The romanization systems in common use until the late 19th century were based on the
Hanyu Pinyin romanization system, which was officially adopted in 1958, with exceptions for the romanized forms of some of the most commonly used names of locations and persons, and other proper nouns. The romanized name for most locations, persons and other proper nouns in Taiwan is based on the Wade–Giles derived romanized form, for example Kaohsiung, the Matsu Islands and Chiang Ching-kuo
Taiwan used Wade–Giles for decades as the de facto standard, co-existing with several official romanizations in succession, namely, Gwoyeu Romatzyh (1928), Mandarin Phonetic Symbols II (1986), and Tongyong Pinyin (2000). The Kuomintang party has previously promoted Pinyin with Ma Ying-jeou's successful presidential bid in 2008 and in a number of cities with Kuomintang elected mayors. However, the current Tsai Ing-wen administration and Democratic Progressive Party along with the majority of the people in Taiwan, both native and overseas, use spelling and transcribe their legal names based on the Wade–Giles system, as well as the other aforementioned systems.
Initials and finals
The tables below show the Wade–Giles representation of each
Instead of ts, tsʻ and s, Wade–Giles writes tz, tzʻ and ss before ŭ (see below).
Finals
Coda
∅
/i/
/u/
/n/
/ŋ/
/ɻ/
Medial
∅
ih/ŭ [ɨ] ㄭ -i
ê/o [ɤ] ㄜ e
a [a] ㄚ a
ei [ei] ㄟ ei
ai [ai] ㄞ ai
ou [ou] ㄡ ou
ao [au] ㄠ ao
ên [ən] ㄣ en
an [an] ㄢ an
ung [ʊŋ] ㄨㄥ ong
êng [əŋ] ㄥ eng
ang [aŋ] ㄤ ang
êrh [aɚ̯] ㄦ er
/j/
i [i] ㄧ i
ieh [je] ㄧㄝ ie
ia [ja] ㄧㄚ ia
iu [jou] ㄧㄡ iu
iao [jau] ㄧㄠ iao
in [in] ㄧㄣ in
ien [jɛn] ㄧㄢ ian
iung [jʊŋ] ㄩㄥ iong
ing [iŋ] ㄧㄥ ing
iang [jaŋ] ㄧㄤ iang
/w/
u [u] ㄨ u
o/uo [wo] ㄛ/ㄨㄛ o/uo
ua [wa] ㄨㄚ ua
ui/uei [wei] ㄨㄟ ui
uai [wai] ㄨㄞ uai
un [wən] ㄨㄣ un
uan [wan] ㄨㄢ uan
uang [waŋ] ㄨㄤ uang
/ɥ/
ü [y] ㄩ ü
üeh [ɥe] ㄩㄝ üe
ün [yn] ㄩㄣ ün
üan [ɥɛn] ㄩㄢ üan
Wade–Giles writes -uei after kʻ and k, otherwise -ui: kʻuei, kuei, hui, shui, chʻui.
It writes [-ɤ] as -o after kʻ, k and h, otherwise as -ê: kʻo, ko, ho, shê, chʻê. When [ɤ] forms a syllable on its own, it is written ê or o depending on the character.
Wade–Giles writes [-wo] as -uo after kʻ, k, h and sh, otherwise as -o: kʻuo, kuo, huo, shuo, bo, tso. After chʻ, it is written chʻo or chʻuo depending on the character.
Giles's A Chinese–English Dictionary also includes the finals -io (in yo, chio, chʻio, hsio, lio and nio) and -üo (in chüo, chʻüo, hsüo, lüo and nüo), both of which are pronounced -üeh in modern Standard Chinese: yüeh, chüeh, chʻüeh, hsüeh, lüeh and nüeh.
