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Simplified Wade is a modification of the Wade-Giles romanization system for writing Mandarin Chinese. It was devised by the Swedish linguist Olov Bertil Anderson, who first published the system in 1970. Simplified Wade uses tonal spelling: in other words it modifies the letters in a syllable in order to indicate tone differences. It is one of only two Chinese romanization systems that indicate tones in such a way (the other being Gwoyeu Romatzyh). All other systems utilize diacritics or numbers to indicate tone.
Contents |
Spelling conventions
One of the important changes that Anderson made to Wade-Giles to was to replace the apostrophe following aspirated consonants with an <h>.1 This modification, previously used in the Legge romanization, was also adopted by Joseph Needham in his Science and Civilisation in China series.2 The table below illustrates the spelling difference.
| Wade- Giles |
Simplified Wade |
Modern Pinyin |
IPA form |
| t' | th | t | tʰ |
| p' | ph | p | pʰ |
| k' | kh | k | kʰ |
| ch' | chh | q/ch | tɕʰ/tʂʰ |
The indication of tones in Simplified Wade is done by adding letters to the end of the syllable. The table below gives an example.
| First tone |
Second tone |
Third tone |
Fourth tone |
| ma | mav | max | maz |
Notes
References
Anderson, Olov Bertil [comp.] (1970). A Concordance to Five Systems of Transcription for Standard Chinese. Lund: Studentlitteratur.
External links
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- This page was last modified on 28 November 2007, at 16:36.
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