Wade–Giles () is a

romanization Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, an ...

system for

Mandarin Chinese Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language ...

. It developed from a system produced by Thomas Francis Wade, during the mid-19th century, and was given completed form with Herbert A. Giles's '' Chinese–English Dictionary'' of 1892. The romanization systems in common use until the late 19th century were based on the

Nanjing dialect The Nanjing dialect, also known as Nankinese, or Nanjing Mandarin, is a dialect of Mandarin Chinese spoken in Nanjing, China. It is part of the Jianghuai group of Chinese varieties. Phonology A number of features distinguish the Nanjing dialec ...

, but Wade–Giles was based on the Beijing dialect and was the system of transcription familiar in the English-speaking world for most of the 20th century. Both of these kinds of transcription were used in postal romanizations (romanized place-names standardized for postal uses). In

mainland China "Mainland China" is a geopolitical term defined as the territory governed by the People's Republic of China (including islands like Hainan or Chongming), excluding dependent territories of the PRC, and other territories within Greater Chin ...

Wade–Giles has been mostly replaced by the

Hanyu Pinyin Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese for ...

romanization system, which was officially adopted in 1958, with exceptions for the romanized forms of some of the most commonly-used names of locations and persons, and other proper nouns. The romanized name for most locations, persons and other proper nouns in

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the northe ...

is based on the Wade–Giles derived romanized form, for example Kaohsiung, the Matsu Islands and Chiang Ching-kuo.

History

Wade–Giles was developed by Thomas Francis Wade, a scholar of Chinese and a British ambassador in China who was the first professor of Chinese at

Cambridge University , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

. Wade published in 1867 the first textbook on the Beijing dialect of

Mandarin Mandarin or The Mandarin may refer to: Language * Mandarin Chinese, branch of Chinese originally spoken in northern parts of the country ** Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Mandarin, the official language of China ** Taiwanese Mandarin, Stand ...

in English,
Yü-yen Tzŭ-erh Chi
' (), which became the basis for the romanization system later known as Wade–Giles. The system, designed to transcribe Chinese terms for Chinese specialists, was further refined in 1892 by Herbert Allen Giles (in '' A Chinese–English Dictionary''), a British diplomat in China and his son, Lionel Giles, a curator at the British Museum.

used Wade–Giles for decades as the ''

de facto ''De facto'' ( ; , "in fact") describes practices that exist in reality, whether or not they are officially recognized by laws or other formal norms. It is commonly used to refer to what happens in practice, in contrast with '' de jure'' ("by l ...

'' standard, co-existing with several official

s in succession, namely, Gwoyeu Romatzyh (1928),

Mandarin Phonetic Symbols II Mandarin Phonetic Symbols II ( zh, t= ), abbreviated MPS II, is a romanization system formerly used in the Republic of China (Taiwan). It was created to replace the complex tonal-spelling Gwoyeu Romatzyh, and to co-exist with the popular Wa ...

(1986), and Tongyong Pinyin (2000). The

Kuomintang The Kuomintang (KMT), also referred to as the Guomindang (GMD), the Nationalist Party of China (NPC) or the Chinese Nationalist Party (CNP), is a major political party in the Republic of China, initially on the Chinese mainland and in Tai ...

party has previously promoted Hànyǔ Pīnyīn with Ma Ying-jeou's successful presidential bid in 2008 and in a number of cities with

elected mayors. However, the current Tsai Ing-wen administration and Democratic Progressive Party along with the majority of the people in Taiwan, both native and overseas, use spelling and transcribe their legal names in the Wade–Giles system, as well as the other aforementioned systems.

Initials and finals

The tables below show the Wade–Giles representation of each Chinese sound (in bold type), together with the corresponding IPA phonetic symbol (in square brackets), and equivalent representations in Bopomofo and Hànyǔ Pīnyīn.

