39-493: Postal romanization was a system of transliterating place names in China developed by postal authorities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For many cities, the corresponding postal romanization was the most common English-language form of the city's name from the 1890s until the 1980s, when postal romanization was replaced by pinyin , but the system remained in place on Taiwan until 2002. In 1892, Herbert Giles created
78-660: A leading part in the following negotiations, and on the establishment of the legation at Peking he took up the post of Chinese secretary of legation. In 1862 Wade was made a Companion of the Bath . Wade was acting Chargé d'Affaires in Beijing from June 1864 to November 1865 and from November 1869 to July 1871. Wade was appointed Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary and Chief Superintendent of British Trade in China in that year and served in that role until his retirement in 1883. He conducted long and difficult negotiations in
117-542: A long-time customs manager, was appointed postal secretary in 1901. Appointing a French national to the top position fulfilled an 1898 commitment by China to "take into account the recommendations of the French government" when selecting staff for the post office. Until 1911, the post office remained part of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service , which meant that Hart was Piry's boss. To resolve
156-498: A number of romanizations, including Tongyong Pinyin and postal romanization. Place names in China Place names in China primarily refers to Han Chinese names, but also to those used by China's minorities . In his study of place-names in China, J. E. Spencer notes that "although Chinese names indicate both domestic cultural and geographical influences, they almost never indicate cultural influence from other parts of
195-713: A romanization system called the Nanking syllabary . The Imperial Maritime Customs Post Office would cancel postage with a stamp that gave the city of origin in Latin letters, often romanized using Giles's system. In 1896, the Customs Post was combined with other postal services and renamed the Chinese Imperial Post . As a national agency, the Imperial Post was an authority on Chinese place names. When
234-625: A true representation of the varieties of Chinese orthoepy as evinced by the Post Office's repeated desire to transcribe according to "local pronunciation" or "provincial sound-equivalents". At the Commission on the Unification of Pronunciation in 1913, the idea of a national language with a standardized trans-regional phonology was approved. A period of turmoil followed as President Yuan Shikai reversed course and attempted to restore
273-661: Is placed at the end, in English with the exceptions of mountains and lakes the identifier is placed at the end too. For names of lakes and mountains "X Lake" / "Lake X" and "X Mountain" / "Mount X" both is used. Some mountain ranges like Tian Shan are referred to English by the Chinese name. "Tian" means sky or heaven and "Shan" means mountain(s), so Tian Shan literally translates as the "Heaven Mountains". E = English, C = Chinese, P = Pinyin Chinese reckon five directions: From
312-645: The 42nd Highlanders , he served with his regiment in the Ionian Islands , devoting his leisure to the study of Italian and modern Greek. On receiving his commission as lieutenant in 1841 he exchanged into the 98th Foot , then under orders for Qing China and landed at Hong Kong in June 1842. The scene of the First Opium War had at that time been transferred to the Yangtze River and Wade
351-737: The Cambridge University Library 's Oriental Collection. In 1888, he was elected the first Professor of Chinese at the University of Cambridge . He held the position as a professor until his death in Cambridge at 77. He served as president of the Royal Asiatic Society from 1887 to 1890. Wade was married to Amelia Herschel (1841–1926), daughter of astronomer John Herschel . In addition to diplomatic duties, Wade published books assisting in learning of
390-579: The Wade–Giles system became widespread, some argued that the post office should adopt it. This idea was rejected at a conference held in 1906 in Shanghai . Instead, the conference formally adopted Nanking syllabary. This decision allowed the post office to continue to use various romanizations that it had already selected. Wade–Giles romanization is based on the Beijing dialect , a pronunciation standard since
429-521: The yang side is the mountain's south face and the yin side its north. Thomas Francis Wade Sir Thomas Francis Wade , GCMG KCB (25 August 1818 – 31 July 1895) was a British diplomat and sinologist who produced an early Chinese textbook in English, in 1867, that was later amended, extended and converted into the Wade-Giles romanization system for Mandarin Chinese by Herbert Giles in 1892. He
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#1732764981495468-402: The 1850s. The use of Nanking syllabary did not suggest that the post office considered Nanjing pronunciation to be standard. Rather, it was an attempt to accommodate a variety of Mandarin pronunciations with a single romanization system. The spelling "Amoy" is based on pronunciation of Xiamen in the neighboring Zhangzhou dialect of Hokkien 廈門 ; Ēe-mûi , which historically contributed to
507-653: The American press adopted pinyin in 1979. The International Organization for Standardization followed suit in 1982. Postal romanization remained official in Taiwan until 2002, when Tongyong Pinyin was adopted. In 2009, Hanyu Pinyin replaced Tongyong Pinyin as the official romanization (see Chinese language romanization in Taiwan ). While street names in Taipei have been romanized via Hanyu Pinyin, municipalities throughout Taiwan, such as Kaohsiung and Tainan , presently use
