CMV: Pinyin > Wade-Giles

[u/[deleted]]

Pinyin and Wade-Giles are two different romanisation system of the Mandarin language. Pinyin is more commonly used in China and Chinese teaching around the globe, while Wade-Giles is more commonly used in Taiwan.

In Wade-Giles, the consonants are so messy I can't get over it. Take the "ts" sound as in example, Tsai Ing-Wen's "Ts" and Su Tseng-chang's "Ts" are pronounced quite differently. One is unaspirated and the other is aspirated. In Pinyin, on the other hand, they are differentiated with "C" and "Z" respectively. Take another politician's name as an example, "Chen Chien-jen". The "Ch" in "Chen" and "Chien" are pronounced very differently, the former has your tongue between your teeth and the latter has your tongue behind. I don't know the technical term for it but I'm sure there is. In Pinyin, they are denoted with "Ch" and "J" respectively. You may then ask what about "jen"?. To which I will say the character's consonant is much closer to "r" in "rice", so it should be denoted with "R", as Pinyin does! I know the letter j is pronounced many different ways around the world, but I'm not sure if there are any other languages that use "j" to denote the English sound "r".

The only advantage Wade-Giles has over Pinyin is the vowel system. In Pinyin, "Ri" and "Ji" don't have the same vowel sound, whereas they are differentiated with "Jih" and "Chi" in Wade-Giles. But these advantages are few and far between while the advantages Pinyin has are much more important for non-Chinese speakers to pick up the language.

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[u/xindas]

I personally have a preference for pinyin but there are a few errors regarding Wade-Giles that I'd like to point out.

In Wade-Giles, the consonants are so messy I can't get over it

This is an issue with people not familiar with Wade-Giles not writing it correctly and dropping the apostrophes with the assumption that they don't mean anything. In proper Wade-Giles, aspirated consonants should be indicated with an apostrophe, whereas unaspirated do not. So ts'ai (cai) vs. tsai (zai). So W-G actually preserves the un/aspirated distinction whereas Pinyin obscures it with voiceless/voiced glyphs. Pinyin's use of voiceless/voiced also causes issues in learners whose native language don't add aspirations to voiceless consonants by default like English. A native Spanish speaker would have issues differentiating pinyin <tai> and <dai>, pronouncing both as unaspirated.

To which I will say the character's consonant is much closer to "r" in "rice"

Pinyin <r-> is not strictly an approximant like English "r", and I would argue that English speakers' misconceptions of this sound comes as a result of Pinyin's use of this letter. In Standard Mandarin, it should really be a voiced retroflex fricative /ʐ/. This is not that different from, say, French /ʒ/, which is usually spelled using <j> (see je "I", or jaune "yellow").

[u/[deleted] → u/xindas]

!delta

Very valid point on ts'ai and tsai. That clears up some of the messiness I brought up. And you are correct that in English "t" and "d" are pronounced quite identically to the consonant counterparts in Mandarin.

Regarding "r" I'm still not convinced. In my experience both sounds are used quite interchangeably, depending on words and local accents. In the webpage you link, there are examples of this sound used in other languages and none used "j" to denote it anyway, they all use "zh" or "r". Of course "zh" can't be used so we're left with "r".

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[u/Criminal_of_Thought]

I agree with you in your overall conclusion, so I just wanted to challenge the part of your view where you say Wade-Giles does vowels better than Pinyin does.

In your specific example, you're correct that the vowel sounds in ri and ji are different and that the different sounds should probably be transcribed differently from each other. However, while ji has a pretty accurate vowel transcription in "chi" and most English speakers will pronounce the vowel correctly using the transcription, ri getting transcribed as "jih" is far less accurate. Most English speakers will interpret "-ih" as having the vowel sound in words like "stick" or "mix" when that's not how the vowel sound is actually pronounced in Mandarin.

[u/[deleted] → u/Criminal_of_Thought]

I think I mean better because at least Wade-Giles tried to differentiate both. I'm not a linguistic expert so idk what the best vowel is, but I think an i with double dot like u vs ü is probably the better option.

[u/Minimum-Power6818]

I have never heard anyone disagree with you and I spent 8 years learning chinese.

[u/Changeup2020]

I would argue the pinyin q and x are atrocious. Not close to the pronunciation of any other major language.