Wade–Giles Explained

Wade–Giles
Languages:	Mandarin Chinese
Creator:	Thomas Wade and Herbert Giles
Date:	19th century
Iso15924 Note:	BCP 47 variant subtag: wadegile^[1]
Engvar:	us
Footnotes:	Child: yes Header: none P: Wēi-Zhái Shì Pīnyīn Mps: Wēi Jái Shr̀ Pīnyīn Myr: Wēi Jái Shr̀ Pīnyīn Tp: Wei Jhái Shìh Pin-yin Gr: Uei Jair Shyh Pin'in

Wade–Giles is a romanization system for Mandarin Chinese. It developed from the system produced by Thomas Francis Wade during the mid-19th century, and was given completed form with Herbert Giles's A Chinese–English Dictionary (1892).

The romanization systems in common use until the late 19th century were based on the Nanjing dialect, but Wade–Giles was based on the Beijing dialect and was the system of transcription familiar in the English-speaking world for most of the 20th century. Both of these kinds of transcription were used in postal romanizations (romanized place-names standardized for postal uses). In mainland China, Wade–Giles has been mostly replaced by Hanyu Pinyin, which was officially adopted in 1958, with exceptions for the romanized forms of some of the most commonly used names of locations and persons, and other proper nouns. The romanized name for most locations, persons and other proper nouns in Taiwan is based on the Wade–Giles derived romanized form, for example Kaohsiung, the Matsu Islands and Chiang Ching-kuo.

History

Wade–Giles was developed by Thomas Francis Wade, a scholar of Chinese and a British ambassador in China who was the first professor of Chinese at the University of Cambridge. Wade published Chinese: Yü-yen Tzŭ-erh Chi ^[2] in 1867, the first textbook on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin in English,^[3] which became the basis for the system later known as Wade–Giles. The system, designed to transcribe Chinese terms for Chinese specialists, was further refined in 1892 by Herbert Giles (in A Chinese–English Dictionary), a British diplomat in China and his son, Lionel Giles, a curator at the British Museum.^[4]

Taiwan used Wade–Giles for decades as the de facto standard, co-existing with several official romanizations in succession, namely, Gwoyeu Romatzyh (1928), Mandarin Phonetic Symbols II (1986), and Tongyong Pinyin (2000). The Kuomintang (KMT) has previously promoted pinyin with Ma Ying-jeou's successful presidential bid in 2008 and in a number of cities with Kuomintang mayors. However, the current Tsai Ing-wen administration and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) along with the majority of the people in Taiwan, both native and overseas, use spelling and transcribe their legal names based on the Wade–Giles system, as well as the other aforementioned systems.

Initials and finals

The tables below show the Wade–Giles representation of each Chinese sound (in bold type),^[5] together with the corresponding IPA phonetic symbol (in square brackets), and equivalent representations in Bopomofo and Hanyu Pinyin.

Initials

		Labial	Dental/Alveolar	Retroflex	Alveolo-palatal	Velar
Nasal		m [m] ㄇ m	n [n] ㄋ n
Plosive	Unaspirated	p [p] ㄅ b	t [t] ㄉ d			k [k] ㄍ g
	Aspirated	pʻ [pʰ] ㄆ p	tʻ [tʰ] ㄊ t			kʻ [kʰ] ㄎ k
Affricate	Unaspirated		ts [ts] ㄗ z	ch [ʈʂ] ㄓ zh	ch [tɕ] ㄐ j
	Aspirated		tsʻ [tsʰ] ㄘ c	chʻ [ʈʂʰ] ㄔ ch	chʻ [tɕʰ] ㄑ q
Fricative		f [f] ㄈ f	s [s] ㄙ s	sh [ʂ] ㄕ sh	hs [ɕ] ㄒ x	h [x] ㄏ h
Liquid			l [l] ㄌ l	j [ɻ~ʐ] ㄖ r

Instead of ts, ts and s, Wade–Giles writes tz, tz and ss before ŭ (see below).

