Proposed new record for 'wadegile'

[Michael Everson]

On 27 Sep 2008, at 20:17, Randy Presuhn wrote:

>> 4. Intended meaning of the subtag:
>>
>> To be used to indicate transcriptions, typically of Mandarin Chinese,
>
> .s/, typically//
> .s/,//

I do not know what these solidi mean, but I will not agree to remove  
"typically" because there is no guarantee that Wade-Giles orthography  
was never used for a non-Mandarin dialect of Chinese.

>> 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/'/' /

I have no idea what you mean by this.

>> 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.

Mayhap, but the quotation comes from Krieger, Neill, and Reynolds 1997  
so they are responsible for its content.

Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com