Fundamental inability to spell wrt certain names?

Could someone explain to me how

_C_hen _X_iao_W_ang becomes CZW?

Last I knew, the method of make a short initial based name is to take the 1st letter of each name and use that as the shorthand.

Fo

Forrest

Fer cryin' out loud, Fo, most of the posters here couldn't spell their own names correctly, much less someone else's.

Unfortunately, that is not the case the X in pinyin is basically equivalent to how english speakers say 'sh.'

Regardless, making initials requires one take the 1st letter of each name.

In fact, I disagree. Wade Giles probably only makes sense to portuguese speakers. Aside from a few consonants (x, c, z, and h after a consonant), pinyin is much closer to how it should be pronounced. Do you think an english speaker has a remote idea of how an aspirated consonant should sound vs. an unaspirated one. That alone is the reason that most english speakers reading Wade Giles don't even remotely come close to sounding like they are speaking mandarin.

For example.

T'ai Chi is pronounced 'tie jee' Tai Ch'i is pronounced 'dai chee' The Ch'i as in ch'i kung ( qi as in qigong, pronounced 'chee' is not the same as the as the Chi in T'ai Chi (ji as in tai jai, pronounced 'jee'

T'ai Chi was always pronounced taiji if one knew how to read Wade Giles.

While I'm at it, if one knew how to read Wade Giles Peking sounds like Beijing, Szechuan sounds like Sichuan, Mao Tse Tung sounds like Mao ZeDong, etc. It's just that some folks with earlier exposure to romanized chinese are more used to seeing Wade Giles.

Fo

Another common mistake is for people to use the sh(eep) sound instead of the whistling through the bottom teeth 'sh' sound.

The mistake above was probably idiomatic. Many mistakes existin american english. They just stick.

The big problem I have about romanization of chinese is the use of words the romanizers didnt seem to have too much a grip on as far as grammar is concerned.

Phonetic spellings fine by me but harder than **** if you dont know what you need to know.

Hi,

I am no expert in chinese language, but from observation in my readings,

the writing of some words can be spelled differently depending on which dialect you use, cantonese, mandarin and pinyin(?)

Thats why Xing-yi can be spelled Hsing-I and Pakua, Bagua, Tai Chi Chuan is TaiJiQuan, etc!!!

So i guess that the Xiao could be spelled Zhao which would give you CZW instead of CXW.

Now if i am completely off the track, i'm sure someone will come on and educate me!!!

Hi!

Actually, the confusion arises because there are several transcription systems for the same pronunciation. The main ones are pinyin, wade gile and yale. There are numerous other less commonly used ones too. Anyway, in Wade Giles, bagua should be written pa kua. This does not mean it should be pronounced as p or k. In the wade giles system, p is supposed to be pronounced as a b and k as a j. Thus, Beijing was written Peking. The pinyin system ,which is the offical PRC system as well as the system adopted by the U.N. is more accurate for non-native speakers of CHinese, except for a few letters, such as x and zh. Chen Xiaowang can also be written Chen Hsiao wang in Wade Gile. However, It cannot be written zhao wang. The z could perhaps be an abbreviation of one of his nicknames, but I doub;t it. Most likely somebody just made a mistake.

Hope this clarifies things a little.

Before you buy.