As someone who loves looking at alternate history and world building, especially with maps, it’s infuriating how every other post on r/imaginarymaps is something like this. Lib/chud wish fulfillment is painful to look at.
As someone who loves looking at alternate history and world building, especially with maps, it’s infuriating how every other post on r/imaginarymaps is something like this. Lib/chud wish fulfillment is painful to look at.
maybe I am misunderstanding but I don't think pinyin was around then? but you're right, it's not intrinsically bad
except pinyin is consistent, and maps to actual sounds, and wade giles just seems like a guess at most points. like the S in "shanSi" and "kanSu" are different consonants, and the Ks in "Kiangsu" and "Kansu" sound nothing alike. they even use a K for "chungKing", which is yet another consonant sound...? not to mention they use "Ch" to spell like three different sounds. "Shansi" and "Shensi" actually have the same first vowel sound, just different tone, but let's put a different letter there why not.
:UK-cool:
Sorry to necropost, but I just want to sign off on everything you say. The way that 'k' works in Wade-Giles is so incredibly stupid that it makes me angry beyond words to think about it too much.
Chongqing is an interesting one because if you say it in Cantonese it is pronounced Chung-hing, which is awfully close to Chungking...but again, what the hell is going on then with the k!?
Gwoyeu is entirely Anglocentric and quite possibly specifically Taiwanese in its pronunciation and must be a huge pain in the ass to learn and write in , but it is the prince of intuitive English romanization. It's like phonics for Chinese. It literally teaches you how to pronounce the language correctly as you read it:
I am American. I study hard so I can read books in the Chinese language.
简体：我是美国人，我为读书而努力学习中文。
Pinyin: wo shi meiguoren, wo wei dushu er nuli xuexi zhongwen
Gwoyeu Romatzyh: .uo .shy .mhei.guo.rhen .uo .uei .du.shu .el .nhu.lhi .shiue.shi .jong.uen
Zhao Yuanren we didn't deserve you!