1989 I attended a lecture, where the speaker boasted that he knew the politician Kweean Kweetshn personally and that he was a good friend to him.
In German the second name sounded a little bit like "to squeak". A Chinese friend after the name had been mentioned several times, asked me "tell me, do you know who he's talking about?" "Qian Qichen!"
I really hate Wade-Giles (I'm exaggerating a bit).
Wade-Giles is the one and only responsible for wrong pronunciations and wrong terms concerning Chinese matters over the whole (western) world using the Latin script.
You mentioned some like Taoism and Kungfu, but there are many more like Pekin(g), Tofu...
Only the few with some knowledge of Chinese know the real Chinese terms, but the rest of us unfortunately will use the false terms coined with Wade-Giles for the next eternity.
It’s wild how much staying power Wade-Giles still has even after the advent of pinyin. David Tod Roy when translating Plum in the Golden Vase (published 1993 - 2013) chose to use Wade-Giles. Reading all those damn apostrophes drove me nuts! And Taiwan still retains some Wild-Giles when romanizing some proper nouns.
And a lighter note about Pinyin:
1989 I attended a lecture, where the speaker boasted that he knew the politician Kweean Kweetshn personally and that he was a good friend to him.
In German the second name sounded a little bit like "to squeak". A Chinese friend after the name had been mentioned several times, asked me "tell me, do you know who he's talking about?" "Qian Qichen!"
Frank
I really hate Wade-Giles (I'm exaggerating a bit).
Wade-Giles is the one and only responsible for wrong pronunciations and wrong terms concerning Chinese matters over the whole (western) world using the Latin script.
You mentioned some like Taoism and Kungfu, but there are many more like Pekin(g), Tofu...
Only the few with some knowledge of Chinese know the real Chinese terms, but the rest of us unfortunately will use the false terms coined with Wade-Giles for the next eternity.
Frank
It’s wild how much staying power Wade-Giles still has even after the advent of pinyin. David Tod Roy when translating Plum in the Golden Vase (published 1993 - 2013) chose to use Wade-Giles. Reading all those damn apostrophes drove me nuts! And Taiwan still retains some Wild-Giles when romanizing some proper nouns.