#also most of the mandarin speaking people around me speak in a taiwanese dialect so that's what i'm used to

[iiasha-archived]

hii^^ i want to say i understand needing to practice chinese!! i need to practice more too ㅠㅠ it makes me feel better to know other people have some difficulty

yeaaaaaaaaaaa for me its hard because idk where to start? like i’ve tried language apps but i can never gauge where i’m actually supposed to be... like i know way more than a beginner but then i also just don’t know some things that are supposed to be common lmao?

or i’ll know the more “slang/casual” way of saying something, and there’s a lot of phrases i know verbally but have no idea what the chinese characters are/how the pinyin for them is written (which is why i wish there was more support for bopomofo bc i can reason that out much better than pinyin) so it’s even more like auuuuuuuuuughhhhh you know 😭😭😭

[vulpes-incendium]

Question 0-0 I’m writing a historical fic (Ming dynasty to opium wars if that helps) with both HK and Macau in it (also has the rest of the gang), should I use the official Hong Kong Cantonese romanization of HK’s name or not because idk if the official Hong Kong romanization existed at that point, if not, how should I write his name? (I feel like you’re the name authority now lol so that’s why I’m asking 😆)

Romanisation of Cantonese in HK (+ other Chinese speaking countries)

Ahhh this is quite a complicated question. I'll try my best 🙈🙈🙈 Remember, I’m not a linguist nor a historian, these are only information I researched and based on my own knowledge. I could answer you right away that it’s safest to stick to the HK system for HK’s name now, but since romanisation has something to do with history, I thought this bit of insight would interest you and some others as well?

Basic facts

The standard English romanisation of Cantonese the HK government uses was introduced in late 1800s to early 1900s after HK was colonised and Hanyu Pinyin (Mandarin pinyin) in the 1950s after the PRC established, both did not exist back in the period you mentioned. So even Yao might not be Yao back then! (but I’ll talk about that later)

Also, the language has evolved a lot since then, plus there are also many other dialects (that are not mutually intelligible with Cantonese or Mandarin), this could play a role in it too!

Cantonese

How the system worked in Hong Kong 🇭🇰

So I only heard this from my parents and grandparents! Back then (30s - 50s) people just went to the registration office and said their names in Cantonese, the officers (mostly British I think) would hear it and translate it on the spot. I have yet found an official romanisation guide by the HK government (unlike Macau), but I believe with time, they kind of built up a system? HKers are used to the romanisation and would just know how to romanise names. There are some cases with names romanised not in the usual way, like 林 is usually Lam (99% of the time), but there are some romanised as Lamb, could be because of the mistakes made by some officers or they weren’t too used to the system, it does happen sometimes, but they are rare.

The government probably has a system for the street names, but it’s also a mess, they don’t necessarily reflect the pronunciation well, one obvious example would be “G” to “K” like the “K” in Hong Kong, it’s pronounced more like “Gong” in Cantonese, name romanisation has this problem too, but that’s another story.

Pre-colonial Hong Kong

Hong Kong was of course in the Canton/Guangdong region back then, there isn’t really like a border or anything like now. As the name hinted, the region speaks Cantonese. I couldn’t find that much information on the people living in HK, but one of the most famous people active around the HK area was 張保仔 Cheung Po Tsai, a pirate, active in the late 1700s. He wasn’t born in the area that is now known as Hong Kong, but HK was the area where pirates were active, because it’s surrounded by the sea. His name is romanised using the HK romanisation system, but I believe this is how the HK government preserves history. Mind you, this is the modern HK romanisation, his name might not be romanised like that back then, but I couldn’t find further info.

I believe only some people’s names were romanised in Cantonese because (Nanjing) Mandarin was the language the government used (which I heard was quite different from the Beijing dialect, aka modern Mandarin). There were only a few exceptions to have their names romanised in their native dialects (Cantonese, Hokkien, etc) to highlight their heritage/ importance to the region.

Hong Kong before the colonial period was very small and there weren’t a lot of people living there, most of our ancestors fled China for HK due to wars or political instability, but that was mostly after the Brits took power. So I’d say, for the sake of simplicity and also due to lack of information, using the HK system now would be fine, which is Wong Ka Lung or Lee Siu Chun, it also shows his identity (from HK) and his language. See this post for more info on his name.

