Re: USAGE: The name "Chiang Kai-shek"

On Mon, Dec 02, 2002 at 04:25:21PM -0500, Douglas Koller, Latin & French wrote:
[snip]
> "Teoh" for "Zhang"? Who'da thunk.
Actually, "Teoh" is the most common romanization of _zhang1_ in the
northwestern parts of Malaysia, as well as Singapore, where the Chinese
populations are mainly Hokkien speakers. If you visit those parts of
Malaysia, you'll almost certainly run across a Teoh. It does come from the
Hokkien pronunciation of _zhang1_, after all.

[snip]
> >As you can see, before the establishment of a standard transcription
> >scheme, it's a jungle out there. :-)
>
> Tell me about it. A common grouse among expats in Taiwan was the
> indecipherably inconsistent use of romanization on street signs,
> which could change for the same street as you went along from
> intersection to intersection.
[snip]

Now, *that* is a bit extreme. Unsurprising, though. Here in the Chinatown
district of Toronto, you have English street signs with Chinese writing
below it---and some of them are blatantly poor attempts at imitating the
English pronunciation of the street name. But at least they are
consistent.


T

--
I am not young enough to know everything. -- Oscar Wilde

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