinese source. If you think Taoism is a western philosophy, then stick with Taoism. But if you consider it a Chinese philosophy, Daoism makes more sense because it is closer to the source. :This is a somewhat silly argument. Judaism is called "yahadut" in Hebrew, and in fact the word "Judaism" in English has its roots in the Hebrew root of "yahadut". But noone is advocating users of the English language to start calling Judaism "yahadut", and even if the Israeli government mandated the use of this non-word (in the English language) instead of "Judaism" in official publications, I suspect the English-speaking world wouldn't so much as blink. The point is, words are arbitrary. They have etymologies, but those are things of the past, not of the present; they are reasons the word came into existence, not reasons why it continues to exist. There's no reason for the word's continuing existence besides the common agreement of all language users to use and understand that word. If the phonology of Chinese changes drastically in the next 100 years and "Dao" will come to be pronounced like "Fao", that will provide no reason at all to change the English word yet again into "Faoism". It's an English word, albeit with Chinese roots, not a Chinese word. --AV ::The Hebrew example does not fit here because the Israeli government does not publish Hebrew text in roman transliteration but the Chinese government does. There are romanized Chinese books in China which looks like Western publication, but read like Chinese. They are published for illiterates or foreigners who can speak Chinese, but cannot read or recognize Chinese characters. I know romanized Chinese is not English, but Chinese scholars will write all Chinese terms in pinyin in English publications. The Jews do not publish books in romanized Hebrew, the Chinese does. That is the driving force that makes a different and the Hebrew example lacks that. Languages evolve. English Language is not an exception. You cannot resist the change when there was a driving force as strong as a standard from the Chinese government. Just think about the terms Peking vs. Beijing. Do you think the term Peking will ever be forgotten? No, there were tons of literature using that term. Do you think people will still use the term Peking moving forward when the Chinese government uses Beijing? Taoism vs Daoism is in the same situation. The change is inevitable whether you like it or not. My vote is that Wikipedia should go with the pinyin standard. That is the future, but we cannot forget the past. :The change might be inevitable, and it might not be -- plenty of word of foreign origin in English survived unharmed drastic changes in their source languages' phonetics, not to mention spelling or romanisation. Time will show, and we, as encyclopaedia authors, have no prerogative, obligation or indeed reason to second-guess time. Right now "Taoism" is overwhelmingly the better-known and better-recognised spelling, and it should remain the main entry. --AV ::let me give a better example than "Deutsch" = "German". "Deutsch" in American English was often translated as DUTCH, hence, the Pennsylvania Dutch, who were German, or men with the nickname Dutch in the 19th century, who were German. Dutch is a reasonable facsimile of Deutsch, just as Dao and Tao are much closer than some of this argument would admit. On the other hand, is anyone trying to get us to use the Pinyin for Confucius? --MicahelTinkler? :::I vote for redirecting Confucius to the pinyin version because the pinyin is how his name should be called. The redirection support backward compatibility for the English term. To draw an analogy, I always think it is silly for English speaking Christians to pray to Jesus all their life without knowing that they put the wrong address on the prayers. If you want His attention, at least address Him by the name that He called Himself. Try pray to Yesu next time, your prayer may be answered for the first time if it is delivered to the right address. :-) ::::Oh, dear. That's linguistically, philosophically, and theologically suspect. ; ) --MichaelTinkler One wonders what those so stringently opposed to English versions of names think we should do with Charlemagne, who was called different names (Carolus Magnus, Karl der Grosse) in different tongues even while he lived. A few thoughts: My first is that this entire argument is a bit odd, in an encyclopedia that explicitly tells us that we aren't preferring US or UK spelling, that either is fine. The second is that this is an English-language wikipedia, and as such, why should it follow putonghua rather than Cantonese or the other Chinese languages? Yes, I know putonghua is the official language of the People's Republic of China--that doesn't make it official for pronouncing borrowed English words. Third, related to second, is that English spelling of English isn't phonetic, and can't be, because we don't all pronounce English the same way. Oh, and I know few native English speakers for whom the X and Q in pinyin are intuitive. Having studied Spanish before I laid eyes on pinyin, I have to remind myself that X is closer to /sh/ than to /h/. Wade-Giles is similarly flawed: either requires the English-speaker to memorize some new values for consonants (and vowels, since ao isn't a native English digraph). --Vicki Rosenzweig |
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