note 2001: great trouble with the font. Apostrophe coming out as an i. Rough
draft.
One of the most respected English professors in the world once remarked confidently
to an audience, that he had become more multicultural, and had recently been reading
Qing Dynasty poetry. He pronounced it, Kwing. Presumably he thought the Qing Dynasty
and the Ch'ing Dynasty were two different dynasties. They are not, and they are both
pronounced, simply, Ching.
Why the bizarre spellings then? Spellings so unexpected they confuse even great scholars?
Students will not get far if they think Qing and Ch'ing are different eras.
In this essay I address myself to the professor who will have to deal, as soon as
books are assigned, with this pedagogical emergency. I will deal with Chinese, then
with Japanese and Korean romanizations-- the three most populous groups of Asian
Americans with transliterated old country languages.
The colonial heritage makes it unnecessary to devote similar attention to the Filipino
or Vietnamese. Colonialism led the Philippines to use a romanization worked out by
the Spanish; and led Vietnam to use a romanization (called quoc ngu) worked out by
a French missionary, Alexander de Rhodes, in 1651, and enforced by the French when
they closed the China-oriented civil service schools earlier in this century. Vietnam
is the only country in Asia using romanized letters. Thaiís situation will be more
understandable when we know Koreaís.
Chinese
Not only ěChíingî and ěQing,î but ěZhouî and ěChouî are the same dynasty as well,
and the latter two are both pronounced like the English name ěJoe.î As American students
move from book to book during an introductory course, they become confused, as Zhou
in one book changes to Chou in another, and all the philosophers, titles of books
and names of artists shift under their eyes. If only for that reason, when studying
Chinese topics, the professor must start the class by identifying which system of
ěromanizationî he or she will use-- and insist the class follow it. He or she should
also insist, when the reading is assigned, on the whole class using one translation
only-- if only to avoid orthographic confusion.
The problem: there currently is (and perhaps can never be) a good *ěromanizationî
of Chinese-- a method of spelling out Chinese sounds into our alphabet. The older,
still most widely used version, the *Wade-Giles romanization, is so bad itís
comic. Its defenders argue, at best, that it was conceived back when Asian studies
was the province of specialists and experts, who had the time to learn Wade Gilesís
fine distinctions. Others, less charitable, actually have hinted that Wade and Giles
were not unhappy about how convoluted their romanization was, for it meant that only
professional Chinese scholars like themselves would ever pronounce the Chinese sounds
correctly.
For instance, the most important virtue for Confucius is spelled, in Wade-Giles,
ějen.î American readers pronounce it, naturally, like the first syllable of Jennifer.
How do you think that ějî is supposed to be pronounced? Were they thinking of ějî
in German, pronounced like ěyî? No. As in Spanish, like ěhî? No luck. Wade Giles
used a ějî as their symbol for the ěrî sound at the beginning of words like ěrip.î
The Confucian term is pronounced ěren.î
Watch how the damage unfolds. Wade and Giles have used up the letter ějî to mean
ěr.î How will they spell the name of the Taoist philosophic classic, which is pronounced
Dao de Jing? They have used up the ějî. So for the j sound they use... ěchî.
Why? Iíve no idea. They have to spell Dao de Jing as ěTao te Ching.î They also, youíll
notice, chose for some reason to spell the ědî sound with a ět.î Generations of Americans
have called the Dao the ěTaoî (and soybean cake, dofu, ětofu.î )
To recap, having used up ějî on the ěrî sound, they then-- for the ěJî sound-- used
up ěch.î So be it. But theyíre only painting themselves further into the corner.
Having used up ěchî how can they spell the dynasty whose name starts with the ěchî
sound, the Ching dynasty? Their amazing solution: when they print ěchî with an apostrophe
in front of it, just say it the way you normally would. So the Ching dynasty they
write Chíing.
