Re: phonetics (I can't find where we did this just now)

On Mon, 31 Jul 2006 16:31:31 +0100, "Marjorie Clarke"
<dontusethisaddess@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


"Stephen" <stephenbowden@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:n9src211huq6mq7ajo9i61bmoac793urnk@xxxxxxxxxx

The simple answer is that Pinyin, the standard form of romanisation
for Chinese, was designed as a romanisation and was not intended as a
phonetic transcription. It was devised by the Chinese for their own
purposes, unlike Wade-Giles, which *was* intended as a phonetic
version of Chinese, although it was aimed at China specialists, rather
than amateurs.

Isn't umra amazing - how else would we ever have known this? And I'm not
being sarcastic, I do think it's interesting. So presumably the new
spellings for names etc are a recent attempt to make them correspond better
with English phonetics?

Au contraire - Pinyin is possibly less accurate than Giles-Wade in
terms of pronunciation. There is a guide to how to pronounce the
pinyin letters, but it contains advice like (nb letters between
asterisks are the sounds referred to):

zh - ch with no aspiration (take the sound halfway between *j*oke and
*ch*urch and curl it upwards)

x - like sh, but take the sound and pass it backwards along the tongue
until it is clear of the tongue tip; very similar to the final sound
in German ich, Portuguese en*x*ada, lu*x*o, *x*ícara, pu*x*a, and to
*h*uge or *H*ugh in some English dialects

q - like *ch*urch; pass it backwards along the tongue until it is free
of the tongue tip

j - like q, but unaspirated. (To get this sound, first take the sound
halfway between *j*oke and *ch*eck, and then slowly pass it backwards
along the tongue until it is entirely clear of the tongue tip.) While
this exact sound is not used in English, the closest match is the j in
ajar, not the s in Asia.

Still doesn't explain how Bombay became Mumbai, though, or how the Eskimos
turned into Inuits ...

I suspect that Bombay came about because the first person to tell the
occupying British what the town was called had a cold.

Not all eskimos *are* Inuit. Some are Alutiiq, Inupiaq, Sug'piak, and
Yup'ik. These latter don't seem to mind being called eskimos, but the
Inuit do, presumably in large part because it is an externally imposed
name.
--
Stephen

Into my heart an air that kills From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills, What spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went And cannot come again.

http://wenlock.blogspot.com/
.

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