Finals

	Coda
∅			pronounced as //i//		pronounced as //u//		pronounced as //n//		pronounced as //ŋ//			pronounced as //ɻ//
Medial	∅	ih/ŭ [ɨ] ㄭ -i	ê/o [ɤ] ㄜ e	a [a] ㄚ a	ei [ei] ㄟ ei	ai [ai] ㄞ ai	ou [ou] ㄡ ou	ao [au] ㄠ ao	ên [ən] ㄣ en	an [an] ㄢ an	ung [ʊŋ] ㄨㄥ ong	êng [əŋ] ㄥ eng	ang [aŋ] ㄤ ang	êrh [aɚ̯] ㄦ er
	pronounced as //j//	i [i] ㄧ i	ieh [je] ㄧㄝ ie	ia [ja] ㄧㄚ ia			iu [jou] ㄧㄡ iu	iao [jau] ㄧㄠ iao	in [in] ㄧㄣ in	ien [jɛn] ㄧㄢ ian	iung [jʊŋ] ㄩㄥ iong	ing [iŋ] ㄧㄥ ing	iang [jaŋ] ㄧㄤ iang
	pronounced as //w//	u [u] ㄨ u	o/uo [wo] ㄛ/ㄨㄛ o/uo	ua [wa] ㄨㄚ ua	ui/uei [wei] ㄨㄟ ui	uai [wai] ㄨㄞ uai			un [wən] ㄨㄣ un	uan [wan] ㄨㄢ uan				uang [waŋ] ㄨㄤ uang
	pronounced as //ɥ//	ü [y] ㄩ ü	üeh [ɥe] ㄩㄝ üe						ün [yn] ㄩㄣ ün	üan [ɥɛn] ㄩㄢ üan

Wade–Giles writes -uei after k and k, otherwise -ui: kuei, kuei, hui, shui, chui.

It writes pronounced as /[-ɤ]/ as -o after k, k and h, otherwise as -ê: ko, ko, ho, shê, chê. When pronounced as /[ɤ]/ forms a syllable on its own, it is written ê or o depending on the character.

Wade–Giles writes pronounced as /[-wo]/ as -uo after k, k, h and sh, otherwise as -o: kuo, kuo, huo, shuo, bo, tso. After ch, it is written cho or chuo depending on the character.

For -ih and -ŭ, see below.

Giles's A Chinese–English Dictionary also includes the finals -io (in yo, chio, chio, hsio, lio and nio) and -üo (in chüo, chüo, hsüo, lüo and nüo), both of which are pronounced -üeh in modern Standard Chinese: yüeh, chüeh, chüeh, hsüeh, lüeh and nüeh.

Syllables that begin with a medial

	Coda
∅			pronounced as //i//		pronounced as //u//		pronounced as //n//		pronounced as //ŋ//
Medial	pronounced as //j//	i/yi [i] ㄧ yi	yeh [je] ㄧㄝ ye	ya [ja] ㄧㄚ ya		yai [jai] ㄧㄞ yai	yu [jou] ㄧㄡ you	yao [jau] ㄧㄠ yao	yin [in] ㄧㄣ yin	yen [jɛn] ㄧㄢ yan	yung [jʊŋ] ㄩㄥ yong	ying [iŋ] ㄧㄥ ying	yang [jaŋ] ㄧㄤ yang
	pronounced as //w//	wu [u] ㄨ wu	wo [wo] ㄨㄛ wo	wa [wa] ㄨㄚ wa	wei [wei] ㄨㄟ wei	wai [wai] ㄨㄞ wai			wên [wən] ㄨㄣ wen	wan [wan] ㄨㄢ wan		wêng [wəŋ] ㄨㄥ weng	wang [waŋ] ㄨㄤ wang
	pronounced as //ɥ//	yü [y] ㄩ yu	yüeh [ɥe] ㄩㄝ yue						yün [yn] ㄩㄣ yun	yüan [ɥɛn] ㄩㄢ yuan

Wade–Giles writes the syllable pronounced as /[i]/ as i or yi depending on the character.

System features

Consonants and initial symbols

A feature of the Wade–Giles system is the representation of the unaspirated-aspirated stop consonant pairs using a character resembling an apostrophe. Thomas Wade and others used the spiritus asper (or), borrowed from the polytonic orthography of the Ancient Greek language. Herbert Giles and others used a left (opening) curved single quotation mark (‘) for the same purpose. A third group used a plain apostrophe ('). The backtick, and visually similar characters are sometimes seen in various electronic documents using the system.

Examples using the spiritus asper: p, p, t, t, k, k, ch, ch. The use of this character preserves b, d, g, and j for the romanization of Chinese varieties containing voiced consonants, such as Shanghainese (which has a full set of voiced consonants) and Min Nan (Hō-ló-oē) whose century-old Pe̍h-ōe-jī (POJ, often called Missionary Romanization) is similar to Wade–Giles. POJ, Legge romanization, Simplified Wade, and EFEO Chinese transcription use the letter (h) instead of an apostrophe-like character to indicate aspiration. (This is similar to the obsolete IPA convention before the revisions of the 1970s). The convention of an apostrophe-like character or (h) to denote aspiration is also found in romanizations of other Asian languages, such as McCune–Reischauer for Korean and ISO 11940 for Thai.