Everyone, naturally, sees that strange apostrophe, thinks the Chinese must pause
for a second in the middle of the word; and everyone says ěCh... ingî, two separate
sounds. But all the apostrophe means is, ěthis ëCh ë you shouldnít say as ějî but
the way you usually say ch.î If you must resort to an apostrophe, wouldnít it have
made more sense to add the odd apostrophe when youíre not supposed to say it the
way you normally would? Why should the odd spelling symbolize the normal pronunciation?
Alas, the name of the country was China, and the language, Chinese. According to
their logic, Wade and Giles should now ask us to spell those two words ěChíinaî and
ěChíinese.î At this point Wade and Giles threw in the towel and said, ěBut go on
spelling China and Chinese the way theyíve always been spelled, even though it violates
our system.î Chaos.
The proof that Wade Giles has been a catastrophe is that many authors felt they had
the right, even the duty, to make up a simpler system of their own. Then, in the
1950s, the Communists developed a new romanization called Hanyu Pinyin (or ěpinyinî
for short ) which avoids many of the Wade
Giles problems, and is increasingly used throughout the West.
Pinyin is better, and is becoming standard in newer books. Ren is, mercifully, ren,
not ějen.î But , as Molly Isham explains, there are still six symbols that Americans
find difficult: Q like 'ch' in 'cheese'; X like 'sh' in 'sheep'; Z like 'ds' in 'beds';
C like 'ts' in 'cats'; Zh like 'dg' in 'edge'; E like the 'e' in 'the' when it appears
before a consonant.
That is how the Chíing Dynasty became the Qing Dynasty and befuddled the famous professor.
That is why Chou in an old book is Zhou in the newer ones, and itís still pronounced
Joe. (Even closer than a J, would be the harsh grinding sound made at the start of
the name George.)
All these romanizations, from Wade-Giles to Pinyin, only capture the way one of the
eight main Chinese languages pronounce these words: putonghua, the language of the
North, of Beijing, of the Emperorís city, and his ruling class-- the language we
call ěMandarin.î It is more accurate to say that ěChineseî is the name of a language
family, like the ěRomanceî language family. Cantonese is as far from Mandarin as
Spanish is from French. A 1955 PRC government conference estimated that 71.5% of
Chinese spoke Mandarin, while the second most common fangyan, ěregional speechî,
accounted for only 8.5% and behind that came Cantonese with only 5%. Pinyin does
not represent the sounds of any language but Mandarin.
(Among American Chinese, however, Mandarin isnít the most common. Until recently,
ninety five percent of American Chinese came from the six counties around the southern
seaport of Canton, or Guangdong, and the language there was primarily Guangdonghua,
which we call Cantonese. Toishanese was spoken a lot nearby, as well, and is in the
United States as a consequence.)
But everyone in China has to study Mandarin in school, and all now learn pinyin as
well as Chinese characters. Mao decided some central language, some lingua franca
was needed, and decreed it would be Mandarin, the language of the Northern majority
and of the capital.
To further complicate matters, Chinese dialects within the languages are further
apart than dialects within English. It is only as far from Beijing to Shanghai as
from San Francisco to Los Angeles, but the difference in their Mandarin is about
as wide as the difference between the English spoken in California and in Scotland.
Iíve watched Shanghaiese listen to a Beijingese, slowly repeat what theyíd heard,
mulling over the sounds, then suddenly exclaim ěAi-ya!î and understand.
Worst, all the Chinese languages (or ěregionalects,î to use a more precise term)
are tonal languages, and the same sound, said four different ways, means four things.
Two different tones, two different words: the difference between Oh? and Oh! Pinyin
tries to cope with the tones by using a series of accent marks but American books
often omit them as just too much to handle. That means, however, that youíll read
of Confuciusís love for li, courtesy/ritual, and a few pages later of his opponentís
(the Law and Order Schoolís) belief in li, force. Confuciusís li was said like a
skeptical ěli?î and his opponentsí li was said like an emphatic ěli!î The two tones
make two different words-- indeed, two opposing philsophies!
