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

Douglas Koller, Latin & French scripsit:

> The FOAW and other sources give "jioh8" as the most common baihua
> reading for "stone", with "xia7" plunking in only in the word for
> "pomegranate" (perhaps HS, the native, can verify). But, yes, in the
> "God, I'm good" department, "sik8" is the literary reading, which, I
> suppose, could be rendered "shek" in someone's weird romanization.
I guess that taking the ethnographic and phonological evidence together
that Minnan is the best answer.  On purely phonological grounds I still
like the Gan theory: although the Ramsey map doesn't show Gan being
spoken in NE Zhejiang, it is obvious that there are going to be random
outliers throughout the Sinitic-speaking area.

I suppose it would be too much to hope for a pronouncing Gan dictionary
anywhere?

> Perhaps CKS had a
> warped sense of romanization humor (along the lines of "Hi, my name's
> Anvil Chung.").
Who's that?  Googling drew a blank for once.  Or is this supposed
to be a half-translation of CKS?  But if so, why "anvil"?  Anvils are
made of iron, dammit.

But it did occur to me that "Chiang" might be (W-G) Mandarin and the rest
Minnan.

--
John Cowan                                jcowan@reutershealth.com
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