In 1955, two conferences were held with the aim of establishing some basic issues in language planning. Firstly, Putonghua was made the standard form of modern Chinese; secondly, Hanyu Pinyu Fangan was published as the Romanized system annotating the Chinese pronunciation and thirdly, simplification of Chinese script. The Chinese Romanization systems are made up of Hanyu Pinyin, which is the most widely used. Other systems include the Mandarin Phonetic Symbols 2 (MPS2), Guoyu Luomazi, Xin wenzi, Tongyong Pinyin, Wade-Giles as well as Yale. Chinese Romanization systems use the Latin alphabets to write in Chinese. However, this essay will focus on the Wade-Giles Romanization System, which has been used in North American libraries for decades. The essay will analyze the Wade-Giles system in terms of its features, uses, its advantages, and disadvantages, as well as give the reason people are abandoning the system.

Features of the Wade-Giles system

lacks the apostrophe tricky despite the vast knowledge that someone has on how the Wade-Giles system works.

Consequently, a tone in Wade-Giles system uses the superscript numbers 1 – 4, which are placed after the syllables. Additionally, the neutral tones are indicated using superscript numbers 5, 0 or through getting rid of the tone numbers. According to Malmqvist (2011), another feature of the Wade-Giles is that it makes use of the hyphens in separating the syllables that are found in words. Capitalization of the first letter of a word in a sentence is ignored irrespective of the fact that it is a place name or personal names unless syllables are used in the first word.

In comparing Wade-Giles system with Pinyin system, it is found that Wade-Giles system –e when a consonant precedes the sound, Wade-Giles system applies the sound –eh on the word. While Pinyin begins a word with these syllables, B, D, G, Q, R, X and Z, Wade-Giles system begins with syllables like HS and TS. In both Wade-Giles and Pinyin, the vowel uei takes the form of ui on using a consonant as well as using iu and un to replace jou and uen.

Uses of Wade-Giles system

Two British scholars, Sir Thomas Wade, and Herbert Giles, developed the Wade-Giles Romanization system in 1867 by adopting some of the ideas of earlier missionaries. As much as other systems are used, the wade-Giles system was Taiwan’s number one, and it was used to develop other systems as well. These systems included the postal services created by Qing dynasty for communicating across the boundaries, the Gwoyeu Romatzyh system, and the Yale system that was created in 1948, to teach the Chinese language at the universities.

Advantages and disadvantages of Wade-Giles system and reasons for its abandonment

As much as Wade-Giles is linguistically sound, the system has several limitations accompanying its usage in both writing and creation of the sounds. The Wade-Giles system has been blamed over the years for being one of the reasons why some English-speaking people mispronounce Chinese words and names. The Wade-Giles system is said to lack intuition and, therefore, it is quite easy to misunderstand the system if one has not undergone any training, thus mispronouncing most of the words. Unlike Wade-Giles system, the Pinyin system is far more intuitive and uses proper English letters to yield a better Chinese sound for a certain word. It made the Pinyin system popular, and recent Chinese people prefer to use the system to Wade-Giles system when writing their names. The reason for this is that Wade-Giles system requires the use of apostrophes and hyphen on names, which other overseas national omitted. The Wade-Giles system seems quite confusing to most people due to the complex rules required to write and interpret syllables written in Wade-Giles format.

The system does not have a consistent connection between letters and sounds, making it cumbersome for the new users to trigger their memory and pronounce new words after being introduced into the system. The way the system has been mapped is distant from the common English words and pronunciations, making it more confusing. Additionally, the way one is taught about its use and whoever is teaching determines the complexity of using the system.

Rather than representing the syllable with Roman letters/characters, which could have made it easier to determine the Chinese sounds, the Thomas Wade, and Herbert Giles developed the Wade-Giles system appreciated by only the linguists. They only developed a minute difference between the aspirated and unaspirated consonants; denoting the aspirated consonants with apostrophes.

Conclusion

The use of different Chinese Romanization systems has led to confusions, as some people tend to mix the syllables. Most people in Taiwan are unaware of the kind of Romanization tools they use causing inconsistency in Romanizing similar Chinese word in Taiwan. Moreover, the official Romanizing system is frequently altered, in order to suit the current political reasons.

References

Malmqvist, N. G. D. (2011). Bernhard Karlgren: Portrait of a scholar. Bethlehem, Pa: Lehigh University Press.