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Wade–giles
Wade–Giles ( ) is a romanization system for Mandarin Chinese. It developed from the system produced by Thomas Francis Wade during the mid-19th century, and was given completed form with Herbert Giles's '' A Chinese–English Dictionary'' (1892). The romanization systems in common use until the late 19th century were based on the Nanjing dialect, 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, Wade–Giles has been mostly replaced by Hanyu Pinyin, 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 is based on the Wade–Giles der ...
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Tongyong Pinyin
Tongyong Pinyin was the official romanization of Taiwanese Mandarin, Mandarin in Taiwan between 2002 and 2008. The system was unofficially used between 2000 and 2002, when a new romanization system for Taiwan was being evaluated for adoption. Taiwan's Ministry of Education (Republic of China), Ministry of Education approved the system in 2002, but its use was optional. Since 1 January 2009, the Ministry of Education began promoting Hanyu Pinyin. Local governments would not be able to get financial aid from the central government if they used Tongyong Pinyin-derived romanizations. After this policy change, Tongyong Pinyin has been used for the transliteration of some place names and personal names in Taiwan (Republic of China). Some of the romanization, romanized names of the districts, subway stations and streets in Kaohsiung, Tainan, Taichung, Yunlin County and other places are derived from Tongyong Pinyin for example, Cijin District, Kaohsiung, Cijin District (, ''Cíjin Cyu ...
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Postal Romanization
Postal romanization was a system of transliterating place names in China developed by postal authorities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For many cities, the corresponding postal romanization was the most common English-language form of the city's name from the 1890s until the 1980s, when postal romanization was replaced by pinyin, but the system remained in place in Taiwan until 2002. In 1892, Herbert Giles created a romanization system called the Nanking syllabary. The Imperial Maritime Customs Post Office would cancel postage with a stamp that gave the city of origin in Latin letters, often romanized using Giles's system. In 1896, the Customs Post was combined with other postal services and renamed the Chinese Imperial Post. As a national agency, the Imperial Post was an authority on Chinese place names. When the Wade–Giles system became widespread, some argued that the post office should adopt it. This idea was rejected at a conference held in 1906 in Sha ...
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Hanyu Pinyin
Hanyu Pinyin, or simply pinyin, officially the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet, is the most common romanization system for Standard Chinese. ''Hanyu'' () literally means ' Han language'—that is, the Chinese language—while ''pinyin'' literally means 'spelled sounds'. Pinyin is the official romanization system used in China, Singapore, Taiwan, and by the United Nations. Its use has become common when transliterating Standard Chinese mostly regardless of region, though it is less ubiquitous in Taiwan. It is used to teach Standard Chinese, normally written with Chinese characters, to students in mainland China and Singapore. Pinyin is also used by various input methods on computers and to categorize entries in some Chinese dictionaries. In pinyin, each Chinese syllable is spelled in terms of an optional initial and a final, each of which is represented by one or more letters. Initials are initial consonants, whereas finals are all possible combinations of medials ( semivowels co ...
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Romanization Of Chinese
Romanization of Chinese is the use of the Latin alphabet to transliterate Varieties of Chinese, Chinese. Chinese uses a logographic script and its Chinese characters, characters do not represent phonemes directly. There have been many systems using Romanization, Roman characters to represent Chinese throughout history. Linguist Daniel Kane (linguist), Daniel Kane wrote, "It used to be said that sinologists had to be like musicians, who might compose in one key and readily transcribe into other keys." The dominant international standard for Standard Chinese, Standard Mandarin since about 1982 has been Pinyin, Hanyu Pinyin, invented by a group of Chinese linguists, including Zhou Youguang, in the 1950s. Other well-known systems include Wade–Giles (Beijing Mandarin) and Yale romanization (Yale romanization of Mandarin, Beijing Mandarin and Yale romanization of Cantonese, Cantonese). There are many uses for Chinese romanization. Most broadly, it is used to provide a useful way for ...
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A Chinese–English Dictionary
''A Chinese–English Dictionary'' (1892), compiled by the British consular officer and sinologist Herbert Allen Giles (1845–1935), is the first Chinese–English encyclopedic dictionary. Giles started compilation after being rebuked for criticizing mistranslations in Samuel Wells Williams' (1874) '' A Syllabic Dictionary of the Chinese Language''. The 1,461-page first edition contains 13,848 Chinese character head entries alphabetically collated by Beijing Mandarin pronunciation romanized in the Wade–Giles system, which Giles created as a modification of Thomas Wade's (1867) system. Giles' dictionary furthermore gives pronunciations from nine regional varieties of Chinese, and three Sino-Xenic languages Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese. Giles revised his dictionary into the 1,813-page second edition (1912) with the addition of 67 entries and numerous usage examples. History Herbert Giles served as a British consular officer in late Qing dynasty China until from 18 ...
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Bopomofo
Bopomofo, also called Zhuyin Fuhao ( ; ), or simply Zhuyin, is a Chinese transliteration, transliteration system for Standard Chinese and other Sinitic languages. It is the principal method of teaching Chinese Mandarin pronunciation in Taiwan. It consists of 37 characters and five tone (linguistics), tone marks, which together can transcribe all possible sounds in Mandarin Chinese. Bopomofo was first introduced in China during the 1910s by the Beiyang government, where it was used alongside Wade–Giles, a romanization system which used a modified Latin alphabet. Today, Bopomofo is more common in Taiwan than on the mainland, and is used as the primary Chinese input method, electronic input method for Taiwanese Mandarin, as well as in dictionaries and other non-official documents. Terminology ''Bopomofo'' is the name used for the system by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and Unicode. Analogous to how the word ''alphabet'' is derived from the names of ...
