Tetsuo you obviously know a lot about languages but you don’t seem to know the first thing so let me tell you what it is. Ready? “Language is a symbolic system that works because people agree to allow particular symbols to represent particular things.” For example x is not actually the sound x, it is a symbol for the sound x. Pinyin has symbols for all the sounds of mandarin. If lots of experienced, knowledgable people have already agreed that pinyin is a good symbolic system and if that system is already in place why argue with it?
In other words, the earth was never flat and no amount of agreement on the issue would make it so. To make Pinyin a more viable, useful tool to greater numbers of people however, all that is required is more agreement on the issue. Apples and oranges dear. Apples and oranges.
No bob, apples and apples.
No, the fact that it’s the more consistently applied system is what makes it the right system for us to use at the moment. It’s not because “intelligent people everywhere” use it that it’s better, “intelligent people everywhere” use it because it’s better.
And I should mention that those same groups of “intelligent people” used to subscribe to WG or Yale. Just because they use Pinyin now doesn’t mean it’s any better, just that it’s the currently preferred option. In fact, you could argue that they only use Pinyin because it’s the officially sanctioned romanization system of the PRC, which is both the home to the majority of Mandarin speakers (making it the practical choice for portability) and the Chinese native-speaker country that most foreign countries officially recognise (making acceptance of Pinyin also potentially political).
[quote=“bob”]Tetsuo you obviously know a lot about languages but you don’t seem to know the first thing so let me tell you what it is. Ready? “Language is a symbolic system that works because people agree to allow particular symbols to represent particular things.” For example x is not actually the sound x, it is a symbol for the sound x. Pinyin has symbols for all the sounds of Mandarin. If lots of experienced, knowledgable people have already agreed that pinyin is a good symbolic system and if that system is already in place why argue with it?
In other words, the earth was never flat and no amount of agreement on the issue would make it so. To make Pinyin a more viable, useful tool to greater numbers of people however, all that is required is more agreement on the issue. Apples and oranges dear. Apples and oranges.[/quote]
Pinyin won over all simply because China had more resources to throw behind the campaign to make it a worldwide system. Not because it’s any better. Now that it is in place it is useful to know it; however, living in Taiwan I can find lots of books with zhuyin which helps me. Also as I mentioned, this old brain prefers new symbols to represent sounds that I normally wouldn’t try to make. 
Tetsuo you still don’t get it. Apples and oranges. The fact that all those universities and dictionairies use it is exactly what makes it better. Or perhaps you could say that they use it because it is better system AND it is a better system because they use it. And because millions of people in China know it. There is a bit of confusion when you first learn Pinyin and discover that some letters are really not pronounced as in English. That is why an association betwen the sounds and the letters needs to be made at the ouset (and this is where shenmar is out to lunch - he really doesn’t get this). Pinyin is the system of the future and foriegners studying Chinese here should be clear about that. We should encourage Taiwanese to learn it especially if they plan on teaching Chinese or participating in language excahnges or communicating with foriegners who speak Mandarin. This thing has been argued to death in other forums. Pinyin won. Let’s move on.
Hear hear.
Yes, it has been argued to death BUT why on earth would they need it for communicating with foreigners who SPEAK Mandarin??? 
And let’s not forget bob, pinyin is not the Chinese alphabet. Pinyin is only there to help people learn how to speak and eventually learn the characters. People don’t write Chinese with pinyin characters… 
No bob, you don’t get my point in the least. Re-read. I’m not saying Pinyin’s stupid. Here’s my posts in a nutshell:
You said it was better because smart people use it.
I said that’s not an accurate gauge, because smart people have endorsed idiotic things in the past, and that it’s not a case of it being better because smart people use it, it’s that smart people use it because it’s better.
Personally I back Pinyin over WG, and I’ve said so repeatedly. Basically, though, I don’t back it because it’s inherently any better than WG, just that it’s more common, more widely accepted and recognised, and more consistently applied than WG. And I certainly don’t back it just because “intelligent people everywhere” are using it.