People unfamiliar with Wade–Giles often ignore the spiritus asper, sometimes omitting them when copying texts, unaware that they represent vital information. Hànyǔ Pīnyīn addresses this issue by employing the Latin letters customarily used for voiced stops, unneeded in Mandarin, to represent the unaspirated stops: b, p, d, t, g, k, j, q, zh, ch.

Partly because of the popular omission of apostrophe-like characters, the four sounds represented in Hànyǔ Pīnyīn by j, q, zh, and ch often all become ch, including in many proper names. However, if the apostrophe-like characters are kept, the system reveals a symmetry that leaves no overlap:

• The non-retroflex ch (Pīnyīn j) and ch (Pīnyīn q) are always before either ü or i, but never ih.
• The retroflex ch (Pīnyīn zh) and ch (Pīnyīn ch) are always before ih, a, ê, e, o, or u.

Vowels and final symbols

Syllabic consonants

Like Yale and Mandarin Phonetic Symbols II, Wade–Giles renders the two types of syllabic consonant (; Wade–Giles: kung¹-yün⁴; Hànyǔ Pīnyīn: kōngyùn) differently:

• -ŭ is used after the sibilants written in this position (and this position only) as tz, tz and ss (Pīnyīn z, c and s).
• -ih is used after the retroflex ch, ch, sh, and j (Pīnyīn zh, ch, sh, and r).

These finals are both written as -ih in Tongyòng Pinyin, as -i in Hànyǔ Pīnyīn (hence distinguishable only by the initial from pronounced as /[i]/ as in li), and as -y in Gwoyeu Romatzyh and Simplified Wade. They are typically omitted in Zhùyīn (Bōpōmōfō).

IPA		ʈ͡ʂɻ̩	ʈ͡ʂʰɻ̩	ʂɻ̩	ɻɻ̩	t͡sɹ̩	t͡sʰɹ̩	sɹ̩
Yale		jr	chr	shr	r	dz	tsz	sz
MPS II		jr	chr	shr	r	tz	tsz	sz
Wade–Giles		chih	chʻih	shih	jih	tzŭ	tzʻŭ	ssŭ
Tongyòng Pinyin		jhih	chih	shih	rih	zih	cih	sih
Hànyǔ Pīnyīn		zhi	chi	shi	ri	zi	ci	si
Gwoyeu Romatzyh		jy	chy	shy	ry	tzy	tsy	sy
Simplified Wade		chy	chhy	shy	ry	tsy	tshy	sy
Zhùyīn		ㄓ	ㄔ	ㄕ	ㄖ	ㄗ	ㄘ	ㄙ

Vowel o

Final o in Wade–Giles has two pronunciations in modern Peking dialect: pronounced as /[wo]/ and pronounced as /[ɤ]/.

What is pronounced in vernacular Peking dialect as a close-mid back unrounded vowel pronounced as /[ɤ]/ is written usually as ê, but sometimes as o, depending on historical pronunciation (at the time Wade–Giles was developed). Specifically, after velar initials k, k and h (and a historical ng, which had been dropped by the time Wade–Giles was developed), o is used; for example, "哥" is ko¹ (Pīnyīn gē) and "刻" is ko^4[6] (Pīnyīn kè). In Peking dialect, o after velars (and what used to be ng) have shifted to pronounced as /[ɤ]/, thus they are written as ge, ke, he and e in Pīnyīn. When pronounced as /[ɤ]/ forms a syllable on its own, Wade–Giles writes ê or o depending on the character. In all other circumstances, it writes ê.

What is pronounced in Peking dialect as pronounced as /[wo]/ is usually written as o in Wade–Giles, except for wo, shuo (e.g. "說" shuo¹) and the three syllables of kuo, kuo, and huo (as in 過, 霍, etc.), which contrast with ko, ko, and ho that correspond to Pīnyīn ge, ke, and he. This is because characters like 羅, 多, etc. (Wade–Giles: lo², to¹; Pīnyīn: luó, duō) did not originally carry the medial pronounced as /[w]/. Peking dialect does not have phonemic contrast between o and -uo/wo (except in interjections when used alone) and a medial pronounced as /[w]/ is usually inserted in front of -o to form pronounced as /[wo]/.

