WI: China invades Taiwan in the 60's with American neutrality?

Interesting and informative post, Tony. I never knew that cross-strait relations were that varied throughout the years. The dynamic in teh 70s seems particularly interesting.

I agree.

Look, I don't even know why this is a political problem. Traditional characters, yeah, I support those, but Wide-Giles simply sucks.

The problem with Wade-Giles is not that is just simply sucks (I'm not defending it here), but because it is misused, primarily by leaving out aspiration, which W-G marks with an apostrophe <'>. It's even more so because the actual "W-G" one sees is really Postal romanization, which let's be honest is very bad very ugly (tempted not to work in the whole "very erotic very violent" meme from years ago), and another thing we can blame the Qing for. If there's one W-G modification that should have been used, it's to replace the apostrophe with an <h>, like in POJ and in the Vietnamese alphabet (though <ph> and <kh> were historical as they were originally aspirate voiceless but are now /f/ and /x/), as well as the romanization of similar consonants in Hindi, other Indo-Aryan languages, and other languages of SE Asia. So in that case:

They are the single worst thing about reading old history books. They turn "Q", "Zh" and "J" all into "Ch" which is the most stupid and confusing thing in existence.

Maintaining the apostrophe or replacing it with an <h> would solve that problem, so <ch> and <ch'/chh> would be Pinyin's <zh> and <ch>, where adding a palatalizing <i> to it - resulting in <chi> and <ch'i/chhi> being equivalent to Pinyin's <j> and <q>. (Oh, and whilst we're at it, we can regularize it so that we have <sh> as such in both systems but have <shi> replace W-G <hs> and thus be equivalent to <x> in Pinyin.)

"Z" turns into "Ts" but "C" is also "Ts".

Again, the original form of W-G separates them into <ts> and <ts'/tsh>, which before /ɨ/ is respelled to <tz> and <tz'/tzh>. Gwoyeu Romatzyh avoids this by respelling both as <tz> and <ts>, respectively, but it loses a bit of symmetry. A possible modification here would be to retain Pinyin <c> for W-G <ts'/tsh> but retain W-G <ts>. To reflect the symmetry of the original W-G system, /i/ and /ɨ/ would remain separate and not merged (unlike Pinyin), but use <i> for /i/ and <y> for /ɨ/ (like in a lot of Slavic languages with the latter phoneme), so <tzû> and <tz'û/tzhû> become <tsy> and <cy> and <tsi> and <ts'i/tshi> become <tsi> and <ci>. (This could also work with <ch, chh> where <chi, chhi> occur before /i/, /y/ (W-G <ü>) or /j/ and <ch, chh> occur before <y> and other vowels.)

"T/D", "K/G", and "P/B" are only differentiated with apostrophes that every writer who doesn't actually know Mandarin forgets to use.

True, which is why I stated that the apostrophe should be replaced with an <h>.

Oh and the Taiwanese can't even get their own system right, they are always adding in things like extra vowels (like Soong instead of Song) or whatnot for some reason.

Most of those extra Romanizations are also not W-G, but are idiosyncratic. In some cases, especially with Mainlanders, it's actually purporting to represent GR (which I am assuming is the case for James Soong, where the double <o> represents Tone 3, but is inaccurate as the surname is actually Tone 4, so should really be <Sonq>). Another possibility is that in Pe̍h-ōe-jī there are two vowels written with the <o> letter: <o> itself, which is a schwa in Southern Taiwan but a full-blown /o/ (not /ow/, as in wont in both English and Mandarin) in Northern Taiwan (including Taipei); and <o͘ >, which represents an open o sound /ɔ/ akin to English <aw> in <law>, German short <o>, or the <o> in Mandarin <wǒ>. However, as not too many computers or typewriters have the additional letter <o͘ >, sometimes it is represented as <oo> instead (indeed, this is what the ROC Ministry of Education does with its Tâi-lô system). Though in the case of the vowels, Tongyong Pinyin's use of fully writing out the syllables /ej/ and /əw/ as <ei> and <ou> in some areas unlike the Hanyu Pinyin/W-G contracted forms <u>, <ui> is something worth considering.

