Wade-Giles Transcription of Chinese
To deal with Wade-Giles transcription in your reading, you need to know how to get from Wade-Giles to the pinyin system we're using in G380. This guide includes the most essential pointers:
- CONSONANTS - |
||
| If Wade-Giles has: | The pinyin form would be: | Notes |
ch |
j or zh | The Spring-Autumn period state of
Jin will be Chin in Wade-Giles The philosopher Zhuangzi becomes Chuang Tzu in Wade-Giles |
| ch' | q or ch | The state of Qi becomes Ch'i; the state of Chu becomes Ch'u |
| hs | x | The philosopher Xunzi is Hsun Tzu in Wade-Giles |
| k | g | However, k' would equal pinyin
k (W-G kou → pinyin gou, but W-G k'ou → pinyin kou) |
| p | b | However, p' would equal pinyin p |
| t | d | However, t' would equal pinyin t |
| j | r | The Confucian virtue of ren becomes jen in a Wade-Giles world |
| ts | z | |
| ts' | c | Sounds like the "ts" in English hits |
| tzu | zi | Lots of pinyin names
end in -zi (Master so-and-so). In W-G, this ending is either -tzu or a stand alone: Tzu. |
| - VOWELS - | ||
| -ih | -i | Whenever a pinyin
form ending in -i is pronounced as though it ended in "-ur" (e.g., the shi class), Wade-Giles uses -ih (shih) |
| u | o | The state of Song is Sung in Wade-Giles |
| u | u | Some u's stay the same: King Wu, wuwei |
| ü | u | But some u's add an umlaut: Junzi becomes chün-tzu |
As you can see from the examples, Wade-Giles also adds hyphens to separate syllables; pinyin generally doesn't (although most online G380 course readings do add hyphens to separate syllables in pinyin.
If you're confused about a transcribed name or term in your reading that seems important, just send me an e-mail message -- I'll try to solve the problem.