EPT
On August 16 2011 22:50 MaGariShun wrote:
You just say that like it's a proven fact. Of course there are other problems with romanization too, but an English speaker (americans even more so it seems, because of their pronounciation), who is pronouncing the very same characters differently than say a french, german, italian etc., will obviously have problems reading something romanized using the "standard" (note the quotes) pronounciation of the latin alphabet. I am not saying english speakers are using the characters "wrong", but they need to understand that their pronounciation is not the common one and is in fact very specific to their language.
Using a romanization for english speakers, like proposed in the OP, will only help english speakers and confuse almost every other language that uses the roman alphabet.
You just say that like it's a proven fact. Of course there are other problems with romanization too, but an English speaker (americans even more so it seems, because of their pronounciation), who is pronouncing the very same characters differently than say a french, german, italian etc., will obviously have problems reading something romanized using the "standard" (note the quotes) pronounciation of the latin alphabet. I am not saying english speakers are using the characters "wrong", but they need to understand that their pronounciation is not the common one and is in fact very specific to their language.
Using a romanization for english speakers, like proposed in the OP, will only help english speakers and confuse almost every other language that uses the roman alphabet.
Keep in mind that it's not just English that's different - there is plenty of variation in how the Roman alphabet is pronounced between other languages that use it as well.
Also, the point is that a Romanization doesn't use "standard" pronunciation of the Roman alphabet, but assigns sounds from the Romanized language to the Roman alphabet. For ease of use the Romanized sound is generally matched to the letter that most closely matches its pronunciation, but there isn't always a good match - look at "c" or "x" or even "e" in pinyin. Precision is more important than intuitiveness in Romanization systems.
An Anglicization, like "shee gwa", is not a Romanization for English speakers but something else entirely. An Anglicization approximates the sounds made in the original language as closely as possible using English sounds and English spellings. It is for laymen and emphasizes intuitiveness above precision. It is sometimes useful for giving someone without training in a Romanization system a rough idea of how something is pronounced, but because it lacks the precision and universality of a Romanization system it is not nearly as useful for anyone who does have training in the language, English speaker or otherwise.
As for the whole "x" debate, non-Chinese speakers should first realize that there are two "sh" sounds in Chinese, if you will: "sh" and "x" in pinyin. Your tongue should roll back when pronouncing "sh" (sounds produced this way are called retroflex consonants), and is pretty much exactly the same as the English "sh" in words like "she" or "shop". The "x" sound sounds most like "sh" in English, but without rolling back your tongue back. That's the best way I can describe it; it's not a hard sound to make, but there's no real English equivalent.
The source of the debate here I think is that pronunciation in Mandarin varies across China and Taiwan. For example, in the south they tend not to use the retroflex "sh" sound, so whereas 是 in what is usually thought of as standard Mandarin pronunciation would be written as "shi" in pinyin, in the south they will often pronounce it as "si" in pinyin. As saritenite explained, "watermelon" in one common accent would be pronounced with a "see" sound rather than the "x" sound as I described it, though my explanation of the "x" sound is usually considered more standard. Neither is wrong though.
The pinyin is xiǎozi. xiǎo has a dipping tone (can't think of a better description), zi has no tone. If you don't know tones don't bother with them unless you start studying Chinese, just know they exist. It could be Anglicized very roughly as "shyeeow dzuh", where "ow" sounds like the vowel in "ouch".
the "q" sound is similar to "x," except at the beginning of the sound, touch the tip of your tongue to the top of your mouth.
