Why is it that the creators of the Wade-Giles romanization system chose so many unintuitive transliterations of Chinese sounds? Why is "p" pronounced as "b" in English, and "k" pronounced as "g," for instance? I know Wade-Giles was intended for academics, but that doesn't seem to explain why they would do things that make no sense. How does it help the academic to have to mentally substitute all Ps for Bs, unless they have an apostrophe after them? I don't get it..
2007-08-30
06:54:00
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4 answers
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asked by
Leon M
2