Macau 🇲🇴

I have to also mention that even among Cantonese, the romanisation could be different too! Macau’s system is similar to HK’s but not 100% the same, this is because their system is based on Portugese pronunciation. Some common differences are Leong instead of Leung in HK or Ao instead of Au in HK. I’m not quite sure when they started using the system, but the document I found from the Macau government in 1985 showed they had a system for quite a while.

My bet for Macau is that his name was probably already romanised based on the Portugese system at that time, he’d probably also be given a Portugese name for the ease of communicating with the Europeans too. I have 2 names for Macau: 王濠鏡 Wong Hou Keang, popular among the Chinese fans which is based on one of Macau’s old names (I romanised his name wrong in my previous post using the HK system) and 王嘉麟 Wong Ka Lon, suggested by a HK fan, it shows his relationship with HK sharing the word 嘉 (many parents give siblings a sharing name). I use Vicente or Marco as his Portugese name. I can do a detailed post on this later.

Mandarin

Pre-PRC China (pre-1949)

Before the PRC was established (and Mandarin pinyin was introduced), I believe each country had their own method of romanisation for Chinese (all different dialects), probably catered to  their own speakers. Wikipedia said Nanjing dialect-based romanisation systems are more commonly used until the late 19th century, but I can’t really confirm that, since I don’t speak the dialect and I couldn’t find much info on that. But it could make sense, Nanjing was once the capital and a very important city, I could see why that would be the case.

If you look at this book from 1742, you can see the romanisation is very different from what we are used to, it's a French book so it’s based on French pronunciation, on top of the fact that the language back then was a bit different than nowadays (both French and Mandarin).

A notable example would be Confucius. It’s the latinised from 孔夫子 (Kǒng Fūzǐ in Mandarin pinyin) in the late 16th centuries by the early Jesuit missionaries in China, which consisted of mainly Italians, but also Portugese and Spanish I believe. Nowadays, of course his name wouldn’t be romanised like that, but this name was made popular by them based on Italian/Latin I think. In theory, his name would probably be based on the Nanjing-dialect, which I have no clue of, it does sound like Beijing Mandarin though.

Wade-Giles I believe was the most used romanisation system pre-pinyin. It was created in the 19th century and based on the Beijing-dialect. This may not be obvious if you look at important people in the modern (mainland) Chinese history because the Chinese government has probably changed the records to make the status of Mandarin pinyin more important (eg. Peking to Beijing). However, you can still find some hints in Chinese living abroad or non-mainland Chinese (most prominent example would be the Taiwanese).

Michael Shen Fu-Tsung was one of the first Chinese people who moved to Europe (late 1600s, from Nanjing/Nanking), he was using his Portugese name Michel Alfonso most of the time when he was in Europe, but his Chinese name was romanised using the Wade-Giles system later, could be because his life was more well-known in the west than in the east, so when Wade-Giles became popular, the European used the system when they refer him by his Chinese name?

All in all, China’s name would probably be romanised differently in each period by different countries. Not sure about Nanjing-Mandarin, but in Beijing Mandarin, his name 王耀 would be romanised as Wang Yao in both Mandarin pinyin and Wade-Giles luckily.

Taiwan 🇹🇼

Taiwan still used Wade-Giles until the government started encouraging the people to use Mandarin pinyin in 2009. I would say if you’re using 林曉梅 (Lin Xiao Mei), Lin Hsiao Mei would be more accurate to the time, for 林乙玲 (Lin Yi Ling) it’s Lin I Ling according to this. For Wade-Giles, names were usually hyphanated too I think so that the westerners know they have to use both words to refer to a person’s name, so Lin Hsiao-mei or Lin I-ling? (It’s not important, I just wanna mention my observation)

Taiwan also has another official language, which is Taiwanese (Hokkien). Now I don’t speak Taiwanese, but it’s also an important representation of the culture too and some people’s names were romanised from their own dialects, which leads me to my next point...