Initials

Instead of ''ts'', ''ts'' and ''s'', Wade–Giles writes ''tz'', ''tz'' and ''ss'' before ''ŭ'' (see

below Below may refer to: *Earth * Ground (disambiguation) * Soil * Floor * Bottom (disambiguation) * Less than *Temperatures below freezing * Hell or underworld People with the surname * Ernst von Below (1863–1955), German World War I general * Fr ...

Finals

Wade–Giles writes ''-uei'' after ''k'' and ''k'', otherwise ''-ui'': ''kuei'', ''kuei'', ''hui'', ''shui'', ''chui''. It writes as ''-o'' after ''k'', ''k'' and ''h'', otherwise as ''-ê'': ''ko'', ''ko'', ''ho'', ''shê'', ''chê''. When forms a syllable on its own, it is written ''ê'' or ''o'' depending on the character. Wade–Giles writes as ''-uo'' after ''k'', ''k'', ''h'' and ''sh'', otherwise as ''-o'': ''kuo'', ''kuo'', ''huo'', ''shuo'', ''cho''. For ''-ih'' and ''-ŭ'', see

. Giles's '' A Chinese–English Dictionary'' also includes the syllables ''chio'', ''chio'', ''hsio'', ''yo'', which are pronounced like ''chüeh'', ''chüeh'', ''hsüeh'', ''yüeh'' in Peking dialect.

Syllables that begin with a medial

Wade–Giles writes the syllable as ''i'' or ''yi'' depending on the character.

System features

Consonants and initial symbols

A feature of the Wade–Giles system is the representation of the unaspirated-aspirated stop consonant pairs using a character resembling an

apostrophe The apostrophe ( or ) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritical mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet and some other alphabets. In English, the apostrophe is used for two basic purposes: * The marking of the omission of one ...

. Thomas Wade and others have used the

spiritus asper In the polytonic orthography of Ancient Greek, the rough breathing ( grc, δασὺ πνεῦμα, dasỳ pneûma or ''daseîa''; la, spīritus asper) character is a diacritical mark used to indicate the presence of an sound before a vowel, ...

( or ), borrowed from the polytonic orthography of the

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic p ...

language. Herbert Giles and others have used a left (opening) curved single

quotation mark Quotation marks (also known as quotes, quote marks, speech marks, inverted commas, or talking marks) are punctuation marks used in pairs in various writing systems to set off direct speech, a quotation, or a phrase. The pair consists of an ...

(‘) for the same purpose. A third group used a plain

('). The

backtick The backtick is a typographical mark used mainly in computing. It is also known as backquote, grave, or grave accent. The character was designed for typewriters to add a grave accent to a (lower-case) base letter, by overtyping it atop that le ...

, and visually similar characters are sometimes seen in various electronic documents using the system. Examples using the spiritus asper: ''p, p, t, t, k, k, ch, ch''. The use of this character preserves ''b'', ''d'', ''g'', and ''j'' for the romanization of Chinese varieties containing voiced consonants, such as Shanghainese (which has a full set of voiced consonants) and

Min Nan Southern Min (), Minnan (Mandarin pronunciation: ) or Banlam (), is a group of linguistically similar and historically related Sinitic languages that form a branch of Min Chinese spoken in Fujian (especially the Minnan region), most of Taiwan ( ...

(Hō-ló-oē) whose century-old

Pe̍h-ōe-jī (; ; ), also sometimes known as the Church Romanization, is an orthography used to write variants of Southern Min Chinese, particularly Taiwanese and Amoy Hokkien. Developed by Western missionaries working among the Chinese diaspora in So ...

(POJ, often called Missionary Romanization) is similar to Wade–Giles. POJ, Legge romanization,

Simplified Wade Simplified Wade, abbreviated ''SW'', is a modification of the Wade–Giles romanization system for writing Standard Mandarin Chinese. It was devised by the Swedish linguist Olov Bertil Anderson (1920–1993), who first published the system in ...

