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Comment by jollybean | Hacker News Reader

Question for someone knowledgeable - why doesn't Chinese transliteration make rational use of vowels and consonants?

Why Q? Why not simply 'Ch'?

Chinese has (at least) two different sounds that map to "Ch" in English. Pinyin has both a "Ch" and a "Q" to capture this nuance. Of course, when you translate it to native English phonemes that difference is lost.

You can listen here:

https://dictionary.hantrainerpro.com/chinese-english/transla...

Chinese has both, and they're different sounds: ch [ʈʂʰ] vs q [tɕʰ]. Unfortunately the Chinese "q" doesn't exist in English, so "ch" is the closest approximation.

https://www.fluentinmandarin.com/content/break-through-chine...

In the older Wade-Giles system, they indeed tried to maintain some similarity with how English uses the Latin alphabet. Ch was used, for example Ssu-ma Ch'ien, which is now Sima Qian. Using Latin q for a ch sound isn't unheard of in European languages, for example, in Albanian. Mandarin pinyin is "rational" in the sense that any other language with phonemic values for the Latin alphabet widely divergent from Latin or English, like Turkish, Albanian, or Irish.

As always, “rational” is subjective. Pinyin, the transliteration scheme in use in this post (in use in the PRC since the 50s or so), is necessarily full of trade-offs.

Ch is already needed to represent a sound which is much closer to the English “Ch”, as in Chen. But then there is this other sound, which sounds superficially like Ch to a non-native speaker, but actually is quite different (and if you mix them up, you might not be understood by a native speaker). What letter do you use for that?

Originally people used Ts, as in Tsingtao the beer, named for the city on the coast (but that wasn’t perfect either, because the sound also has very little in common with T). Then in the 50s Pinyin came along and it was changed to Q, so Qingdao (the final consonant was changed too).

Btw this change in transliteration schemes is why Peking Duck is still a thing: even though the city’s name is now spelled Beijing, the old spelling of Peking lives on in the name of the dish (and a few other places).

Because the standard transliteration used for Mandarin (pinyin) already has a CH. Q sounds similar, but not identical to CH. Similar enough that "just pronounce Q as CH" is ok advice, different enough to make a huge difference when actually speaking Mandarin.

I am no expert, I asked the same question.

It seems this system is the Pinyin system common to mainland China, there are other transliteration systems used in Taiwan (Bopomofo) and Wade-Giles (which seems to create more phonetically obvious transliterations).

This link has a nice table in the symbology section. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bopomofo

Bopomofo is not a transliteration system. It's a phonetic spelling system used to teach reading to young children in Taiwanese schools. The characters it uses are not meaningful outside of Taiwan.

There are plenty of other uses of Bopomofo: 1) as a faster electronic input method for Mandarin and other Chinese languages 2) in casual or abbreviated writing 3) in overseas education

Thank you for clarifying.

It does use almost all vowels and consonants. “Ching” ㄔㄧㄥ is a technically valid syllable in the Pinyin system but does not correspond to any word in the dictionary.

> “Ching” ㄔㄧㄥ is a technically valid syllable in the Pinyin system

No, it isn't; "ch" cannot be followed by a front vowel.

There are plenty of theoretically-valid but nonexistent syllables such as sěng or nǖ, but "ching" is not such a syllable.

Yes, I mean that it is a valid syllable in the orthography rules but that does not imply it can be pronounced sensibly.

But it isn't a valid syllable in the orthography rules. Pinyin has a set of syllable onsets and a set of rimes. You determine the spelling of a syllable by choosing the onset/rime combination you want and looking it up in a table. Thus, the spelling of n-/-ü is "nü", and the spelling of ∅-/-ü is "yu". Same syllable column; zero characters in common in the spelling.

And if you look up ch-/-ing, the table will tell you "no such syllable", just like it will for "m-/-iang" or "h-/-weng".

All three of those are invalid in terms of orthography -- the standard specifically defines that there is no way to spell them. But "miang" is perfectly valid conceptually, and "ching" isn't even that.

So by your definition, are "biang", "kiang" and "duang" valid pinyin, considering those are pronounceable and understandable to millions of people, though they don't appear in your table?

Not being defined by "the Pinyin system", they cannot be valid elements of the Pinyin system.

I know that biang is the name of a particular noodle; I'm not aware of kiang; and I believe that duang is a sound Jackie Chan made once. Which leads into a tangential question -- "duang" has no meaning. What would it mean to say it is "understandable" to millions of people?

A cursory search of media published in the last month [1][2] shows those can be used to productively communicate in Chinese languages. You can argue that it is outside of what is prescribed in a table, but if not Pinyin, then what writing system is being used here?

[1] http://finance.eastmoney.com/a/202107151999911843.html [2] https://www.marieclaire.com.tw/lifestyle/art/58762

> why doesn't Chinese transliteration make rational use of vowels and consonants

Usage is way more rational than in English where the number of graphemes and phonemes associations is mind blowing. Save for a few contextual allophones, vowels is very regular, and consonant letters has a 1:1 mapping to consonant which is very rational in pinyin.

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