From: Allen Haaheim (haaheima@interchange.ubc.ca)
Date: Mon May 19 2003 - 19:04:19 EDT
while
> pinyin, if misread by uninformed people, sounds simply wrong.
Yes, there are also good arguments for using Wade-Giles by a similar logic:
when read by the uninitiated, the words usually come closer to the actual
sound.
Another disadvantage of pinyin is its need for diacritical marks, which GR
(Guoyu luomazi) tonal spelling dispenses with, instead distinguishing
differing tones by using spelling rules, resulting in far less
homophonous-looking romanized words, and less confusion with and inattention
to tones. If GR were used, we would be hearing better Chinese pronunciation
from foreign learners, though perhaps
there might be less of them, because it takes more effort to learn than
Hanyu pinyin.
Allen Haaheim
----- Original Message -----
From: "Marco Cimarosti" <marco.cimarosti@essetre.it>
To: "'Andrew C. West'" <andrewcwest@alumni.princeton.edu>;
<unicode@unicode.org>
Sent: Monday, May 19, 2003 11:43 AM
Subject: RE: Decimal separator with more than one character?
> Andrew C. West wrote:
> > I don't quite follow your argument, but in my wife's dialect
> > of Chinese (a variety of South-West Mandarin) Beijing is
> > pronounced [pekin] ...
>
> That was exactly my point: the old English and French graphies coveyed a
> genuinely Mandarin pronunciation (albet a dialectal one, today), while
> pinyin, if misread by uninformed people, sounds simply wrong.
>
> _ Marco
>
>
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