, and

EFEO Chinese transcription The Chinese transcription of the École française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO) was the most used phonetic transcription of Chinese in the French-speaking world until the middle of the 20th century. While it is often deemed to have been devised by ...

use the letter instead of an apostrophe-like character to indicate aspiration. (This is similar to the obsolete IPA convention before the revisions of the 1970s). The convention of an apostrophe-like character or to denote aspiration is also found in romanizations of other Asian languages, such as McCune–Reischauer for Korean and

ISO 11940 ISO 11940 is an ISO standard for the transliteration of Thai characters, published in 1998 and updated in September 2003 and confirmed in 2008. An extension to this standard named ISO 11940-2 defines a simplified transcription based on it. Cons ...

for Thai. People unfamiliar with Wade–Giles often ignore the spiritus asper, sometimes omitting them when copying texts, unaware that they represent vital information. Hànyǔ Pīnyīn addresses this issue by employing the Latin letters customarily used for voiced stops, unneeded in Mandarin, to represent the unaspirated stops: ''b, p, d, t, g, k, j, q, zh, ch.'' Partly because of the popular omission of apostrophe-like characters, the four sounds represented in Hànyǔ Pīnyīn by ''j'', ''q'', ''zh'', and ''ch'' often all become ''ch'', including in many proper names. However, if the apostrophe-like characters are kept, the system reveals a symmetry that leaves no overlap: * The non- retroflex ''ch'' (Pīnyīn ''j'') and ''ch'' (Pīnyīn ''q'') are always before either ''ü'' or ''i'', but never ''ih''. * The retroflex ''ch'' (Pīnyīn ''zh'') and ''ch'' (Pīnyīn ''ch'') are always before ''ih'', ''a'', ''ê'', ''e'', ''o'', or ''u''.

Vowels and final symbols

Syllabic consonants

Like Yale and

, Wade–Giles renders the two types of syllabic consonant (; Wade–Giles: ''kung¹-yün⁴''; Hànyǔ Pīnyīn: ''kōngyùn'') differently: * ''-ŭ'' is used after the

sibilant Sibilants are fricative consonants of higher amplitude and pitch, made by directing a stream of air with the tongue towards the teeth. Examples of sibilants are the consonants at the beginning of the English words ''sip'', ''zip'', ''ship'', an ...

s written in this position (and this position only) as ''tz'', ''tz'' and ''ss'' (Pīnyīn ''z'', ''c'' and ''s''). * ''-ih'' is used after the retroflex ''ch'', ''ch'', ''sh'', and ''j'' (Pīnyīn ''zh'', ''ch'', ''sh'', and ''r''). These finals are both written as ''-ih'' in Tongyòng Pinyin, as ''-i'' in Hànyǔ Pīnyīn (hence distinguishable only by the initial from as in ''li''), and as ''-y'' in Gwoyeu Romatzyh and

. They are typically omitted in Zhùyīn (Bōpōmōfō).

Vowel o

Final ''o'' in Wade–Giles has two pronunciations in modern Peking dialect: and . What is pronounced in vernacular Peking dialect as a close-mid back unrounded vowel is written usually as ''ê'', but sometimes as ''o'', depending on historical pronunciation (at the time Wade–Giles was developed). Specifically, after velar initials ''k'', ''k'' and ''h'' (and a historical ''ng'', which had been dropped by the time Wade–Giles was developed), ''o'' is used; for example, "哥" is ''ko¹'' (Pīnyīn ''gē'') and "刻" is ''ko⁴'' (Pīnyīn ''kè''). In Peking dialect, ''o'' after velars (and what used to be ''ng'') have shifted to , thus they are written as ''ge'', ''ke'', ''he'' and ''e'' in Pīnyīn. When forms a syllable on its own, Wade–Giles writes ''ê'' or ''o'' depending on the character. In all other circumstances, it writes ''ê''. What is pronounced in Peking dialect as is usually written as ''o'' in Wade–Giles, except for ''wo'', ''shuo'' (e.g. "說" ''shuo¹'') and the three syllables of ''kuo'', ''kuo'', and ''huo'' (as in 過, 霍, etc.), which contrast with ''ko'', ''ko'', and ''ho'' that correspond to Pīnyīn ''ge'', ''ke'', and ''he''. This is because characters like 羅, 多, etc. (Wade–Giles: ''lo²'', ''to¹''; Pīnyīn: ''luó'', ''duō'') did not originally carry the medial . Peking dialect does not have phonemic contrast between ''o'' and ''-uo''/''wo'' (except in interjections when used alone) and a medial is usually inserted in front of ''-o'' to form . Note that Zhùyīn and Pīnyīn write as ㄛ ''-o'' after ㄅ ''b'', ㄆ ''p'', ㄇ ''m'' and ㄈ ''f'', and as ㄨㄛ ''-uo'' after all other initials.

