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QIN???...C'MON

#61
Their language relies so much on inflections, it's very difficult to give straight forward phonetic translations. If they want to call their country Qin, surely the pronunciation is more important than the spelling. Why not just call it "Chin" in English (which is rather simple)? And how is Qin pronounced in other languages (some of which don't even have Q's)? The Spanish pronounce English as "El Inglis". The French pronounce it as "Anglais".

If they want us to call China "Qin", they should simply allow us to spell it "Chin" - and likewise in other languages they should conform to the phonetics of those languages. Otherwise, countries will just continue to pronounce it as they always have.

Does anyone know why they want this change in name? Is it worth the hassle (and the huge costs involved)? I only heard about this a few days ago, and I'm curious about the reasons behind it. I assume the reason is of considerable importance.
 
#62
hrodbert696 said:
In a sense, this is the difference between the Wade-Giles and Pinyin transcriptions. Wade-Giles is what you give the third-grader; something they can pronounce that approximates what the word was in the original language.

The problem is that English phonemes DON'T match Chinese ones, and there are sounds in their language that NO Latin letter can capture as that letter is normally pronounced. To your third-grader (or Joe on the street) that doesn't matter, but if a person is going to actually study China and communicate with others about China, you need a system of transcription that is more accurate; otherwise Wade-Giles is going to produce transliterations where YOU CAN"T TELL which of three or four different Chinese words is meant.

To deal with that inaccuracy, the Pinyin system assigns (rather arbitrary) values to certain Latin letters (generally the less-used ones like X and Q) to allow them to stand in for Chinese phonemes that have no clear Western analogue. As far as I've ever heard it's only widely used among China experts, not the general public.

Imagine someone trying to transcribe English into a language that had no vowels. You would end up writing WNT with no way to show whether the word intended was "want," "won't" or "went." So you would have to borrow, or invent, some arbitrary symbols for people reading in that alphabet to know which word was intended. And somebody on an internet forum is going to gripe about how it makes no sense to spell WNT as W#NT.
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This post wins the thread, BUT I thought this thread was about the Chinese trying to impose their pronunciation/spelling on the rest of the world. That's another story.

EDIT:If I type in "Chin Dynasty" on wikipedia it redirects me to the page called "Qin Dynasty". If it's English wikipedia it should be "Chin Dynasty".
 
#67
so let it be written...so let it be done

:cool:

davesignatureII-1.png
 
#71
mc_muench said:
Anyone else mad they decided to make Pluto not a planet anymore?
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I am. It stuffed up my mnemonic for the order of the planets, which I leant when I was about seven: My Very Easy Memory Jingle Seems Useful Naming Planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto).

It makes no damn sense without Pluto, so as far as I'm concerned, Pluto is a planet until someone comes up with a new mnemonic. ;)
 
#73
What if everyone who posts here replaces ch with a q throughout their post.

I had a qeese pizza the other day. I usually qoose at least one topping, like mushroom or pepperoni. In my spaghetti, I like to use qunky pieces of onions and mushrooms in the sauce. Munq, munq, munq, I love pasta.
After dinner, I worked on my qops by practicing on my bass for an hour. Then, I watqed TV, or qannel surf. You know, qanging the qannel often. For a midnight snack, I ate some naqos.
 
#75
placedesjardins said:
What if everyone who posts here replaces ch with a q throughout their post.

I had a qeese pizza the other day. I usually qoose at least one topping, like mushroom or pepperoni. In my spaghetti, I like to use qunky pieces of onions and mushrooms in the sauce. Munq, munq, munq, I love pasta.
After dinner, I worked on my qops by practicing on my bass for an hour. Then, I watqed TV, or qannel surf. You know, qanging the qannel often. For a midnight snack, I ate some naqos.
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ROFLMAO!!
 

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