Wade-Giles 威妥瑪拼音 (威妥玛拼音)

Wēituǒmǎ pīnyīn · from English

What is Wade-Giles?

Wade-Giles is an older romanisation of Mandarin, using apostrophes to mark aspiration; it survives in Taiwanese place and personal names.

Developed by Thomas Wade in the 19th century and refined by Herbert Giles in 1892, it was the standard in English until Pinyin. It is why we have Taipei and Kaohsiung, and why the apostrophes in Tai-chi or T'ai-chi matter. Its unaspirated p, t, k correspond to Pinyin b, d, g.

Examples

Taipei = Táiběi (T'ai-pei); Kaohsiung = Gāoxióng; Chiang Kai-shek = Jiǎng Jièshí; Peking = Běijīng (older postal spelling)

Kungfucius says: Wade-Giles: the system that made a generation of journalists pronounce Beijing wrong with confidence.