A Note on Chinese Pronunciation

It is not necessary to strangle over the pronunciation of Chinese names if one observes a few simple rules in the rather arbitrary but workable Wade-Giles System of transliteration (romanization) of the language into English. Each Chinese character represents only one sound and homonyms are innumerable. Chinese is monosyllabic, but combinations of characters in the spoken language may form a single idea or equivalent of one foreign word, and thus in a sense the spoken language is polysyllabic. Chinese surnames come first, given names (usually two words) follow, as in Teng Hsiao-p'ing. Aspirates are represented in this book by apostrophes; they indicate a soft consonantal sound. Examples：Chi (as in Chi Chao-t'ing) is pronounced "Gee, "but Ch'i (as in Liu Shao-ch'i) sounds like "Chee."Chin is exactly our "chin."Chu is like "Ju, "in Chu Teh, but Ch'u equals "Chew."Tsung is "dzung"; ts'ung with the "ts"as in "Patsy."Tai is our word sound "die"; Tai—— "tie."Pai is "buy"and p'ai is "Pie."

Kung is like "Gung"(-a Din); Kung with the "k"as in "kind."J is the equivalent of "r"but roll it, as rrrun.H before an s, as in hsi, is the equivalent of an aspirate but is often dropped, as in Sian for Hsian. One may ignore the "h"and still be understood.

Single Chinese words are always pronounced as monosyllables. Thus：Chiang is not "Chee-yi-ang"but a single sound, "Geeang."Mao is not "May-ow"but pronounced like a cat's "miaow"without the "i."Chou En-lai is "Joe Un-lie, "but the last syllable of his wife's given name, Ying-ch'ao, sounds like "chow."

Vowels in Chinese are generally short or medium, not long and flat. Thus T'ang sounds like "dong, "never like our "tang."Tang is "tong."

These sounds indicate Chinese as spoken in kuo-yu, the northern (Peking, mandarin) speech, which is now the national language, taught in all schools. Where journalism has already popularized misspellings or variants in other dialects, such as Chiang Kai-shek for Chiang Chieh-shih, etc., I have followed the familiar version.

Chinese words frequently encountered in place names are：sheng——province; hsien—— county; hsiang——township; ching (or king)——capital; ch'eng——city; ts'un——village; chiang (kiang)——great river; ho——river; hu——lake; k'ou——mouth; pei——north; nan——south; tung——east; hsi (or si)——west; chung——central; shan——mountain. Such words combine in the following examples：Peking (properly, Pei-ching, pronounced "Bay-ging"), meaning "northern capital."Peking was renamed "Pei-p'ing (Peiping or, erroneously, Peping), "northern peace"(or tranquillity), by the Kuomintang regime, which made its seat in Nanking (southern capital), but the historic name remained in general use and was formally restored in 1949.Shantung means East of the mountains.Shansi—— West of the mountains.Hankow——Mouth of the Han (river).Sian——Western Peace (tranquillity).Hopei——North of the (Yellow) river.Hunan——South of the lakes.Yunnan——South of the clouds.Kiangsi——West of the river.

There is also a "ü"as in German and an "ê"as in French. I have omitted Wade's umlaut and circumflex markings, which are found in European latini-zations of Chinese.