Syllables that begin with a medial
Coda
∅
/i/
/u/
/n/
/ŋ/
Medial
/j/
i/yi [i] ㄧ yi
yeh [je] ㄧㄝ ye
ya [ja] ㄧㄚ ya
yai [jai] ㄧㄞ yai
yu [jou] ㄧㄡ you
yao [jau] ㄧㄠ yao
yin [in] ㄧㄣ yin
yen [jɛn] ㄧㄢ yan
yung [jʊŋ] ㄩㄥ yong
ying [iŋ] ㄧㄥ ying
yang [jaŋ] ㄧㄤ yang
/w/
wu [u] ㄨ wu
wo [wo] ㄨㄛ wo
wa [wa] ㄨㄚ wa
wei [wei] ㄨㄟ wei
wai [wai] ㄨㄞ wai
wên [wən] ㄨㄣ wen
wan [wan] ㄨㄢ wan
wêng [wəŋ] ㄨㄥ weng
wang [waŋ] ㄨㄤ wang
/ɥ/
yü [y] ㄩ yu
yüeh [ɥe] ㄩㄝ yue
yün [yn] ㄩㄣ yun
yüan [ɥɛn] ㄩㄢ yuan
Wade–Giles writes the syllable [i] as i or yi depending on the character.
System features
Consonants and initial symbols
A feature of the Wade–Giles system is the representation of the
, and visually similar characters are sometimes seen in various electronic documents using the system.
Examples using the spiritus asper: p, pʻ, t, tʻ, k, kʻ, ch, chʻ. The use of this character preserves b, d, g, and j for the romanization of
Min Nan (Hō-ló-oē) whose century-old Pe̍h-ōe-jī (POJ, often called Missionary Romanization) is similar to Wade–Giles. POJ, Legge romanization, Simplified Wade, and EFEO Chinese transcription use the letter ⟨h⟩ instead of an apostrophe-like character to indicate aspiration. (This is similar to the obsolete IPA convention before the revisions of the 1970s). The convention of an apostrophe-like character or ⟨h⟩ to denote aspiration is also found in romanizations of other Asian languages, such as McCune–Reischauer for Korean and ISO 11940 for Thai
.
People unfamiliar with Wade–Giles often ignore the spiritus asper, sometimes omitting them when copying texts, unaware that they represent vital information. Hànyǔ Pīnyīn addresses this issue by employing the Latin letters customarily used for voiced stops, unneeded in Mandarin, to represent the unaspirated stops: b, p, d, t, g, k, j, q, zh, ch.
Partly because of the popular omission of apostrophe-like characters, the four sounds represented in Hànyǔ Pīnyīn by j, q, zh, and ch often all become ch, including in many proper names. However, if the apostrophe-like characters are kept, the system reveals a symmetry that leaves no overlap:
The non-
retroflex
ch (Pīnyīn j) and chʻ (Pīnyīn q) are always before either ü or i, but never ih.
The
retroflex
ch (Pīnyīn zh) and chʻ (Pīnyīn ch) are always before ih, a, ê, e, o, or u.
Vowels and final symbols
Syllabic consonants
Like
Hànyǔ Pīnyīn
: kōngyùn) differently:
-ŭ is used after the sibilants written in this position (and this position only) as tz, tzʻ and ss (Pīnyīn z, c and s).
Final o in Wade–Giles has two pronunciations in modern Peking dialect: [wo] and [ɤ].
What is pronounced in vernacular Peking dialect as a close-mid back unrounded vowel[ɤ] is written usually as ê, but sometimes as o, depending on historical pronunciation (at the time Wade–Giles was developed). Specifically, after velar initials k, kʻ and h (and a historical ng, which had been dropped by the time Wade–Giles was developed), o is used; for example, "哥" is ko1 (Pīnyīn gē) and "刻" is kʻo4[5] (Pīnyīn kè). In Peking dialect, o after velars (and what used to be ng) have shifted to [ɤ], thus they are written as ge, ke, he and e in Pīnyīn. When [ɤ] forms a syllable on its own, Wade–Giles writes ê or o depending on the character. In all other circumstances, it writes ê.
What is pronounced in Peking dialect as [wo] is usually written as o in Wade–Giles, except for wo, shuo (e.g. "說" shuo1) and the three syllables of kuo, kʻuo, and huo (as in 過, 霍, etc.), which contrast with ko, kʻo, and ho that correspond to Pīnyīn ge, ke, and he. This is because characters like 羅, 多, etc. (Wade–Giles: lo2, to1; Pīnyīn: luó, duō) did not originally carry the medial [w]. Peking dialect does not have phonemic contrast between o and -uo/wo (except in interjections when used alone) and a medial [w] is usually inserted in front of -o to form [wo].
Zhùyīn and Pīnyīn write [wo] as ㄛ -o after ㄅ b, ㄆ p, ㄇ m and ㄈ f, and as ㄨㄛ -uo after all other initials.