I changed my mind. It’s not apples and oranges. It’s two apples an orange and three nuts. Me, you and Vanneyel for continuing to talk about this.
See bob, I knew you’d figure it out if we gave you enough time…
Well, I do think Pinyin has one point that is inherently better than Wade-Giles: no apostrophes (in 99% of cases). Even if someone learns the correct letter to sound correspondence in WG, lots of times they will screw up on the apostrophe (which is the aspirate/nonaspirate distinction, more or less like voiced-voiceless in English — if you don’t have a clue what I’m talking about it really doesn’t matter anyway).
Other than that, any system of writing is only as accurate as the person using it, and that includes Romanization systems for various languages as well.
And besides Wade-Giles looks stupid.
The problem with Wade-Giles is that it’s not properly defined anywhere. Am I supposed to write che as che or cheh? What is WG lo? Is it Pinyin’s lo, luo or le? Or all of them? There are tables like the one on pinyin.info, but it’s easy to find conflicting tables on American university sites.
Is there a definitive WG? SOmehow I doubt it!
Yes, there is a definitive WG - the one the resulted in Herbert Giles’ compilation of his Chinese-English Dictionary.
The table on pinyin.info ( pinyin.info/romanization/wad … basic.html ) is good and can be relied upon.
And pinyin.info is scarcely definitive is it.
This site looks just as authoritative, but its ke and k’e aren’t on pinyin.info: that has them down as ko and k’o
m.isar.de/denner/neijia/roma … pping.html
This one surely speaks with some authority, yet the treatment of o and e is different from the other two sites mentioned: lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/pinyin/romcover.html
And come on you’ve seen Kiang for Chiang, and Juo for Jo, and Lo for any of what in Pinyin are Lo, Le and Luo. And cheh for che. The list goes on and on. No consistency.
There’s no standard, get over it. All the sites that show WG to Pinyin equivalences, including pinyin.info, are geared to encouraging the use of Pinyin. There are no sites promoting Wade-Giles, nobody uses it correctly and its standards are not policed or recorded anywhere except in a 1912 dictionary.
1912? That’s practically a century ago, Tecuo. Was the syllabary for Hanyu even established then?
You know how suo and shuo are the same sound in taiwan mandarin. Well, in WG they’re written so and shuo. Just STUPID! I mean if you must have ‘so’, then why not ‘sho’? No standards, and no internal consistency.
I corrected a thesis recently that used WG. What a mess! And seeing Chen written as Ch’en over and over again, apostrophes (OK ayns or whatever they’re called, but of course the guy just used apostrophes). So I have had a particularly trying time with WG just recently!
Those might not necessarily be WG. They could be Yale, they could be something else. I’m no expert on systems outside of Pinyin and have a functional knowledge of WG, so I can’t answer with any authority. Ask Cranky Laowai, he’s the man here for that stuff.
[quote]There’s no standard, get over it. All the sites that show WG to Pinyin equivalences, including pinyin.info, are geared to encouraging the use of Pinyin. There are no sites promoting Wade-Giles, nobody uses it correctly and its standards are not policed or recorded anywhere except in a 1912 dictionary.
1912? That’s practically a century ago, Tecuo. Was the syllabary for Hanyu even established then?[/quote]
YES THERE IS A STANDARD. Do you think Herbert Giles just MADE SHIT UP? And no, there was no Hanyu Pinyin syllabary then, because the CCP made Pinyin up.
And what’s the fact it was nearly a century ago got to do with it? The Chinese language existed before Pinyin.
The real problem here is that WG now is not implemented consistently, and since it’s fallen out of common use with the implementation of Pinyin, it’s gone downhill. But just because people don’t use it properly doesn’t mean it’s not able to be properly used, and certainly doesn’t mean there’s no standard.
And the reason there’s no-one promoting WG isn’t because it’s worse, there’s no standard, or anything like that - it’s because it’s obsolete, nothing more.
smithsgj-It’s Tetsuo not Tecuo. :bouncy:
I think it’s Dacuo.
Wow, that was creative. 
That’s the best counter “argument” you can come up with?