To avoid conflicting romanizations, the professor, if books are assigned, should
insist the class all work from one translation. Thereís another reason. Chinese translations
can legitimately differ from each other much more widely than two translations from,
say, French into English, legitimately can.
Here are two translations from the Tao te Ching, chapter 6:
The valley spirit never dies;
It is the woman, primal mother.
Her gateway is the root of heaven and earth.
(Feng and English)
The Valley Spirit never dies.
It is named the Mysterious Female.
And the Doorway of the Mysterious Female
Is the base from which Heaven and Earth sprang.
(Arthur Waley)
Is the valley spirit ěprimal motherî or Mysterious Female? Thereís a difference!
In the first translation, her gateway ěisî, present tense, right now, the root of
heaven and earth. But in the second, the Tao seems to be talking about a cosmic event
long ago, the origin of ěHeaven and Earth,î some sort of creation myth: ěthe Doorway
of the Mysterious Female is the base from which Heaven and Earth sprang.î
Yet neither translation is wrong. The Chinese text permits both of them, and indeed,
many others. It has to do with the great differences between Chinese and English.
Chinese has no plurals, no ěaî or ětheî, often avoids verbs, and has only the present
tense. You put time first in a sentence to specify when something happened. We sometimes
do that too: ěYesterday Iím walking along the road and I see a girl walking toward
me.î The Chinese say that, in effect, to create a past tense. To create a future
tense, they say something like, ěTomorrow, I ëm walking along a road and I see a
girl walking toward me.î So literary texts can justifiably be translated many different
ways. The Chinese sentence to be translated literally says, ěHe/she/it says/said/will
say to him/her/it....î and the translator has to pick the sense that makes the most
sense.
Pick one translation; be aware from the start which romanization it uses; compare
it with other translations if it seems odd. Chinese affords tremendous room for interpretation
and many translators take advantage of it. Be particularly wary if the translation
seems surprisingly trendy. Chinese gives plenty of room for a translator whoís grinding
some axe to turn ancient Chinese sexists into feminists, or pacifists, or whatever
the soup du jour is. (Stephen Mitchell of Berkeley comes to mind.) Watch out for
ěorientalism,î for hippie translations full of mystic magic mumbo jumbo, and, equally
obnoxious, for yuppie translation that turn old generals Sun Tse into CEOís giving
tips on how to run an office.
Japanese
Fortunately, no other Asian language presents romanization problems as great as the
Chinese situation.
The story of other Asian writing systems is, by and large, the story of that
languageís scholarsís wrestlings with Chinese characters. In the first stage, the
Rome-like political and cultural splendor of Chinese civilization, thrills the countryís
intellectuals. They note that the Chinese ideograms stand for ideas, not sounds;
that different Chinese speakers already make very different sounds in response to
the ideograms. Why should not a Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese or Thai scholar borrow
them to symbolize his ideas too? Why not, as it were, learn to use Microsoft Windows,
tap into the vast library already written in that language, and simultaneously be
able to communicate not only with oneís countrymen, but with everyone in Asia using
that vast Chinese system? That dream too often turned into a bad dream, in proportion
to how poorly the Chinese characters fit the aspiring scholarsís languageís grammar.
Luckily, it is not our job to describe the growth of several Asian writing systems.
A sketch will alert the reader to the subjectís complexity. We only need to suggest
why romanization worked better or worse for these languages than it did for Chinese.
The Japanese had, as yet, no written language, when Chinese and Korean emissaries
began going there in significant numbers, towards the end of the Han Dynasty (the
later 3rd century AD.) The Japanese adopted, at first, Chinese characters, and in
a way, that was bad luck, since Japanese is even less related to Chinese than Latin
is to German. Japanese and Korean, its closest relative, both belong to the Altaic
language family, whose members include Mongolian, Manchu and even Turkish. Japanese
isnít even a tonal language. Chinese characters, designed for that language, fit
Japanese needs poorly, as Iíll describe. (Nonetheless, some 1945 Chinese characters
are still in everyday use and taught in the schools. There are, in addition, a much
smaller number of characters the Japanese invented themselves.)
