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The Wade-Giles system of Romanisation of [[Chinese]] characters (rendering Chinese characters in Roman - i.e. western - letters) was devised in the nineteenth century and was the main method used for most of the twentieth century. In recent decades it has been replaced to a significant degree in popular use by the [[Pinyin]] system, devised by scholars in the [[People's Republic of China]] in the 1950s.
The system was first devised in 1859 by Sir Thomas Francis Wade (1818-1895), a British army officer who had served in the first [[Opium War]] (1839-42) and who in 1845 became a student interpreter in China. The system was modified in 1892 by Herbert Giles (1845-1935) and acquired its double-barrelled name.
Among the drawbacks of the system are that pronunciation of certain consonants is only obvious to the initiated. In Wade-Giles, P is pronounced as the letter ''B''; P' is ''P''. Likewise K is pronounced ''J'' and K' is pronounced ''K'' Thus the place name transliterated at Peking was always intended be pronounced ''Be(i) Jing'' (as in the Pinyin ''Beijing'')rather than ''Pea-king''. These anomalies, and very many others, are not present in the Pinyin system which, for English-speakers at any rate, gives a much more accurate version of the Chinese words.
But some characteristics of Wade-Giles have notable advantages. A single letter is used as the basis for pairs of [[phonology|phoneme]]s that differ only in aspiration. This more accurately represents how Chinese treats these pairs, from a phonological perspective (in terms of which vowels and consonants with which they can co-occur). Wade-Giles is more linguistically accurate than Pinyin, which uses different basic symbols for these phoneme pairs. In many cases, the [[orthography]] used by Wade-Giles for diphthongs is also more phonetically accurate than the pinyin alternative. Consequently, many linguists prefer to use Wade-Giles rather than Pinyin. It is also often used in Chinese colleges and universities to transition students to English.
[[Category:China]]
[[Category:Writing systems]]