Other dialects

Some names were romanised from their own dialects, an example would be Koxinga from 國姓爺, or 鄭成功 (Zhèng Chénggōng in Mandarin pinyin). It’s the Dutch romanisation of Hokkien. From his name, you can probably tell why his name was romanised this way. He was of Hokkien and Japanese descent and he was most active in Taiwan (well, the sea regions, his family were pirates), hence he had most contact with the Dutch (he eventually replaced Dutch Formosa with Kingdom of Tungning). His name was also romanised differently, either from Beijing Mandarin or based on other languages, but I supposed he was most well-known by Koxinga.

Most of the Chinese immigrants in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Phillipines and Myanmar are of Hokkien (Hoklo) descent. I believe this is why many Chinese names are romanised differently in these countries, say the surname 陳 is usually Tan in Malaysia because it is romanised from Hokkien or Teochew (it’s Chan in Cantonese and Chen in Mandarin). This could theoretically happen in HK too, but most people wanted to integrate into the community and the majority of HKers speak Cantonese (eg. my grandparents were Shanghaiese but their names were in Cantonese).

Cantonese in Pre-PRC mainland China

This is just an extra piece of information if you’re interested, it’s about Cantonese in mainland China after British Hong Kong was established (mid-late 1800s), which is probably not your subject of interest, but maybe if someone wants to do an oc, or idk, just want to know in general? Long story short, there’s still not really an offical way to romanise names, but in my opinion, you can tell someone’s story/background from how their names were romanised.

Cantonese like 康有爲 Kang Youwei and 梁啓超 Liang Qichao were romanised like that (pinyin) because they worked at the Chinese government and I think the Chinese government now romanised them like that? Their names were probably not like that back then, not sure.

Another example would be 孫逸仙 Sun Yat-sen. He was Cantonese, born and was mostly active in the Canton(Guangdong) region. He’s more well-known as 孫中山 in Chinese (he had a lot of names), but he mostly went by Sun Yat-sen when he’s with westerners since he studied in HK. It looks a bit different than modern HK romanisation (it would be Suen Yat Sin I think), but I believe it was because that was the time the HK government just started developing the system, and as I’ve mentioned, there are some exceptions when romanising names in HK.

And then we have Chiang Kai-shek, who was not Cantonese (he spoke Wu, another Chinese dialect) but his name was romanised from Cantonese, probably because of the KMT activities he participated in were in Canton/Guangdong? He did change his name and the romanisation for his political career (he went through a lot of names too, I don’t speak Wu unfortunately to tell you whether one of his names were romanised from Wu, but some were from Mandarin using Wade-Giles). His name looks like it’s romanised using the HK system to me, it could really be that the Cantonese in the Mainland adopting the system when it was developing and got popularised in HK.

Cantonese might not be the main language used by the Chinese government (even though it almost became the official language of modern China), but since Canton/Guangdong was an important trading spot (on top of HK and Macau), many foreigners would learn Cantonese too.

Conclusion

Romanisation is to aid their own countries, it would be catered to their own languages, Turkish doesn’t have the letter Q, or W is pronounced V in German, Yao’s name in German could be “Jau” if the Germans were to romanise his name to cater their own people. The influence of the countries contributes a lot in it too. As you can see there are many names romanised from Dutch, because the Netherlands was a strong power, so I guess that’s why sometimes the Dutch romanisation would be more used? The HK romanisation and Wade-Giles got so popular probably because the British Empire was so strong back then or that English became an international language. And of course there is history too. Taiwan’s old name, Formosa, means beautiful in Portugese, because the Portugese were the first Europeans to discover Taiwan.

There are still so many different romanisation systems nowadays, one can tell where you’re from or where your root is just by seeing your romanised name. Say the surname 鄭, it’s romanised as Cheng in HK and Taiwan (different languages though), Cheang in Macau, Zheng in China and Tay or Tee in Malaysia and Singapore (Trịnh and Jung/Jeong would be the equivalent of the name in Vietnamese and Korean respectively) and they are all based on different languages, romanising different languages/dialects based on different languages.

Again, I’m not a linguist nor a historian so I might not be 100% correct! Please correct me if I got any of these wrong! Sorry for turning this into an essay lol, I really really appreciate your effort on making your fic historically accurate! Feel free to ask me more, I’m glad to help!

