This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 at 9:58 pm and is filed under All Posts, Family and Parenthood, Usability and Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Babel Babble
“For the past 20 years or so Mr Cai (pronounced ‘tsigh’)…”
Say what?
First of all, why on earth does a person with a name that is natively written in a non-Latin language choose Latin letters to spell it with that have nothing to do with his name’s pronounciation? (If the name were spelled with those letters in the native language, the unexpected pronounciation wouldn’t bother me.)
And second of all, how exactly does “tsigh” help me to read this name?
What the heck is going on here?
[Note: my daughter says it’s obvious that “tsigh” should be pronounced as in the English word “sigh”, but with a “ts” to start with. I’m glad that’s cleared up, then.]
February 1st, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Hi there. Maybe i’ll can help clear up some of your doubts.
For the first question, mandarin characters are written in brush strokes. However, the pronunciation of these characters are represented by “hanyu pinyin”. The latter is important as they not only spell out how the character should be pronounced, but its enunciation as well. “Hanyu pinyin”, if i’m not wrong, is used widely both in asia and southeast asia.
As for question two, i have to agree with you that ‘tsigh’ is an awkward way to explain it’s pronunciation. I can see where he is coming from though. The ‘c’ in this case is pronounced akin to ‘tsk’. Like when you say ‘tsk tsk’ if someone uses expletives.
I must say that i am not an expert in mandarin. But it’s safe to assume that the author in this case must be of asian origin. And his choice of not using the native language to spell out his surname boils down to well, his preference over “hanyu pinyin”, which is a legit and recognised form as well.
Hope this clears up some of your doubts!