Places By Any Other Names? By John Duncan

Roads

          Even more confusing are the street names. When setting up meeting places and appointments, one cannot count on the person on the other end of the phone for anything other than proper pronunciation. A difficulty with spelling for non-fluent speakers of English is maintained with the lack of a coherent Romanization system.
           One must be quite confident of their pronunciation if they are to reach their destination by cab. Many carry cards with the addresses written in Chinese on them, or even have the drivers phone a Chinese-speaking friend.
          Using the Hanyu Pinyin system, the street I live on is spelt ZhongCheng Road (see below for pronunciation). Heading south from Tianmu, a five to ten minute scooter ride will bring one to ZhongZheng Road, similar in pronunciation to my own street, the only difference being an unaspirated initial phoneme on the second syllable (this might be better-perceived by a native speaker of English as a difference in voicing, this phonetic feature being more comparable to the English phonemes and , as in char and jar, respectively. To be more phonetically specific, however, the ch in cheng is actually a voiceless aspirated alvelo-palatal affricate, while the zh in zheng is actually a voiceless unaspirated alvelo-palatal affricate. Both ZhongCheng and ZhongZheng share a common spelling alternative: ChungCheng. The confusion is obvious.

ChungChen * ChungCheng JungCheng ZhongCheng

* ChungCheng JungJeng ZhongZheng

* Some more confusing street name signs

Road name title spelled with Hanyu Pinyin

          Other variations in street name variations are as follows (Hanyu Pinyin example is in bold type):

Bade Pateh

Dunhua Tunhua Tunhwa

Hwahsi Huashi Huaxi

ChienTan JianTan

MinChuan MinQuan

NanJing NanKing

Jenai Renai

Chihshan Chishan Jhihshan J-Shen ZhiShan

ChungShan JhongShan JungShan ZhongShan

          An analysis of these examples shows that variations of 'q' and 'zh' , in addition to 'ch' can all be written as 'ch'.

Library of Congress - Pinyin Conversion Project: New Chinese Romanization Guidelines return to the main chinglish page back to the pages of john

* One word or two? No effort was made to point out differences in road name syllables being spelled as one word or two.