All the hoopla surrounding last week’s anniversary of Hong Kong’s Handover got me thinking about the many Hong Kong vs. China dichotomies. Which led me to a broader old China vs. new China reverie.
Take Wade-Giles. It’s not a British taipan, but rather a system of Mandarin romanization popular from the 1800s until sometime during Mao era (1949-1976).
When I think of Wade-Giles, I think:
But during the inaugural year of the Great Leap Forward (1958), the People’s Republic approved a new romanization system: pinyin. And this is what I think of when I think of pinyin:
I have nothing against pinyin. In fact, without pinyin, I never would have learned to speak Mandarin very well. I’ve been able to read characters for 22 years (more than half my life!), yet I’ll never ever master them. But I’m a wizard at pinyin. Sure, it’s not much of an accomplishment, but it has made learning Chinese easier than previous generations had it.
When I started studying Mandarin in 1989, one of my textbooks used Wade-Giles. I hated it.
Wade-Giles uses apostrophes that make no sense. In pinyin, there’s a bang and a pang (nothing raunchy, mais oui). But in Wade-Giles, bang is pang and pang is p’ang. That stuff drove me crazy.
Pinyin seemed so structured with its user-friendly rules: q is pronounced as ch, x as sh, zh as j, and so forth. And no apostrophes.
But now I’ve done a 180 with Wade-Giles and love it. It seems romantic where pinyin seems contrived.
I’d much rather dream of this:
Than this:
Have you learned pinyin, or Taiwan’s bopofomo (another thorn in my side), or Wade-Giles? Do you prefer one over the others, or is it all Chinese to you?
To add to the confusion, Shang Hai is the same in both Pinyin and Wade-Giles! 😛
Wade Giles is an imperialist throwback while pinyin is liberation. How anyone could learn Chinese using Wade Giles was so backward while pinyin is so natural.
Although I never had to learn Wade-Giles, I can definitely relate to the nostalgia you’re referring to. For me Wade-Giles brings up fond memories of afternoons spent at the library reading old books about Chinese history.
The eccentricity of some of pinyin’s spelling choices (especially for consonants) is definitely a drawback of the system. Not so long ago one of my colleagues told me he had been to China and visited a place called (as I heard it) “Koo Foo”. It took me a while to realize that he meant 曲阜 (Qufu).
Thanks, Jens, for your comment! Wade-Giles does bring back nice memories for me, too. In the 70s we had a Chinese restaurant in the next town over called Tien Tsin. When I learned pinyin and realized Tien Tsin was really Tianjing, I was shocked.
I never would have associated Koo Foo with Qufu!
Wade-Giles always made sense to me! I used to have several books (from my parents) that had the Wade-Giles system (from when my parents were in language school) but I think I loaned it back to my dad. I’d love to have it back!
Thanks for another thoughtful post!
Thanks so much, Sarah! I can see how Wade-Giles would make sense if you hadn’t first been trained in pinyin! Of course, pinyin’s rules are not so obvious. No one would ever guess that x is pronounced as sh or q as ch, but once I figured it out, I thought pinyin was easy to learn. I do love Wade-Giles, though, and feel that it represents another time in China and greater China 🙂