The charactersí name in Japanese, *kanji, simply means ěHan Chinese characters.î
For instance, the symbol for sun was borrowed, but a Japanese would say a Japanese
word, ěnichi,î seeing it, instead of the Chinese word. That method of borrowing worked
well enough for many familiar nouns and verbs, but Chinese lacks as many grammatical
features of Japanese as it does of English. English speakers might borrow the Chinese
character for ěsun,î for instance, but what we would borrow if we wanted to write
ěingî on the end of a word, or use a tense like ěhave hadî which doesnít exist in
Chinese? If we were to borrow the Chinese symbols whenever we could, and when we
couldnít, invent an alphabet in which we could write out ěingî and ěhave hadî, then
use both systems together at once, we would have a situation similar to what developed
in Japanese. The Japanese developed, not one, but two alphabets of syllables (ěsyllabaryî)
to flesh out the Chinese characters. In the 700s a 48 character syllabary, *katakana,
was created mostly for foreign loan words and names. It was soon found necessary
to help out the 48 characters of katakana with yet another 48 character syllabary,
*hiragana, to deal with grammatical situations like the one described above. Collectively,
the two syllabaries are referred to as *kana. Each symbol represents at least two
letters, instead of one, as our alphabet does. ěSaî ěSuî ěSeě and ěSoî each get a
symbol unto themselves. It is assumed that goju-on, the ěfifty soundsî are the basis
of the entire Japanese language. Japanese schoolchildren start by learning hiragana,
and books for them are written entirely in hiragana. They add katakana and kanji
as they grow older. The Japanese system is even more complicated than that, but the
reader has been put on guard, which was our goal for now.
Sticking to the topic at hand, romanization, now the reader can better understand
why Japanese has not been nearly as hard to romanize into English as Chinese has
been. Since Japanese, unlike Chinese, is not tonal, and does already include alphabets
of syllables, it was a closer fit. Add to that, that unlike Chinese, with its great
variety of languages and dialects, Japanese, concentrated in one smallish island
chain, has few regional variations to contend with. The ěHepburnî romanization is
the standard one.
Korean
The early history of the Korean written language shows the same understandable desire
to tap into the Chinese cultural network by adapting Chinese characters to Korean
words. Korean, like Japanese an Altaic language, was also too different from Chinese
for the process to work well. Unlike Japan, however, a strong party in Korean intellectual
life faced up to this, and actually succeeded in replacing the old system with an
alphabet. *Hangul is simpler and more rational than the Western alphabet-- so much
so, that you can learn Hangul in a few days. In 1443 the Korean academy, encouraged
by Koreaís greatest King, King Sejong (ruled, 1419 1450) created a 28 letter alphabet,
Chongum, which would eventually come to be known as Hangul. Sejong himself wrote
in his 1446 promulgation of Hangul that the new alphabetic writing was intended,
not to replace the Chinese classical characters and their texts, but for ěthe convenience
for daily use of the ignorant people.î The popular, as well as nationalist fervor
behind Sejongís revolution is unmistakeable. The Korean literati immediately protested,
claiming that adopting this ěvulgarî writing would mean ěthrowing away Chinese culture
and proclaiming ourselves Barbarians.î Koreans to this day see their unique writing
system as a national symbol. When the Japanese occupied Korea early in this century,
they suppressed Hangul, and forced them to use Japanese-based writing systems. When
America defeated Japan, and Korea was liberated, they made the day they readopted
Hangul into a national holiday-- and a popular one.
Hangul is indeed an admirably rational and even a witty writing system. The symbol
used for ěnî represents a sideways view of the tongue making an ěnî sound, touching
the inside gum. Similarly, the sound for ětî is represented by the tongue taking
that position ,
and sounds made in the throat include a picture of one and the ěsî sound shows a
tooth, to remind you of the ěsí blowing over it.