Finally, the Mandarin spoken on Taiwan and in the mainland are the same language. Seeing things like "Diayudao/Tiaoyutai/Senkaku" just piss me off. Should we start adding in Erhua as well to make the Northerners happy? Don't go about messing up the Mandarin language just because of political BS.

Technically, I agree with you there, even if the Guoyu in Taiwan is of a somewhat older state than the Standard Chinese on the Mainland and is also partially reflective of a Taiwanese Hokkien substratum. (However, I am curious as to how Taiwanese Mandarin would handle erhua, seeing as the retroflex approximant is absent from Taiwanese Hokkien, as are retroflex sounds in general.)
 
Ha ha, one of my friends talks like that and we southerners all give him a hard time because of it. It's gotten to the point that whenever he ends an English sentence with a word that is supposed to end in "er", I always give him a strange look and make a quip about that Beijing accent.

Man...you do not want to hear some of the things my cousins and I say about Southern speech. Or southerners in general. ;) It's mostly mindless fun though, seeing that our grandmother is from rural Guangdong and a bunch of her family ended up in HK.
I feel that Erhua in small amounts is something of a poetic, cultured twist, characteristic of the capital, but I totally understand why others would find it annoying to no end. Sometimes I add 兒 to my essays for additional characters, then the teacher gets rid of them as being too colloquial.

The problem with Wade-Giles is not that is just simply sucks (I'm not defending it here), but because it is misused, primarily by leaving out aspiration, which W-G marks with an apostrophe <'>. It's even more so because the actual "W-G" one sees is really Postal romanization, which let's be honest is very bad very ugly (tempted not to work in the whole "very erotic very violent" meme from years ago), and another thing we can blame the Qing for. If there's one W-G modification that should have been used, it's to replace the apostrophe with an <h>, like in POJ and in the Vietnamese alphabet (though <ph> and <kh> were historical as they were originally aspirate voiceless but are now /f/ and /x/), as well as the romanization of similar consonants in Hindi, other Indo-Aryan languages, and other languages of SE Asia. So in that case:



Maintaining the apostrophe or replacing it with an <h> would solve that problem, so <ch> and <ch'/chh> would be Pinyin's <zh> and <ch>, where adding a palatalizing <i> to it - resulting in <chi> and <ch'i/chhi> being equivalent to Pinyin's <j> and <q>. (Oh, and whilst we're at it, we can regularize it so that we have <sh> as such in both systems but have <shi> replace W-G <hs> and thus be equivalent to <x> in Pinyin.)
Now that's all well and good, but why write "Chh" when "Q" works just as well? It also aids recognition. An apostrophe takes longer to notice than a whole different letter.

Again, the original form of W-G separates them into <ts> and <ts'/tsh>, which before /ɨ/ is respelled to <tz> and <tz'/tzh>. Gwoyeu Romatzyh avoids this by respelling both as <tz> and <ts>, respectively, but it loses a bit of symmetry. A possible modification here would be to retain Pinyin <c> for W-G <ts'/tsh> but retain W-G <ts>. To reflect the symmetry of the original W-G system, /i/ and /ɨ/ would remain separate and not merged (unlike Pinyin), but use <i> for /i/ and <y> for /ɨ/ (like in a lot of Slavic languages with the latter phoneme), so <tzû> and <tz'û/tzhû> become <tsy> and <cy> and <tsi> and <ts'i/tshi> become <tsi> and <ci>. (This could also work with <ch, chh> where <chi, chhi> occur before /i/, /y/ (W-G <ü>) or /j/ and <ch, chh> occur before <y> and other vowels.)
Again, why add extra letters? In language-instruction books for instance you'd have a bunch of trouble trying to fit W-G on top of each character whereas for the most part Pinyin can be neatly fit onto the original script (except in cases like Shuang or Xiang, but the probable shortness of adjacent renditions gives you the space needed to make it fit right). This is a transliteration system for Mandarin, not the IPA.

True, which is why I stated that the apostrophe should be replaced with an <h>.
It's better but still confusing to anyone whose native language is English or most other Occidental languages and not as direct as simply using "d" and "g".