546-404: The Chinese language: In these books, Wade produced an innovative system of transliteration of Chinese pronunciation into the Latin alphabet (i.e., " romanization "), based on the pronunciation conventions of the Beijing dialect. Wade's system was later modified by Herbert Giles (Giles succeeded Wade as professor of Chinese at Cambridge University), into the "Wade system as modified by Giles":
585-493: The Japanese ousted A. M. Chapelain, the last French head of the Chinese post. The post office had been under French administration almost continuously since Piry's appointment as postal secretary in 1901. In 1958, Communist China announced that it was adopting the pinyin romanization system. Implementing the new system was a gradual process. The government did not get around to abolishing postal romanization until 1964. Even then,
624-515: The Post Office, quietly ordered a return to Nanking syllabary "until such time as uniformity is possible." Although the Soothill-Wade period was brief, it was a time when 13,000 offices were created, a rapid and unprecedented expansion. At the time the policy was reversed, one third of all postal establishments used Soothill-Wade spelling. The Ministry published a revised pronunciation standard based strictly on Jilu Mandarin in 1932. In 1943,
663-615: The Treaty Ports were incorporated into the new service. The Customs Post was smaller than other postal services in China, such as the British. As the Imperial Post, it grew rapidly and soon became the dominant player in the market. In 1899, Hart, as inspector general of posts, asked postmasters to submit romanizations for their districts. Although Hart asked for transliterations "according to the local pronunciation", most postmasters were reluctant to play lexicographer and simply looked up
702-563: The Wade–Giles system to be specific to English. Atlases explaining postal romanization were issued in 1907, 1919, 1933, and 1936. The ambiguous result of the 1906 conference led critics to complain that postal romanization was idiosyncratic. According to modern scholar Lane J. Harris: What they have criticized is actually the very strength of postal romanization. That is, postal romanization accommodated local dialects and regional pronunciations by recognizing local identity and language as vital to
741-427: The city's administration that it was considered advisable to put the collection of the foreign customs duties into commission, a committee of three, of whom Wade was the chief, being entrusted with the administration of the customs. This formed the beginning of the imperial maritime customs service . In 1855, Wade was appointed Chinese secretary to Sir John Bowring , who had succeeded Sir John Davis at Hong Kong. On
780-501: The decision to use Nanking syllabary was not intended to suggest that the post office recognized any specific dialect as standard. The Lower Yangtze Mandarin dialect spoken in Nanjing makes more phonetic distinctions than other dialects. A romanization system geared to this dialect can be used to reflect pronunciation in a wider variety of dialects. Southern Mandarin is widely spoken in both Jiangsu and Anhui . In Giles' idealization,
819-525: The declaration of the Second Opium War in 1857, he was attached to Lord Elgin 's staff as Chinese secretary and with the assistance of Horatio Nelson Lay he conducted the negotiations which led up to the Treaty of Tientsin (1858). In the following year he accompanied Sir Frederick Bruce in his attempt to exchange the ratification of the treaty, and was present at Taku when the force attending
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#1732764981495858-422: The dialects of various other cities, allowing the reader to create locally based transliteration. From January 1893 to September 1896, local postal services issued postage stamps that featured the romanized name of the city they served using local pronunciation. An imperial edict issued in 1896 designated the Customs Post a national postal service and renamed it the Chinese Imperial Post . The local post offices in
897-497: The early concept of yin and yang (阴 and 阳), originally based upon exposure to the sun, many placenames also incorporate them. Old Luoyang was located on the north bank of the Luo. Old Hanyang was located on the north bank of the Han, while the eponymous county seat of Hanyin was located on the south bank. When a placename is derived from a mountain, however, these positions are reversed:
936-534: The formation of the local Amoy dialect of Hokkien in Xiamen . "Peking" is carried over from the d'Anville map which also came from older texts, such as Italian Jesuit Martino Martini 's De Bello Tartarico Historia (1654) and Novus Atlas Sinensis (1655). In Nanking syllabary, the city is Pehking . The irregular oo in "Soochow" is to distinguish this city from Xuzhou in northern Jiangsu. The other postal romanizations are based on "Southern Mandarin",
975-554: The historical court dialect based on the Nanjing dialect , which used to be the imperial lingua franca of the late Ming and early Qing court. Pinyin spellings are based on Standard Chinese , a form based on the Beijing dialect that is taught in the Chinese education system. After the Kuomintang (KMT) party came to power in 1927, the capital was moved from Peking ('northern capital') to Nanking ('southern capital'). Peking
1014-585: The mission was attacked and driven back from the Hai River . On Lord Elgin's return to China in 1860, he resumed his former post of Chinese secretary, and was mainly instrumental in arranging for the advance of the special envoys and the British and French forces to Tianjin and subsequently towards Beijing . For the purpose of arranging for a camping ground in Tongzhou he accompanied Mr (afterwards Sir) Harry Parkes on his first visit to that city. Wade took