Tones

Tones are indicated in Wade–Giles using superscript numbers (1–4) placed after the syllable. This contrasts with the use of diacritics to represent the tones in Pīnyīn. For example, the Pīnyīn ''qiàn'' (fourth tone) has the Wade–Giles equivalent ''chien⁴''.

Punctuation

Wade–Giles uses

hyphen The hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. ''Son-in-law'' is an example of a hyphenated word. The hyphen is sometimes confused with dashes ( figur ...

s to separate all syllables within a word (whereas Pīnyīn separates syllables only in specially defined cases, using hyphens or closing (right) single quotation marks as appropriate). If a syllable is not the first in a word, its first letter is not

capitalized Capitalization (American English) or capitalisation (British English) is writing a word with its first letter as a capital letter (uppercase letter) and the remaining letters in lower case, in writing systems with a case distinction. The term a ...

, even if it is part of a

proper noun A proper noun is a noun that identifies a single entity and is used to refer to that entity (''Africa'', '' Jupiter'', ''Sarah'', '' Microsoft)'' as distinguished from a common noun, which is a noun that refers to a class of entities (''contine ...

. The use of apostrophe-like characters, hyphens, and capitalization is frequently not observed in place names and personal names. For example, the majority of overseas Taiwanese people write their given names like "Tai Lun" or "Tai-Lun", whereas the Wade–Giles is actually "Tai-lun". (See also

Chinese name Chinese names or Chinese personal names are names used by individuals from Greater China and other parts of the Chinese-speaking world throughout East and Southeast Asia (ESEA). In addition, many names used in Japan, Korea and Vietnam are oft ...

s.)

Comparison with other systems

Pinyin

*Wade–Giles chose the

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

-like (implying a sound like IPA's , as in ''s'' in English ''measure'') to represent a Northern Mandarin pronunciation of what is represented as in pinyin (Northern Mandarin / Southern Mandarin ; generally considered

allophone In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor ''phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in '' ...

s). *''Ü'' (representing ) always has an umlaut above, while pinyin only employs it in the cases of , ', , ' and ', while leaving it out after ''j'', ''q'', ''x'' and ''y'' as a simplification because / cannot otherwise appear after those letters. (The vowel / can occur in those cases in pinyin where the diaeresis are indicated / or ; in which cases it serves to distinguish the front vowel from the back vowel . By contrast it is always present to mark the front vowel in Wade–Giles.) Because (as in "jade") must have an umlaut in Wade–Giles, the umlaut-less in Wade–Giles is freed up for what corresponds to ( "have"/" there is") in Pinyin. *The Pīnyīn cluster is in Wade–Giles, reflecting the pronunciation of as in English ''book'' . (Compare '' kung¹-fu'' to as an example.) *After a consonant, both Wade–Giles and Pīnyīn use and instead of the complete syllables: and /.

Chart

Note: In Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, the so-called neutral tone is written leaving the syllable with no diacritic mark at all. In Tongyòng Pinyin, a ring is written over the vowel.

Adaptations

There are several adaptations of Wade–Giles.

''Mathews''

The Romanization system used in the 1943 edition of ''

Mathews' Chinese–English Dictionary ''A Chinese–English Dictionary: Compiled for the China Inland Mission by R. H. Mathews'' or ''Mathews' Chinese–English Dictionary'', edited by the Australian Congregationalist missionary Robert Henry Mathews (1877–1970), was the standard Ch ...