Most of those extra Romanizations are also not W-G, but are idiosyncratic. In some cases, especially with Mainlanders, it's actually purporting to represent GR (which I am assuming is the case for James Soong, where the double <o> represents Tone 3, but is inaccurate as the surname is actually Tone 4, so should really be <Sonq>). Another possibility is that in Pe̍h-ōe-jī there are two vowels written with the <o> letter: <o> itself, which is a schwa in Southern Taiwan but a full-blown /o/ (not /ow/, as in wont in both English and Mandarin) in Northern Taiwan (including Taipei); and <o͘ >, which represents an open o sound /ɔ/ akin to English <aw> in <law>, German short <o>, or the <o> in Mandarin <wǒ>. However, as not too many computers or typewriters have the additional letter <o͘ >, sometimes it is represented as <oo> instead (indeed, this is what the ROC Ministry of Education does with its Tâi-lô system). Though in the case of the vowels, Tongyong Pinyin's use of fully writing out the syllables /ej/ and /əw/ as <ei> and <ou> in some areas unlike the Hanyu Pinyin/W-G contracted forms <u>, <ui> is something worth considering.
Pinyin has none of these problems. "uo" and "o" are understood to be open, whereas "ou" is always closed. No need for special markings either. And as you point out, the Taiwanese themselves do it wrong a lot of time time.

Technically, I agree with you there, even if the Guoyu in Taiwan is of a somewhat older state than the Standard Chinese on the Mainland and is also partially reflective of a Taiwanese Hokkien substratum. (However, I am curious as to how Taiwanese Mandarin would handle erhua, seeing as the retroflex approximant is absent from Taiwanese Hokkien, as are retroflex sounds in general.)
Pinyin does not actually handle Erhua too well IMO. "本兒" is written
"ben er" in Pinyin when it's really just "ber". But you could say that's just Pinyin carrying the "mistake" over from the characters themselves.
The Guoyu on Taiwan has some differences from Putonghua in the PRC, but I'm pretty sure WG doesn't represent their special variant any better than Pinyin does.

Even as someone who despises the Communist regime and its crimes to no end, I have no reservations with upholding Pinyin as a matter of practical, general representation of Mandarin phonetics.
 
Even as someone who despises the Communist regime and its crimes to no end, I have no reservations with upholding Pinyin as a matter of practical, general representation of Mandarin phonetics.

Does make it easier for us poor wai.guo.ren trying to learn it :eek:

What's Erhua? Is it that penchant Beijing people have for adding an "er" sound to the end of practically everything?

"Wo yo yi dian diar"

"Ni shuo she mer?"

"Ni zhai ner?"

Like that?


I always get called up on having a "Northern" accent. We are taught to pronounce that very strong "rrr" sound. I'm going to be honest, this was one of the most difficult sounds to wrap my tongue around. Especially coming from New Zealand where "r" sounds are quite soft or in some cases dropped.
 
Now that's all well and good, but why write "Chh" when "Q" works just as well? It also aids recognition. An apostrophe takes longer to notice than a whole different letter.

I'm thinking both Indo-Aryan (which have that, along with <Jh/jh> as its breathy-voiced equivalent) and, closer to home, the Pe̍h-ōe-jī orthography for Taiwanese Hokkien (which is also used, in a modified form by adding a dedicated letter for /ɨ/, for Hakka), which uses that for an aspirate /ts/ with a palatal equivalent like <q> that's an allophone before /i/. If you're a Taiwanese Hokkien speaker who already knows what <chh> represents in POJ, then it makes it easier to pick up Mandarin as it already uses familiar cues. I also want to retain phonetic information that can be discarded with the apostrophe (like what Postal romanization does) and make W-G more systemic - because as goes as it is, W-G has a lot of idiosyncracies and some areas where it is inconsistent (like <hs> where a simple <sh> + <i> would work).

Again, why add extra letters? In language-instruction books for instance you'd have a bunch of trouble trying to fit W-G on top of each character whereas for the most part Pinyin can be neatly fit onto the original script (except in cases like Shuang or Xiang, but the probable shortness of adjacent renditions gives you the space needed to make it fit right). This is a transliteration system for Mandarin, not the IPA.