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Standard Chinese Phonology
The phonology of Standard Chinese has historically derived from the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. However, pronunciation varies widely among speakers, who may introduce elements of their local varieties. Television and radio announcers are chosen for their ability to affect a standard accent. Elements of the sound system include not only the segments—e.g. vowels and consonants—of the language, but also the tones applied to each syllable. In addition to its four main tones, Standard Chinese has a neutral tone that appears on weak syllables. This article uses the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to compare the phonetic values corresponding to syllables romanized with pinyin. Consonants The sounds shown in parentheses are sometimes not analyzed as separate phonemes; for more on these, see below. Excluding these, and excluding the glides , , and , there are 19 consonant phonemes in the inventory. Between pairs of plosives or affricates having the same place of ...
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Gwoyeu Romatzyh
Gwoyeu Romatzyh ( ; GR) is a system for writing Standard Chinese using the Latin alphabet. It was primarily conceived by Yuen Ren Chao (1892–1982), who led a group of linguists on the National Languages Committee in refining the system between 1925 and 1926. In September 1928, it was adopted by the Republic of China (1912–1949), Republic of China as the national romanization system for Standard Chinese. GR indicates the four tones of Standard Chinese by varying the spelling of syllables, a method originally proposed by team member Lin Yutang (1895–1976). Distinct sets of spellings are assigned to syllables in GR according to particular rules. This differs from approaches used by other systems to denote tones, like the Tone number, numerals used by the earlier Wade–Giles system, or the diacritics used by the later Hanyu Pinyin system. Despite support from linguists both in China and overseas—including some early proponents who hoped it would eventually replace Chinese ...
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Kaohsiung
Kaohsiung, officially Kaohsiung City, is a special municipality located in southern Taiwan. It ranges from the coastal urban center to the rural Yushan Range with an area of . Kaohsiung City has a population of approximately 2.73 million people as of October 2023 and is Taiwan's third most populous city and largest city in southern Taiwan. Founded in the 17th century as a small trading village named Takau, the city has since grown into the political and economic center of southern Taiwan, with key industries such as manufacturing, steel-making, oil refining, freight transport and shipbuilding. It is classified as a "Gamma −" level global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network, with some of the most prominent infrastructures in Taiwan. Kaohsiung is of strategic importance to the nation as the city is the main port city of Taiwan; the Port of Kaohsiung is the largest and busiest harbor in Taiwan and more than 67% of the nation's exports and i ...
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Herbert Giles
Herbert Allen Giles (; 8 December 184513 February 1935) was a British diplomat and sinologist who was the professor of Chinese at the University of Cambridge for 35 years. Giles was educated at Charterhouse School before becoming a British diplomat in China. He modified a Mandarin Chinese romanization system established by Thomas Wade, resulting in the widely known Wade–Giles Chinese romanization system. Among his many works were translations of the ''Analects of Confucius'', the '' Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching)'', the '' Chuang Tzu'', and, in 1892, the widely published '' A Chinese–English Dictionary''. Biography Herbert Allen Giles was the fourth son of John Allen Giles (1808–1884), an Anglican clergyman. After studying at Charterhouse, Herbert became a British diplomat to Qing China, serving from 1867 to 1892. He also spent several years (1885–1888) at Fort Santo Domingo in Tamsui, northern Taiwan. Giles' great-grandson, Giles Pickford, stated in an address at the openi ...
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Mandarin Phonetic Symbols II
Mandarin Phonetic Symbols II (MPS II) is a romanization system formerly used in Taiwan. It was created to replace the complex Gwoyeu Romatzyh system, which used tonal spelling—and to co-exist with the Wade–Giles romanization as well as bopomofo. It is sometimes referred to as Gwoyeu Romatzyh 2 or GR2. History Based on the earlier and more complex Gwoyeu Romatzyh, the tentative version of MPS II was released on May 10, 1984, by the Ministry of Education under the Chiang Ching-kuo administration. After two years of feedback from the general public, the official version was established on January 28, 1986. To distinguish bopomofo () from MPS II, the former is officially called "Mandarin Phonetic Symbols I" (). Despite its official status for almost two decades until it was replaced by Tongyong Pinyin in 2002, MPS II existed only in some governmental publications (such as travel brochures and dictionaries). However, MPS II was not used for the official romanized names of Ta ...
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Matsu Islands
The Matsu Islands; Foochow Romanized: Mā-cū liĕk-dō̤ ( or ), officially Lienchiang County; Foochow Romanized: Lièng-gŏng-gâing (), are an archipelago of 36 islands and islets in the East China Sea governed by the Republic of China (Taiwan), situated alongside the southeastern coast of mainland China. The archipelago forms the smallest county in the ROC-controlled territories by area and population, as well as one of two counties that is a part of the nominal Fuchien Province. The current Lienchiang County of the ROC was once part of an intact Lienchiang County of Fujian before its effective partition in 1949 following the Chinese Civil War, which resulted in the mainland portion of the county being controlled by the People's Republic of China (PRC), while the offshore islands of Matsu remained under ROC control. The circumstance has made the county the only former geographical unit with the same name that is now divided between the administrations of the ROC and ...
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