Subject: Again: transcription of Chinese cmene

From: "Alfred W. Tüting" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 04 Jun 2000 13:41:29 -0000

la pycyn. cusku di'e

> Chinese names seem to cause more trouble than most, probably reflecting the 
> vagaries of the different romanizations floating around. The decision for names 
> -- when the benamed is not available to have a say -- seems to be to follow 
> the PRC pinyin system... 

Sure, it's okay following the pinyin system (you can follow any existing system 
of transcription), yet this is not the question, since - not being a matter 
of *transliteration* - it's just the ('correct') *pronunciation* one has to 
follow. 
All systems for Mandarin romanization (e.g. Pinyin, Wade-Giles, German, 
Hungarian or any other language's transcription) - or even non-Roman systems 
like Chinese Zhuyin etc. - will do, as far as they're giving the pronunciation 
correctly. Think of e.g. English or Russian - one does not follow the spelling, 
but the sound. All those systems mentioned above are doing their job well for 
our purpose (some do even much more than pinyin - e.g. with regard to ancient 
phonology of Middle Chinese etc. For scholarly use the systems of Karlgren or 
v. d. Gabelentz are much better than W.-G.; but compared with this, Pinyin is useless). 
For example, the old systems of K. and v. d. G. are giving the consonants like that:

Tenues Ten. aspiratae Fricativae (fortes) Nasales
Velares k k' h ng
Supradent. ch ch' sh 
(=Alveolares)
Dentales t t' s n
D. Affricatae ts ts'
Labiales p p' f m

Liquida l (as a lateral to the Dentales)
Semivowels y, w
Retroflex j (initial), erh (final) - a cerebral Fricativa lenis

So e.g. the Chinese capital's name given with pe-ching (above system) is identical 
in pronunciation with pinyin: beijing or still another scholarly system with 
the spelling: peking - from which our western spelling (and wrong pronunciation!) derives etc. etc.
You can write py: "shijing" (Book of Odes), W.-G.: shih-ching, Haenisch: shi-king 
(first i with 2 dots), or even Hungarian: si-king etc. - the pronunciation 
is fixed and always the same! 
We just are up to determine fixed Lojban rules for correctly transcribing the 
*sounds* (as far as Lojban allows)!
So, I'd suggest:
la bei,djin. i. la sh,djin. (la sh,djin. cukta loi pemci... ???) Please, bear with me and
my awkward first steps. I'm not even able to write about planting tomatos ;(((