Proposed new record for 'wadegile'

Randy Presuhn randy_presuhn at mindspring.com
Sat Sep 27 21:17:44 CEST 2008


Hi -

> From: "Doug Ewell" <doug at ewellic.org>
> To: <ietf-languages at iana.org>
> Sent: Saturday, September 27, 2008 11:21 AM
> Subject: Re: Proposed new record for 'wadegile'
...
> Type: variant
> Subtag: wadegile
> Description: Wade-Giles romanization
> Added: 2008-xx-xx
> Prefix: zh-Latn
> 
> ===
> 
> LANGUAGE SUBTAG REGISTRATION FORM
> 1. Name of requester:
> 
> Mark Davis
> 
> 2. E-mail address of requester:
> 
> markdavis at google.com
> 
> 3. Record Requested:
> 
> Type: variant
> Subtag: wadegile
> Description: Wade-Giles romanization
> Prefix: zh-Latn
> 
> 4. Intended meaning of the subtag:
> 
> To be used to indicate transcriptions, typically of Mandarin Chinese,

.s/, typically//
.s/,//

> in the romanization developed by Thomas Wade in the mid-19th century,
> and reached settled form with Herbert Giles'Chinese-English dictionary

.s/and/which/
.s/'/' /

> of 1892.
> 
> 5. Reference to published description of the language (book or article):
> 
> Krieger, Larry S.; Kenneth Neill, Dr. Edward Reynolds (1997). "Chapter
> 4", in World History; Perspectives on the Past (in English). Illinois:
> D.C. Heath and Company, p. 82. ISBN 0-669-40533-7. "This book uses the
> traditional system for writing Chinese names, sometimes called the
> Wade-Giles system. This system is used in many standard reference
> books and in all books on China published before 1979."

I find the statement "in all books on China published before 1979" implausible.
The textbook we used when I studied Mandarin used pinyin exclusively,
and was published in 1978.  I recall the switch to pinyin in Chinese place
names (e.g. Beijing instead of Peking) in US magazines and newspapers
happening *long* before that.

Randy



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