Talk:Spelling in Gwoyeu Romatzyh

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[edit] Lead section

I'm not yet happy with this: it's more an introduction than a summary. Yet this article doesn't really lend itself to pithy summaries. Maybe someone else can improve the lead. --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 11:52, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't much like the first sentence! It doesn't really make sense. Let's work on this intro. --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 18:40, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Intro now rewritten as a summary. Comments, please. --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 12:42, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I like it. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 22:02, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GR "b" "p" vs Wade-Giles "p" "p' "

When I first read the article, I found the follow paragraph:

GR introduced several innovations in Chinese romanization. One of these, later adopted by Pinyin, was to use contrasting unvoiced/voiced pairs of consonants to represent aspirated and unaspirated sounds in Chinese. For example b and p represent IPA [p] and [pʰ] (p and p in Wade-Giles). Another feature of GR surviving in Pinyin was to write words (usually of two syllables) as units: eg Gwoyeu rather than the Wade-Giles Kuo2-yü3.

The bold part is somewhat incorrect; while GR "b" corresponds to Wade-Giles "p" (unaspirated), GR "p" corresponds to Wade-Giles "p' ", i.e. with an apostrophe to indicate it is aspirated. I changed it to read "p and p' in Wade-Giles" but another user reverted it back with an edit summary "no, Wade-Giles "p" is unaspirated, while Pinyin and GR is aspirated. WG "p" = GR "b"; WG "p' " = GR "p" " I am very confused. Can somebody explain? --Joshua C hi e w 03:04, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm glad you pointed this out. When I last looked at the article it was, I think, correct, stating that:

GR/PY b = WG p (unaspirated)

GR/PY p = WG p' (aspirated)

I think a tired editor later inadvertently removed the apostrophe from the WG p' . (Strictly speaking it should be a raised reversed comma or "smart quote", but that's not too important.) In any case, I shall correct the text, which at the moment is wrong! Thanks for your attentiveness. --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 21:02, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GR vs. Chao's use of it

I have a sense that some of these spellings may have existed only in Chao's works and were developed by him for his own use, e.g. the abbreviations sh for shyh, etc. If that's the case, it should be stated. Are these abbreviations used in Simon's stuff on/in GR? --Cam 17:52, 12 September 2007 (UTC)