Yale Romanization

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Yale Romanization refers to four transcription systems developed at Yale University for the East Asian languages standard Chinese , Cantonese , Korean and Japanese .

The four phonetic transcriptions are separate language-related systems. A letter can stand for different sounds depending on the language being transcribed. Some of the Yale transcription systems were also used in the United States for teaching East Asian languages ​​at schools and universities, but are now rarely used for Chinese (both standard Chinese and Cantonese) and Korean. For example, the standardized transliteration Hanyu Pinyin , used in the People's Republic of China , has established itself for Chinese lessons ( standard Chinese) .

Standard Chinese

Mandarin Yale was developed during World War II with the intention of facilitating communications between US military personnel and allied Chinese forces. Instead of adopting the Wade-Giles transliteration system that was in use at the time , it was preferred to introduce a new system that would further meet the needs of English-speaking readers.

Problems which arose when using the Wade-Giles system should be avoided. For example, the "breath mark" (in the form of an apostrophe) was dispensed with, which is used to distinguish between the sounds [ tɕ ] and [ tɕʰ ]. In Wade-Giles the first sound is reproduced with chi , the second with ch'i . In the Yale romanization, however, ji and chi are written.

The advantage of the Yale system over pinyin is that it uses Latin letters and combinations of letters in a way that is closer to the pronunciation assumed by an English-speaking reader. For example, in Yale ch stands for both [ tʂʰ ] and [ tɕʰ ], in Pinyin, however, ch or q . For xi in Pinyin, Yale is written syi and for zhi in Pinyin, jr is written in Yale.

Japanese

Japanese Yale is a less well-known alternative name for the JSL system, modified or further developed from the Japanese Kunrei system by the American linguist Eleanor Jorden at Yale University in the late 1980s. The name of the Umschriftsystems was for the location or name of the 1987 published in Yale Book of Eleanor Jorden J apanese: The S poken L anguage named.

Cantonese

In contrast to Yale-Mandarin , the Yale Romanization of the Cantonese Yale-Cantonese for Cantonese is still widespread. Since Chinese characters usually correspond to a syllable , they can be transcribed into Latin script as a combination of initial and final with marking of the tone with diacritical marks or numbers.

Korean

Korean Yale was also developed by Samuel Elmo Martin at Yale University and is still used today. However, it is increasingly being supplanted in official use in South Korea and in language teaching by the McCune-Reischauer- based Revised Romanization , which was developed by the National Academy of the Korean Language and published by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in 2000.

See also

Web links

literature

  • Samuel E. Martin: Yale Romanization. A Reference Grammar of Korean, 1st edition, Rutland and Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Publishing, 1992, pp. 8 ff. ISBN 0-8048-1887-8 .