Believe it or not, the <i>/<y> alternation comes from Gwoyeu Romatzyh, and it's one of the few features of GR that I like. One problem with Hanyu Pinyin is that both /i/ and /ɨ/ are mapped to <i> - which is all fine and good if you already know the phonetic data, but it can lead to inconsistent pronunciations since both are separate phonemes and not simple allophones like what Pinyin assumes. In many languages and Romanizations, <y> is used for /ɨ/, and it's basically reusing an existing letter. <C> as used in Pinyin is also familiar, so it's no big shock, but also because I find <tz> to be both ugly and because I assume Greek (which uses <tz> for /dz/). As for tone marks - one could use the same ones as Pinyin.

And I'm also thinking this way because as used Pinyin is dual-purpose - it can be used to transliterate characters, and it can also be used on its own for practical writing, especially if one doesn't have access to the characters on computers as well as the IMEs for them.

It's better but still confusing to anyone whose native language is English or most other Occidental languages and not as direct as simply using "d" and "g".

The problem with your suggestion is that there are people who speak Chinese regionalects - not to mention South East Asian languages - that have voiced consonants in addition to voiceless aspirated and unaspirated consonants, so Pinyin <b, d, g> is going to get mispronounced as voiced (as it is already amongst gaijin like me). So using <p, t, k; ph, th, kh> frees up space for those Chinese regionalects who use voiced consonants to use <b, d, g>. (This is also part of the logic of Simplified Wade, which also uses tonal spelling which I disapprove of.) For English-speakers especially, that shouldn't be a problem as the aspirate voiceless consonants already exist in our inventory, but as allophones of /p/, /t/, /k/, so it shouldn't be that big of a leap.

Pinyin has none of these problems. "uo" and "o" are understood to be open, whereas "ou" is always closed. No need for special markings either. And as you point out, the Taiwanese themselves do it wrong a lot of time time.

Except the contracted forms, which Tongyong Pinyin represents in full and should be considered for inclusion. If I see <dui> I'm going to assume /dwi/, not /dwej/ unless it's fully written out as such. Most standardized Romanizations of Chinese regionalects try to write out their phonemes in full (once again POJ, but even Jyutping for Cantonese).

Pinyin does not actually handle Erhua too well IMO. "本兒" is written
"ben er" in Pinyin when it's really just "ber". But you could say that's just Pinyin carrying the "mistake" over from the characters themselves.

True.

The Guoyu on Taiwan has some differences from Putonghua in the PRC, but I'm pretty sure WG doesn't represent their special variant any better than Pinyin does.

True, that. :eek: That's why there's POJ for a fallback. ;):p

Even as someone who despises the Communist regime and its crimes to no end, I have no reservations with upholding Pinyin as a matter of practical, general representation of Mandarin phonetics.

Understandable - I use Pinyin at times - but it would have been just as good to improve on W-G. Which is what the ROC should have done instead of introducing a system as complex as Gwoyeu Romatzyh and perpetuating Postal romanization. By doing so, everyone thus assumes that W-G = Postal romanization, when it's not true. So an improved version of W-G would have been just as good as Pinyin.
 
If they ever went insane enough to try it, the mainland Chinese would be caroling for* a devastating foreign intervention. Maoist China is not the China of today - some pretty hefty asskicking would ensue. And, hopefully, said asskicking of the PRC would be quick enough to not allow anyone to think of lobbing nukes at each other right away. Plus, there's the lack of a proper Chinese invasion navy and landing forces in that era, as several board members have already pointed out.

If such a foolhardy attempt at invasion was ever carried out, expect the diplomatic relations of the PRC with other countries - particularly Taiwan, the US and India - to be a billion times worse than in OTL. No opening up in the 70s, no Nixon and others visiting China, and the PRC could probably even end up as the biggest pariah state in the world, about as trusted as North Korea or Hoxha's Albania.


* (It's how we say "asking for it" over here.)
 
No opening up in the 70s, no Nixon and others visiting China, and the PRC could probably even end up as the biggest pariah state in the world, about as trusted as North Korea or Hoxha's Albania.
Albania's relations with China went south after Nixon's visit to Beijing, so they would probably still be allied. :D
 
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