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Re: Completely OT: Romanization of Chiense speech



On Mon, 13 Oct 2003 02:49:20 -0500, 
Alex Malinovich <demonbane@the-love-shack.net> wrote in message 
<[🔎] 1066031360.8501.48.camel@Thief>:

> I apologize in advance as this is about as OT as you can get, but I've
> found a great diversity of backgrounds and languages on this list so
> I'm hoping someone might have more information on this for me as most
> of the stuff I've found through googling seems to be geared towards
> linguists and not casual users.
> 
> So, getting onto the actual question. This all started with the search
> for the proper pronunciation of "chi". (As in life-force, etc.)
> Whether it's "che(eseburger)" or "key". In looking around, I've
> learned about Pinyin, Wade-Giles, Lessing-Othmer, EFEO, et al.
> romanizations. Unfortunately, I've learned a whole lot of nothing. I'm
> finding "chi" referred to as "qi" and as "chi" with no consensus on
> either pronunciation or spelling. I think a big part of the problem is
> that I'm finding a number of old English references done in the Yale
> style, which has very conflicting characters with Pinyin.
> 
> So the first and easy question is, what's the story on ch/qi. And
> second, is there any easy way to tell which romanization is being used
> for a particular word in order to more easily figure out the
> pronunciation? (I'm guessing that it's "che(eseburger)" as "q" in
> Pinyin seems to be a ch and not a k sound.
> 
> Also, any simpler references to more on the subject would be
> appreciated. I'm actually finding all of this very interesting. :)
> 

..in _which_ Chinese language do you want the correct pronounciation of
"ch|k|qi"?  It would not be wrong to think of China and India as
"continents", in the same sense as "europeans" call themselves
"continental europeans".  ;-)
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/middle_east_and_asia/china_ling_90.jpg

-- 
..med vennlig hilsen = with Kind Regards from Arnt... ;-)
...with a number of polar bear hunters in his ancestry...
  Scenarios always come in sets of three: 
  best case, worst case, and just in case.




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