1053-463: The post office did not adopt pinyin, but merely withdrew Latin characters from official use, such as in postal cancellation markings. Mapmakers of the time followed various approaches. Private atlas makers generally used postal romanization in the 1940s, but they later shifted to Wade–Giles. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency used a mix of postal romanization and Wade–Giles. The U.S. Army Map Service used Wade–Giles exclusively. The U.S. government and
1092-724: The relevant characters in a dictionary. The spellings that they submitted generally followed the Wade–Giles system, which was the standard method of transliteration at this time. The post office published a draft romanization map in 1903. Disappointed with the Wade-based map, Hart issued another directive in 1905. This one told postmasters to submit romanizations "not as directed by Wade, but according to accepted or usual local spellings." Local missionaries could be consulted, Hart suggested. However, Wade's system did reflect pronunciation in Mandarin-speaking areas. Théophile Piry,
1131-480: The romanization issue, Piry organized an Imperial Postal Joint-Session Conference in Shanghai in the spring of 1906. This was a joint postal and telegraphic conference. The conference resolved that existing spellings would be retained for names already transliterated. Accents, apostrophes, and hyphens would be dropped to facilitate telegraphic transmission. The requirement for addresses to be given in Chinese characters
1170-472: The speaker consistently makes various phonetic distinctions not made in Beijing dialect (or in the dialect of any other specific city). Giles created the system to encompass a range of dialects. For the French-led post office, an additional advantage of the system was that it allowed "the romanization of non-English speaking people to be met as far as possible," as Piry put it. That is to say, Piry considered
1209-552: The teaching of Literary Chinese . Yuan died in 1916 and the Ministry of Education published a pronunciation standard now known as Old National Pronunciation for Guoyu in 1918. The post office reverted to Wade's system in 1920 and 1921. It was the era of the May Fourth Movement , when language reform was the rage. The post office adopted a dictionary by William Edward Soothill as a reference. The Soothill-Wade system
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1248-593: The wake of the 1870 Tianjin Massacre , and was knighted in 1875. Despite leaving Beijing in the wake of the Margary Affair , Wade negotiated the Chefoo Convention in 1876 with Li Hongzhang . He was then made KCB . After retiring from working over forty years in the British embassies in China, he returned to England in 1883, and three years later donated 4,304 volumes of Chinese literature to
1287-521: The world", a tendency that also appeared to be characteristic of Chinese place-names in Singapore . Tibetan , Mongolian , Uighur and tribal minorities of China 's names are phonetically transcribed into Chinese. Names for places in China , when referred to in Chinese contain a class identifier. In English this is often translated, while the rest of the name is not. The class identifier in Chinese
1326-483: Was dropped. For new transliterations, local pronunciation would be followed in Guangdong as well as in parts of Guangxi and Fujian . In other areas, a system called Nanking syllabary would be used. Nanking syllabary is one of several transliteration systems presented by Giles to represent various local dialects. Nanjing had once been the capital and its dialect was, like that of Beijing, a pronunciation standard. But
1365-423: Was marked with a romanized form of the city's name. In addition, there were companies that provided local postal service in each of these cities. A Chinese-English Dictionary by Herbert Giles, published in 1892, popularized the Wade–Giles method of transliteration. This system had been created by Thomas Francis Wade in 1867. It is based on pronunciation in Beijing. Giles's dictionary also gives pronunciation in
1404-505: Was ordered there with his regiment. There he took part in the attack on Zhenjiang and in the advance on Nanjing . In 1843, he was appointed Cantonese interpreter to the garrison and, two years later, to the Supreme Court of Hong Kong , and, in 1846, assistant Chinese secretary to the superintendent of trade, Sir John Francis Davis . In 1852 he was appointed vice-consul at Shanghai . The Taiping Rebellion had so disorganised
1443-600: Was renamed to "Peiping" ('northern peace'). The Customs Post, China's first government-run post office, opened to the public and began issuing postage stamps in 1878. This office was part of the Imperial Maritime Customs Service , led by Irishman Robert Hart . By 1882, the Customs Post had offices in twelve Treaty Ports : Shanghai , Amoy , Chefoo , Chinkiang , Chungking , Foochow , Hankow , Ichang , Kewkiang , Nanking , Weihaiwei , and Wuhu . Local offices had postmarking equipment so mail
1482-652: Was the first professor of Chinese at Cambridge University . Born in London , he was the elder son of Colonel Thomas Wade, CB, of the Black Watch and Anne Smythe (daughter of William Smythe) of Barbavilla , County Westmeath , Ireland. He was educated at the Cape, in Mauritius, at Harrow and at Trinity College, Cambridge . In 1838, his father purchased for him a commission in the 81st Foot . Exchanging (1839) into
1521-427: Was used for newly created offices. Existing post offices retained their romanizations. Critics described the Ministry's standard, now called Old National Pronunciation , as a mishmash of dialects, bookish, and reminiscent of previous dynasties. While drawing phonetic features from Beijing dialect, many phonological features of Southern Mandarin had been retained. In December 1921, Henri Picard-Destelan , co-director of
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