Welcome to join our Facebook group of Chinese Station. It only takes a few hours to learn, and is well worth it. There is also the conundrum of how to represent the ow in cow, without it being mistaken for the ow in low. Although the pronunciation is instantly recognizable, in cases like the Chinese word yue, written youair for ease of pronunciation recognition, the system is not as efficient as pinyin in the number of letters used. It is sometimes used to show pronunciation on the China Highlights China Guide pages.Īccording to this system Beijing would be written Bayjing and Guangdong would be written Gwungdong. The system takes no time at all to use, and could be used as a quick guide to pronunciation for those unfamiliar with Chinese. This system uses the alphabet to represent Chinese sounds in a way that English speakers are familiar with. In the tables below is a pronunciation system that is (roughly) true to standard Chinese pronunciation (without tones), but uses the letters of the English alphabet in an intuitive way, instead of assigning new sounds to the alphabet. An English Speakers Chinese Pronunciation System Watch more videos about Chinese culture stories. While superseded in China, some of these old pronunciations are still in common use around the world. Likewise Canton used to be a way to pronounce Guangdong, a province in the southeast of China. For example Peking used to be a way to pronounce China’s capital, but now in China it is pronounced Beijing. However, since the standardization of the Chinese language in the latter half of last century, many of the pronunciations that these old systems represent are no longer valid in China (though there are many Wade-Giles names still in common use in Taiwan). The most notable is the Wade-Giles system, settled in 1892. Alternative Pronunciation Systemsīefore pinyin was developed there were other systems for writing the pronunciation of Chinese words using the English alphabet. Several systems have been used, but pinyin is the current standard way of writing Chinese pronunciation. Hence there has needed to be a way of representing in writing the pronunciation of each character when teaching the language. Unlike other current written languages, Chinese characters are not primarily phonetic, and certainly not alphabetic, but pictographic or ideographic (displaying combinations of pictures or symbols to convey meaning) like ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. There you go – now you’ll be able to tell people which state you’re from! If you’re American, leave us a comment in Chinese to practice! I’ll start: I’m from Michigan.In general, pronunciation cannot be derived from looking at Chinese characters, although sometimes characters with common parts have similar pronunciation. Without further adieu, here are the Chinese names for all 50 states: My poor state (Michigan) can’t seem to make up its mind when it comes to its Chinese name, as two are commonly used – “Mì xiē gēn” and “Mì xī gēn.” When referring to Washington or New York in Chinese, you’ll want to add the character for “ state” (州 – zhōu) to differentiate the between D.C. Some names sound about the same, such as “Ā lā bā m ǎ” and “Mì xī xī b ǐ,” which you probably guessed are Alabama and Mississippi. What state do you think is called “Qiáo zhì yà” in Chinese? How about “Bīn xī f ǎ ní y ǎ”? Those would be Georgia and Pennsylvania. Sure, Americans tend to mispronounce Chinese words for cities/provinces – Chinese people are always correcting foreigners on their pronunciation of Shanghai, for example – but often times the Chinese words for American states or cities sound little to nothing like the English name.
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