Again, this brief introduction gives far from the whole story about Korean writing,
even about hangul, but the reader is now in a position to understand the difficulties
of transliteration. They should be less than those involving Chinese, and they are.
Unhappily, the sounds of Korean have proved a great obstacle. Korean abounds in sounds,
like the unaspirated ěpî at the end of the English word ěLipî, which English has
no separate letters for. Korean ěpî sounds like their ěbî to us, their ělî sounds
like their ěn,î their ěgî sounds like their ěkî. The popular Korean name ěKimî is
our attempt to represent a sound which could as justly be written ěGeem.î One of
their ělî sounds could be one of our several sounds symbolized by ěr.î The popular
name ěLee,î therefore, could as easily be romanized ěRhee,î and indeed, often has
been.
The dated official transliteration system has been as bad as Wade-Giles in Chinese,
and got everyone off on the wrong foot. As one writer reports, a province name pronounced
ěCholla-pukdouî appears on maps using the official system as ěChonra-bugdo.î
Vietnamese and Thai
In conclusion, we can understand that the Vietnamese willingness to abandon their
own ancient, complex system using Chinese characters was not inexplicable, not like
giving up the flag. Vietnam cared even less for the Chinese superpower to the North
than it did for France. When North Vietnamese kicked out the French-- and with them,
many ethnic Chinese who had been in Vietnam for generations-- their nationalism certainly
did not lead them back to the characters associated with feudalism and the oppressive
past. Ho Chi Minh, their charismatic leader, had been educated in Paris, had been
an early member of the French Communist Party. He saw French romanization as a break
with the mandarin past. Vietnamese, therefore, needs no transliteration, though some
of the letters are pronounced in unique ways. The ěNgî on the front of the familiar
name ěNguyen,î for instance, is close to the English ěwî, or even better, the deeper
sound symbolized by the archaic ěGuî on the front of ěGuinevere.î
Thailand, meanwhile, had done the Korean-style revolution several hundred years before
the Koreans. Chinese characters had worked better in Thailand than other places,
one must assume, since the languages are closely related, monosyllabic, and tonal.
The cultures, however, are far apart, Thailand being also within the religious and
even ethnic sphere of India. Today 95% of the country espouses one of the oldest
Indian versions of Buddhism, Theravada (or ěHinayana.î The great King Ram Khamheng,
sentimentally regarded as the Solomon-like leader of a golden age, in 1283, codified
Theravada Buddhism and also promulgated a new alphabet, a syllabary based on Sanskrit,
the earliest Indian language. Ram Kamheng turned Thailandís cultural face from China
toward India.
There is no standard transliteration system for Thai, which has led one writer to
lament that there is ěno proper way to transliterate Thai-- only wrong ways.î As
in the case of Korean, Thai uses sounds which the English language does not represent,
like the unvoiced ěPî which sounds, to us, almost identical with B. Transliterators
have great latitude to improvise and they have used it.
In all these cases, forewarned is forearmed. The alert reader can proceed, albeit
with caution.
Further Reading:
The best book on the all Asian writing systems, with an evaluation of the strengths
and weaknesses of each, is DeFrancis, John, The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy,
Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1984.
The standard Peopleís Republic of China work on hanyu pinyin (by far the most comprehensive)
is Binyong, Yin, Chinese Romanization: Pronunciation and Orthography, trans. Felley,
Mary, Beijing: Sinolingua, 1990.
Kenneth G. Henshallís A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters (Rutland, Vermont:
Tuttle, 1988) is long and comprehensive.
The unusual and fascinating Mangajin Magazineís system of teaching Japanese idioms
by analyzing Japanese comic book speech situations has produced Mangajinís Basic
Japanese Through Comics, (Atlanta. Georgia: Mangajin, 1993).
An advanced introduction to Korean is the collection of linguistic articles compiled
in the official government publication, The Korean Language, edited by the Korean
National Commission for Unesco, (Arch Cape, Oregon: Pace International Research,
1983).
