I'm glad you made that correction, it was very interesting. Does this oddity of the misused letters go the other way, leading Chinese people to mispronounce queen as cheen, for example?
On Thu, Sep 1, 2011 at 1:32 AM, Weiqi Gao <weiqi...@gmail.com> wrote: > Java Posse, > > Thank you for making me a winner of the strangest loop contest. I should > have mentioned that I do not need a pass. So I won't be emailing Alex > Miller for a ticket. > > I sensed some hesitation when you are reading my name. So here's some > background: > > The spelling of my name, and a lot of other mainland Chinese's names, > follow the PinYin system. This system is not only a Latin transliteration > system for Chinese words, but also a phonetic system used in Chinese > elementary schools to teach pupils how to pronounce the various Chinese > characters. They tried to fit the Latin alphabets into the Chinese sounds. > Most of the alphabets fits nicely, like b, p, m, f, etc. Some, such as q, > x, and v does not have a Chinese equivalent. And c is already covered by k > (the hard c) and s (the soft c). And, of course, there are a few Chinese > consonants that does not have a Latin equivalent. In the infinite wisdom of > the authors of the PinYin standard, they simply used q, x, and c to > represent these sounds that does not have a Latin equivalent. > > That was done in the 1950's. > > Then in the 1970's the government decreed that all Latin translations of > people's names and place names are to be done in PinYin instead of the > centuries old Wade-Giles system. That's when Peking became Beijing. The > PinYin is better for people and placed whose names does not involve the > messed up consonants, e.g. Bing, Dong, and Nian. > > For people who's name contains Q, X, C, and Zh, it's a different story. We > have two choices: either we accept the wrong (to the Chinese ear) > pronunciation that's a native English speaker's first guess; or, we correct > any instances of mispronunciation when we here them. > > I choose to correct people. So here it goes: > > It's not Wei-Ki, it's Wei-Chee. The Chinese 'q' has the 'ch' sound. > > > Off Topic is bliss, > (but I'm sure there is a way to morph this into something Scala :) ) > -- > Weiqi Gao > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "The Java Posse" group. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msg/javaposse/-/gIJ2sMclP9UJ. > To post to this group, send email to javaposse@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > javaposse+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to javaposse@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to javaposse+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
