A Chinese-English-Russian Question

[Daniel Rancour-Laferriere]

Dear Paul,
Thanks for this valuable information.  Now I do not feel quite so 
ignorant about Chinese as I was when first encountering the problem of 
transliterating Chinese names into English from Cyrillic texts by 
Tolstoy and his memoirists.

Best regards,
Daniel RL

Paul B. Gallagher wrote:

> Daniel Rancour-Laferriere wrote:
>
>> 15 Jan 06
>>
>> Dear Michael,
>> Thanks, that is a good suggestion, but I do not recall the Boddes 
>> dealing with what Tolstoy called "Mi-ti" when I read that book (but I 
>> could be wrong).  I the meantime, I have received several messages on 
>> this subject and I am pretty well convinced that the correct answer is:
>>
>>> Mo Di (no hyphen please!) (468-376 BC). It would be quite logical 
>>> for Tolstoy to be interested in his ideas, which included 
>>> "non-aggression" and "universal brotherly love".
>>
>>
>> I understand that "Mo-tzu" and "Mo Ti" have also been utilized to 
>> render this name in English.  Apparently "Mo Di" is the now proper 
>> rendition, just as Taoism is now Daoism.  I do wish I knew more about 
>> Chinese.
>> Thanks to everyone who contributed to answering my question!
>
>
> You're welcome.
>
> The difference in transliteration is the difference between the older 
> Wade-Giles system and the newer Pinyin system that the Chinese 
> government endorses (see below). The consonant in the second syllable 
> is unaspirated (as in French and Spanish ptk), but is heard by English 
> and Russian speakers as voiced, so the Pinyin system is more 
> intuitive. Thus:
>
> Wade-Giles  Pinyin    Russian
>     p'        p       п  (hard or soft)
>     p         b       б  (hard or soft)
>     f         f       ф  (hard or soft)
>
>     t'        t       т  (hard or soft)
>     t         d       д  (hard or soft)
>
>     ts',tz'   c       ц  (always hard  -- Polish c)
>     ts        z       цз (always hard  -- Polish dz)
>     s         s       с  (always hard  -- Polish s)
>
>     ch'(i/ü)  q       ц  (always soft! -- Polish ć)
>     ch(i/ü)   j       цз (always soft  -- Polish dź)
>     hs(i/ü)   x       с  (always soft  -- Polish ś)
>
>     ch'       ch      ч  (always hard! -- Polish cz)
>     ch        zh      чж (always hard  -- Polish dż, drz)
>     sh        sh      ш  (always hard  -- Polish sz)
>     j         r       ж  (always hard  -- Polish ż, rz)
>
>     k'        k       к  (hard or soft)
>     k         g       г  (hard or soft)
>     h         h       х  (hard or soft)
>
> Note that Russian uses the following vowel to distinguish the hard 
> consonants it represents with ц цз с (Pinyin c z s) from the soft 
> consonants it also represents with ц цз с (Pinyin q j x), and it 
> always writes "hard" vowels after the Chinese hard consonants ч чж ш ж 
> (Pinyin ch zh sh r). For other consonants, Russian spelling 
> hardness/softness represents a semivowel as in бяо (Pinyin biao), not 
> consonantal softness. This should not present any difficulty, except 
> that Russian speakers will have to remind themselves that ч before a 
> hard vowel really is hard, and ц before a soft vowel really is soft.
>
> The hyphen is used in Wade-Giles to join components of the personal 
> name (Mao Tse-Tung), but omitted in Pinyin (Mao Zedong). It should not 
> be used to join the personal name to the family name.
>
> There are other differences between the systems that are not relevant 
> to your specific question. You can see a complete table of 
> equivalencies at 
> <http://www.library.ucla.edu/libraries/eastasian/ctable3.htm>; if you 
> want to view the third column (Zhuyin), set your browser's encoding to 
> "Chinese (Big5)."
>

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