Daoism-Taoism romanization issue

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Dào is the pinyin romanization of the Chinese character 道, representing a word that was usually rendered in English as Tao, and used as the root word for the English term Taoism. Taoism is a native Chinese philosophy and religion that, along with its various offshoot sects and syncretisms with other traditions (Chan Buddhism, Neo-Confucianism), has influenced much of East Asia for thousands of years. More recently, it has gained worldwide recognition.

The concepts of Taoism were first widely studied in the West before the development of pinyin, when the older Wade-Giles transliteration system was in use in English speaking countries. Consequently, the Wade-Giles spellings are still generally used in most English language editions of the Tao Te Ching and other major Taoist works, and thus most commonly used and recognized by native speakers of English. "Taoism" appeared first in English in 1836 (Oxford English Dictionary) as a translation of the Chinese term 道教 (Wade-Giles: tao4 chiao4, pinyin: dào jiào).

However, in academia and politics, there has been a strong trend towards using pinyin, which is recommended by the government of the People's Republic of China and widely used in teaching Chinese language. Joseph Lau's translation of the Tao Te Ching (pub. Penguin) has been renamed "Daodejing" in its latest edition; similarly, Burton Watson's translation of Chuang Tzu (pub. Columbia Univ. Press) is now titled "Zhuangzi" instead. Both texts have abandoned Wade-Giles in favor of pinyin.

Due to fundamental differences between Chinese and English phonology, in English neither d nor t can be considered adequate phonetic representations for the consonant at the beginning of the word Dao/Tao (in pinyin d represents the sound exactly). The Chinese pronunciation is voiceless (similar to English t but not to English d), but it is also unaspirated (like the <t> in "stop," but not "time," where a breathy /h/ sound can be heard proceeding the /t/). One perspective holds that both transliterations when used in English are thus in theory technically equally close to (or far from) the Mandarin pronunciation of 道. However in practice, due to partial de-voicing of "d" in English in certain situations, the only reliable phonetic difference between initial /d/ and /t/ in English is aspiration, not voicing, just as in Chinese. Therefore to the ear of most English speakers the Chinese pronunciation sounds more like an English "d" than an English "t", thus some argue that "Dao" is in that sense more accurate than "Tao".

Generally, in the case of Chinese words that are not assimilated into English by the end of the 20th century, like most place or persons names, pinyin is preferably used by international community and has largely been accepted as the standard romanization. In the case of words with Chinese origins that have long been assimilated into English, opinions differ. Some people think that existing words in English which come from Chinese words should be remodeled after the pinyin transliteration scheme. Others think that the older forms should be retained because those spellings have become English words in their own right--and hence are not Chinese anymore--while new borrowings should be written according to the official transliteration scheme.

The way Roman letters in Pinyin represent sounds in Chinese is different from how other languages that use the Roman alphabet represent sound. Letters such as j, q, x or zh indicate sounds that do not correspond to any exact sound in English. This usage, the most problematic being pinyin's use of "q" for a sound usually heard as something close to "ch" by most English speakers (eg qi or Qin), have contributed to the confusion in popular usage.