IPA	pronounced as /pwo/	pronounced as /pʰwo/	pronounced as /mwo/	pronounced as /fwo/	pronounced as /two/	pronounced as /tʰwo/	pronounced as /nwo/	pronounced as /lwo/	pronounced as /kɤ/	pronounced as /kʰɤ/	pronounced as /xɤ/	pronounced as /ʈ͡ʂwo/	pronounced as /ʈ͡ʂʰwo/	pronounced as /ʐwo/	pronounced as /t͡swo/	pronounced as /t͡sʰwo/	pronounced as /swo/	pronounced as /ɤ/	pronounced as /wo/
Wade–Giles	po	pʻo	mo	fo	to	tʻo	no	lo	ko	kʻo	ho	cho	chʻo	jo	tso	tsʻo	so	o/ê	wo
Zhùyīn	ㄅㄛ	ㄆㄛ	ㄇㄛ	ㄈㄛ	ㄉㄨㄛ	ㄊㄨㄛ	ㄋㄨㄛ	ㄌㄨㄛ	ㄍㄜ	ㄎㄜ	ㄏㄜ	ㄓㄨㄛ	ㄔㄨㄛ	ㄖㄨㄛ	ㄗㄨㄛ	ㄘㄨㄛ	ㄙㄨㄛ	ㄜ	ㄨㄛ
Pīnyīn	bo	po	mo	fo	duo	tuo	nuo	luo	ge	ke	he	zhuo	chuo	ruo	zuo	cuo	suo	e	wo

Zhùyīn and Pīnyīn write pronounced as /[wo]/ as ㄛ -o after ㄅ b, ㄆ p, ㄇ m and ㄈ f, and as ㄨㄛ -uo after all other initials.

Tones

Tones are indicated in Wade–Giles using superscript numbers (1–4) placed after the syllable. This contrasts with the use of diacritics to represent the tones in Pīnyīn. For example, the Pīnyīn qiàn (fourth tone) has the Wade–Giles equivalent chien⁴.

!Tone!Sample text(s; t; lit)!Hanyu Pinyin!Wade–Giles

1. high		mā
2. rising		má
3. low (dipping)		mǎ
4. falling		mà
5. neutral	(interrogative)	ma

Punctuation

Wade–Giles uses hyphens to separate all syllables within a word (whereas Pīnyīn separates syllables only in specially defined cases, using hyphens or closing (right) single quotation marks as appropriate).

If a syllable is not the first in a word, its first letter is not capitalized, even if it is part of a proper noun. The use of apostrophe-like characters, hyphens, and capitalization is frequently not observed in place names and personal names. For example, the majority of overseas Taiwanese people write their given names like "Tai Lun" or "Tai-Lun", whereas the Wade–Giles is actually "Tai-lun". (See also Chinese names.)

Comparison with other systems

Pinyin

• Wade–Giles chose the French-like (implying a sound like IPA's pronounced as /link/, as in s in English measure) to represent a Northern Mandarin pronunciation of what is represented as in pinyin (Northern Mandarin pronounced as /link// Southern Mandarin ; generally considered allophones).
• Ü (representing pronounced as /link/) always has an umlaut above, while pinyin only employs it in the cases of, ,, and , while leaving it out after j, q, x and y as a simplification because /pronounced as /link/ cannot otherwise appear after those letters. (The vowel /pronounced as /link/ can occur in those cases in pinyin where the diaeresis are indicated /pronounced as /link/ or pronounced as /link/; in which cases it serves to distinguish the front vowel pronounced as /link/ from the back vowel pronounced as /link/. By contrast it is always present to mark the front vowel in Wade–Giles.) Because (as in "jade") must have an umlaut in Wade–Giles, the umlaut-less in Wade–Giles is freed up for what corresponds to ("have"/"there is") in Pinyin.
• The Pīnyīn cluster is in Wade–Giles, reflecting the pronunciation of pronounced as /link/ as in English book . (Compare kung¹-fu to as an example.)
• After a consonant, both Wade–Giles and Pīnyīn use and instead of the complete syllables: and /.

Chart

Note: In Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, the so-called neutral tone is written leaving the syllable with no diacritic mark at all. In Tongyòng Pinyin, a ring is written over the vowel.

Adaptations

There are several adaptations of Wade–Giles.