'' differs from Wade–Giles in the following ways:''

''. *It uses the right apostrophe: ''p'', ''t'', ''k'', ''ch'', ''ts'', ''tzŭ''; while Wade–Giles uses the left apostrophe, similar to the aspiration

diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...

used in the International Phonetic Alphabet before the revisions of the 1970s: ''p'', ''t'', ''k'', ''ch'', ''ts'', ''tzŭ''. *It consistently uses ''i'' for the syllable , while Wade–Giles uses ''i'' or ''yi'' depending on the character. *It uses ''o'' for the syllable , while Wade–Giles uses ''ê'' or ''o'' depending on the character. *It offers the choice between ''ssŭ'' and ''szŭ'', while Wade–Giles requires ''ssŭ''. *It does not use the spellings ''chio'', ''chio'', ''hsio'', ''yo'', replacing them with ''chüeh'', ''chüeh'', ''hsüeh'', ''yüeh'' in accordance with their modern pronunciations. *It uses an underscored ''³'' to denote a second tone which comes from an original third tone, but only if the following syllable has the neutral tone and the

tone sandhi Tone sandhi is a phonological change occurring in tonal languages, in which the tones assigned to individual words or morphemes change based on the pronunciation of adjacent words or morphemes. It usually simplifies a bidirectional tone into ...

is therefore not predictable: ''hsiao³•chieh''. *It denotes the neutral tone by placing a dot (if the neutral tone is compulsory) or a circle (if the neutral tone is optional) before the syllable. The dot or circle replaces the hyphen.

Table

Gallery

Examples of Wade–Giles derived English language terminology: File:Sign of Buddhist Tzu Chi University at the main entrance.JPG, Tzu Chi University, Hualien File:Lienchiang County Health Bureau and Lienchiang County Hospital 20140405.jpg, Lienchiang County Hospital and Health Bureau File:Emblem of Pingtung County.svg, Emblem of

Pingtung County Pingtung County is a county located in southern Taiwan. It has a warm tropical monsoon climate and is known for its agriculture and tourism. Kenting National Park, Taiwan's oldest national park, is located in the county. The county seat is Pin ...

References

Bibliography

Giles, Herbert A. ''A Chinese–English Dictionary''. 2-vol. & 3-vol. versions both. London: Shanghai: Bernard Quaritch; Kelly and Walsh, 1892.
Rev. & enlarged 2nd ed.
in 3 vols.
Vol. I: front-matter & ''a''-''hsü''Vol. II: ''hsü''-''shao''
an
Vol. III: ''shao''-''yün''
, Shanghai: Hong Kong: Singapore: Yokohama: London: Kelly & Walsh, Limited; Bernard Quaritch, 1912. Rpt. of the 2nd ed. but in 2 vols. and bound as 1, New York: Paragon Book Reprint Corp., 1964.

External links

* ttp://www.mandarintools.com/pyconverter.html Chinese Romanization Converter– Convert between Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, Wade–Giles, Gwoyeu Romatzyh and other known or (un-)common Romanization systems.
A conversion table of Chinese provinces and cities from Wade–Giles to PīnyīnPinyin4j: Java library supporting Chinese to Wade–Giles
– Support Simplified and Traditional Chinese; Support most popular Romanization systems, including Hànyŭ Pīnyīn, Tongyòng Pinyin, Wade–Giles, MPS2, Yale and Gwoyeu Romatzyh; Support multiple pronunciations of a single character; Support customized output, such as ü or tone marks.
''Chinese without a teacher'', Chinese phrasebook by Herbert Giles with RomanizationChinese Phonetic Conversion Tool
– Converts between Wade–Giles and other formats
Wade–Giles Annotation
– Wade–Giles pronunciation and English definitions for Chinese text snippets or web pages.

Key to Wade–Giles romanization of Chinese characters: November 1944
( Army Map Service) {{DEFAULTSORT:Wade-Giles Romanization of Chinese Writing systems introduced in 1892