Tones
Tones are indicated in Wade–Giles using superscript numbers (1–4) placed after the syllable. This contrasts with the use of diacritics to represent the tones in Pīnyīn. For example, the Pīnyīn qiàn (fourth tone) has the Wade–Giles equivalent chʻien4.
^Simplified and traditional characters are the same
neutral tone
for more.
Punctuation
Wade–Giles uses hyphens to separate all syllables within a word (whereas Pīnyīn separates syllables only in specially defined cases, using hyphens or closing (right) single quotation marks as appropriate).
If a syllable is not the first in a word, its first letter is not
capitalized, even if it is part of a proper noun. The use of apostrophe-like characters, hyphens, and capitalization is frequently not observed in place names and personal names. For example, the majority of overseasTaiwanese people write their given names like "Tai Lun" or "Tai-Lun", whereas the Wade–Giles is actually "Tai-lun". (See also Chinese names
.)
Comparison with other systems
Pinyin
Wade–Giles chose the French-like ⟨j⟩ (implying a sound like IPA's [ʒ], as in s in English measure) to represent a Northern Mandarin pronunciation of what is represented as ⟨r⟩ in pinyin (Northern Mandarin [ʐ]/ Southern Mandarin [ɻ]; generally considered allophones).
Ü (representing /y/) always has an umlaut above, while pinyin only employs it in the cases of nü, nüe, lü, lüe and lüan, while leaving it out after j, q, x and y as a simplification because ⟨u⟩/[u] cannot otherwise appear after those letters. (The vowel ⟨u⟩/[u] can occur in those cases in pinyin where the diaeresis are indicated ⟨ü⟩/[y] or [ɥ]; in which cases it serves to distinguish the front vowel[y] from the back vowel[u]. By contrast it is always present to mark the front vowel in Wade–Giles.) Because yü (as in 玉 "jade") must have an umlaut in Wade–Giles, the umlaut-less yu in Wade–Giles is freed up for what corresponds to you (有 "have"/"there is") in Pinyin.
The Pīnyīn cluster ⟨-ong⟩ is ⟨-ung⟩ in Wade–Giles, reflecting the pronunciation of [
kung1-fu
to gōngfu as an example.)
After a consonant, both Wade–Giles and Pīnyīn use ⟨-iu⟩ and ⟨-un⟩ instead of the complete syllables: ⟨-iou⟩ and ⟨-uên⟩/⟨-uen⟩.
Note: In Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, the so-called neutral tone is written leaving the syllable with no diacritic mark at all. In Tongyòng Pinyin, a ring is written over the vowel.
It consistently uses i for the syllable [i], while Wade–Giles uses i or yi depending on the character.
It uses o for the syllable [ɤ], while Wade–Giles uses ê or o depending on the character.
It offers the choice between ssŭ and szŭ, while Wade–Giles requires ssŭ.
It does not use the spellings chio, chʻio, hsio, yo, replacing them with chüeh, chʻüeh, hsüeh, yüeh in accordance with their modern pronunciations.
It uses an underscored 3 to denote a second tone which comes from an original third tone, but only if the following syllable has the neutral tone and the tone sandhi is therefore not predictable: hsiao3•chieh.
It denotes the neutral tone by placing a dot (if the neutral tone is compulsory) or a circle (if the neutral tone is optional) before the syllable. The dot or circle replaces the hyphen.
Wade, Thomas Francis. A progressive course designed to assist the student of Colloquial Chinese (Yü Yen Tzǔ Êrh Chi) in two volumes. Third edition Shanghai: Hong Kong: Singapore: Yokohama: London: Kelly & Walsh, Limited, 1903.
Giles, Herbert A. A Chinese–English Dictionary. 2-vol. & 3-vol. versions both. London: Shanghai: Bernard Quaritch; Kelly and Walsh, 1892. Rev. & enlarged 2nd ed. in 3 vols. (Vol. I: front-matter & a-hsü, Vol. II: hsü-shao, and Vol. III: shao-yün), Shanghai: Hong Kong: Singapore: Yokohama: London: Kelly & Walsh, Limited; Bernard Quaritch, 1912. Rpt. of the 2nd ed. but in 2 vols. and bound as 1, New York: Paragon Book Reprint Corp., 1964.
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