Why do we have such different spellings for Asian languages?

Question

In China, "q" is pronounced "ch"; "c" is pronouced "ts" when preceding a vowel; "z" is pronounced "ts." In Korea, the name "Lee" is actually pronounced "Yi" and also spelled "Rhee," "Li," and "Yee." And I don't even know how to pronounce some Vietnamese names! Like Nguyen, for example, and Htohn. It's enough to drive me mad.
Who came up with this spelling system for converting Asian languages to English writing? Why not just spell it the way it sounds? Any insight you can give me is appreciated.

Answer 1

The problem is that no one language will truly define the spelling of how something sounds. For example, in English th "T" sound in Tap and the "D" sound in Dog do exactly the same thing with the tongue and mouth, the only difference is that T is just with breath and D is 'vocalized' (you actually vibrate the vocal chords). The same is true of the pairs of K or "hard C" as in King or Cut verses G as in Gut. K = air only; G = using vocal chords, but the motion of the mouth, tongue, lips, etc are all the SAME.

So, is it pronounced "dang" in Chinese or "tang"? Some people "hear" it differently and so spelled it differently. In English we have many of these pairs B/P, D/T, G/K, V/F, etc and that is why Asians have problems with "L" and "R".

Second, there were two systems in Chinese the Wei Jiles (spelling?) and the Pin Yin system - one would pronounce "chee" as Ch'i and the other would spell it Qi, but Chinese does NOT have letters, it has characters that are words/sounds/meanings. Some systems came from Russia, some from Germany, some from France, some from the Asian countries themselves, but as governments changed, so did the "norms and rules". If you look at the two spellings, you can see how they would make the same sound, though the first would suggest a two syllable sound instead of one - who heard it that way? Maybe many people do.

If you want to learn how to pronounce words in other languages you need to study that language, every language has different sounds that don't necessarily cross over into every language. Some languages only have 5 vowel sounds whereas English has 8. For instance "I" (as in me) is actually a "dipthong" (two vowel sounds put together to make one sound). In English it is considered one sound though in other languages, you need to put the two together to get the whole sound. In Spanish (and Chinese) "I" is pronounced "ee" and "A" is pronounced "ah" put "ah" and "ee" together and you get "ahee" or what we would hear as "I" (as in me). Same goes for "A" (eh, ee) or "e" and "i" in other languages. So, "wei" is pronounced "way" and "bai" is pronounced "bi" (or bye) and so on.

We need to respect the languages basic rules (vowel sounds, extra sounds that we would not have - such as extra exhaling on some words, or click sounds) and so other letters are added. Such as tsai (which makes a stronger force of the 's' sound to more closely match the way the word would be pronounced in the native language).

Those are the basic reasons, also, everything in language evolves.

Answer 2

Unfortunately there are too many different styles of Roman-ising Asian words!

I live in Japan, and I know of 2 methods of Japanese romaji that are in popular usage, for example 'good-bye' would be either 'sayōnara' or 'sayounara', and 'Hello' / 'good-day' would always be 'konnichiwa' - but for some strange reason my 9 year old daughter is being taught a third method at the local Elementary school, and konnichiwa ends up being 'konnitiwa'!

These variations are either due to differences of opinion about how best to roman-ise the sound of the syllables (ō / ou - ī / ii for long vowel sounds), or they're due to the changing of the language - in Japanese for example, there used to be a 'tu' sound (pronounced like the English word 'to') and there used to be a 'ti' sound (like tea, but with a shorter vowel sound!) These have evolved into 'tsu' and 'chi' over time, so normally they're roman-ised as 'tsu' and 'chi', but SOME people (like the school!) insist on keeping the antiquated romaji, even though most Japanese people have GREAT difficulty actually pronouncing 'ti' and 'tu' nowadays!!

Anyway, I'm glad I don't have to cope with Vietnamese if they have names like 'Htohn'!! I can't even imagine what it might sound like!
; )

Oh, and regardless of how advancedmaster forms HIS (or her) words, when I make K or G sounds my tongue does NOT make the same motion! Same with T and D!! My tongue is in a 'slightly' different position - and THAT is what makes the difference in pronunciation...!

Answer 3

It's not your fault it makes no sense. America just has a really f*cked up language system.

Answer 4

oh, since we have different language, it's quite obvious that we also have different pronunciations of words.
Enjoy the tongue twister words :)