[dowoonscookies]

:oo you listen to cmusic!! can you recommend some artists? tyy

hey broooo you came to the right person (jkjkjk but I do have some recs so hold on real tight) though beware a lot of the stuff I’ve been hearing recently have all just sounded the same or overall not very impressive, so if you find anything that’s interesting, feel free to share :)

Ok to start off I think when it comes to mandopop no one can forget The King of mandopop aka Jay Chou. He basically invented rnb and pro piano skillz (I’m joking in case people still take me seriously). If you listen to his second album, or even his first, both of which were released around 2000, it was like a really new sound for people back then. I grew up listening to this dude no joke. 夜曲 is a personally fave lol. And one thing I really love is that for most of the albums there would be at least one song that obviously sounds more traditional(?) and uses traditional instruments in the track. I’m not sure if he’s purposely making sure to fit those in but I really like those songs.

Stephanie Sun is a Singaporean singer who’s also pretty famous I think. Her song 天黑黑 is like the best combination of nostalgia and cpop lol. Honestly her voice is so calming ;w;

Speaking of Singaporean singers you can’t forget JJ Lin. He has some songs that are like Classics but I personally thought his most recent experimental album was realllly nice. It was obvious how much work he put into it, and how he was trying to challenge himself. Also, if you’re a fan of cnblue, he did a collab with yonghwa once.

Also don’t forget the queen herself Jolin Tsai. I remember when she performed at the MAMA awards back in 2015 everyone was so shook lol and they didn’t even know who she was. Legit an lgbt icon. Queen of the gays

李榮浩 (li ronghao). GOD I love his stuff a lot for some reason. Idk it just sounds great. I love. 10/10 would recommend. I didn’t really like it at first but it grew on me. Just wait for it to grow on you

Mayday is like the most popular band probably. Poor 阿信 can’t actually really sing anymore but they will always be loved no matter what. Their songs are like your best friend cheering you on in life. You can do it. Life is hard but you can chase your dreams. It’s okay to suffer. It’s okay to start over. That kind of vibe.

Speaking of bands 蘇打綠(sodageeen) is a popular indie band. Day6 actually covered one of their most popular songs in their Taiwan debut showcase and it honestly saved my soul.

And yeah the only band I’ve ever seen live (and not at a concert but at the presidential inauguration sigh) is 滅火器(Fire EX). They sing in Taiwanese, and were like musical icons for the whole sunflower movement thing a few years back. Icons of freedom and justice yay

Bii is pretty popular nowadays I think, even my dad was watching a news segment about him lol. His music… pretty generic pop/ballad sound because that’s the image he’s selling I guess. People seem to be there for his face just as much as his voice. I actually have a lot to say about him only because I think he would fit so much better singing classier styles, more jazz and rnb, rather than whatever he’s doing now. Funky boy (thank god for Ian Chen) was probably the closest he’s gotten to a new style so far

Andrew Tan has a voice that I personally really like. His songs are kind of ehhhh but I’m only here for his voice so…

G.E.M also has a nice voice. I honestly haven’t heard that many songs by her, but you can check her out

Eli Hsieh is a fairly new artist that I really like. Only one album so far, but i personally think it’s Quality Stuff, and showcases different styles. 濕了分寸 sounds so dark but I love it.

I only found out about him recently OTL, but 盧廣仲 (Crowd Lu(?)) is another singer-songwriter that’s great. Sings about eating breakfast. Makes me hungry everytime.

There’s also like those older singers that my parents/grandparents listen to, but idk if you’re into that. I actually saw 潘越雲 live once lol. Also songs that are in Taiwanese to me usually tend to sound kind of the same as well buuuut some of them are great.

That’s all about it that I can think of right now. Not sure if you’ll like any of it lol, and I don’t think I’ve listened to THAT much cpop or anything, and basically everyone that I mentioned above mainly sings using mandarin/taiwanese, and there’s like 10000 other dialects so it’s not really representative I guess.

I hope this gets you started, and maybe you found it at least a bit helpful. I’m always here if you need any specific song recs. Feel free to share any other artists that you find because I can’t seem to find any recently that don’t sound the same as everyone else OTL sorry if this was longer than you expected I tend to rant a bit…

EDIT: i forgot something else. the people with the best voices. most of them are singer-songwriters. 陳建年’s 海洋 is an all-time favorite of mine, and 王宏恩’s 月光 as well

another edit: also check out Suming 舒米恩