I'm used to the variations in Japanese anglicizing, since I have a Japanese-language student in the house who's explained those before. I learned pinyin myself, though I have several (much older) dictionaries that date from the Wade-Giles era. In some ways, pinyin is more economical with its anglicizing, but Wade-Giles makes more sense on a visual level. Xiao vs Hsiao, that kind of thing -- there just aren't a lot of words that start with X in English, so mentally it's a tripwire compared to the intuitive sense that the "h" in "hs" means you're supposed to aspirate the "s" sound.
But I have to admit that this makes me flail about somewhere between fear and excitement: 떡 can be spelled "tuk", "teok", "ttuk", "tteok", "duk", "deok", or "ddeok" ... and here I thought the difficulties of anglicizing Arabic were high. Wow.
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Date: 27 Jun 2011 04:50 pm (UTC)But I have to admit that this makes me flail about somewhere between fear and excitement: 떡 can be spelled "tuk", "teok", "ttuk", "tteok", "duk", "deok", or "ddeok" ... and here I thought the difficulties of anglicizing Arabic were high. Wow.
again, thank you!