Mathews

The Romanization system used in the 1943 edition of Mathews' Chinese–English Dictionary differs from Wade–Giles in the following ways:^[7]

• It uses the right apostrophe:

p, t, k, ch, ts, tzŭ; while Wade–Giles uses the left apostrophe, similar to the aspiration diacritic used in the International Phonetic Alphabet before the revisions of the 1970s: p, t, k, ch, ts, tzŭ.

• It consistently uses i for the syllable pronounced as /[i]/, while Wade–Giles uses i or yi depending on the character.
• It uses o for the syllable pronounced as /[ɤ]/, while Wade–Giles uses ê or o depending on the character.
• It offers the choice between ssŭ and szŭ, while Wade–Giles requires ssŭ.
• It does not use the spellings chio, chio, hsio, yo, replacing them with chüeh, chüeh, hsüeh, yüeh in accordance with their modern pronunciations.
• It uses an underscored ³ to denote a second tone which comes from an original third tone, but only if the following syllable has the neutral tone and the tone sandhi is therefore not predictable: hsiao³•chieh.
• It denotes the neutral tone by placing a dot (if the neutral tone is compulsory) or a circle (if the neutral tone is optional) before the syllable. The dot or circle replaces the hyphen.

Table

See main article: Wade–Giles table.

Gallery

Examples of Wade–Giles derived English language terminology:

See also

• Comparison of Chinese transcription systems
• Simplified Wade
• Daoism–Taoism romanization issue
• Legge romanization
• Romanization of Chinese
• Cyrillization of Chinese

Bibliography

• Wade, Thomas Francis. A progressive course designed to assist the student of Colloquial Chinese (Yü Yen Tzǔ Êrh Chi) in two volumes. Third edition Shanghai: Hong Kong: Singapore: Yokohama: London: Kelly & Walsh, Limited, 1903.
• Giles, Herbert A. A Chinese–English Dictionary. 2-vol. & 3-vol. versions both. London: Shanghai: Bernard Quaritch; Kelly and Walsh, 1892. Rev. & enlarged 2nd ed. in 3 vols. (Vol. I: front-matter & a-hsü, Vol. II: hsü-shao, and Vol. III: shao-yün), Shanghai: Hong Kong: Singapore: Yokohama: London: Kelly & Walsh, Limited; Bernard Quaritch, 1912. Rpt. of the 2nd ed. but in 2 vols. and bound as 1, New York: Paragon Book Reprint Corp., 1964.

Further reading

• "Library of Congress Pinyin Conversion Project Frequently Asked Questions What's the difference between Wade–Giles and Pinyin?" – Library of Congress

External links

• Chinese Romanization Converter – Convert between Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, Wade–Giles, Gwoyeu Romatzyh and other known or (un-)common Romanization systems.
• A conversion table of Chinese provinces and cities from Wade–Giles to Pīnyīn
• Pinyin4j: Java library supporting Chinese to Wade–Giles – Support Simplified and Traditional Chinese; Support most popular Romanization systems, including Hànyŭ Pīnyīn, Tongyòng Pinyin, Wade–Giles, MPS2, Yale and Gwoyeu Romatzyh; Support multiple pronunciations of a single character; Support customized output, such as ü or tone marks.
• Chinese without a teacher, Chinese phrasebook by Herbert Giles with Romanization
• Chinese Phonetic Conversion Tool – Converts between Wade–Giles and other formats
• Wade–Giles Annotation – Wade–Giles pronunciation and English definitions for Chinese text snippets or web pages.
• 國語拼音對照表
• Key to Wade–Giles romanization of Chinese characters: November 1944 (Army Map Service)

Notes and References

1. Web site: Language Subtag Registry. IANA. 2024-03-13.
2. Book: Wade, Thomas Francis . Yü-yen Tzŭ-erh Chi: A Progressive Course Designed to Assist the Student of Colloquial Chinese, As Spoken in the Capital and the Metropolitan Department . Trübner . 1867 . London . zh.
3. Book: Kaske, Elisabeth . The Politics of Language in Chinese Education: 1895–1919 . Brill . 2008 . 978-9-004-16367-6 . 68.
4. Web site: Chinese Language Transliteration Systems – Wade–Giles . https://web.archive.org/web/20070128065433/http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/skozerow/wadegiles.htm . 2007-01-28 . 2007-08-04 . UCLA film and television archive. (Web archive)
5. A Chinese–English Dictionary.
6. A Chinese–English Dictionary, p. 761.
7. Mathews' Chinese–English Dictionary.