Obscure Or Obvious?

[debka_notion]

Do you know what a doppelganger is? More accurately, how troubled should I be that many of my rabbinical school classmates a. don't know what a doppelganger is, and b. try to spell it as two words?

Just a thought from the insane place in my mind that is me trying to avoid exams...

Comments

[cynara-linnaea.livejournal.com]

I've never studied Chinese, but for the raw beginner, Wade-Giles helps you sound like a bit less of a dolt. The average English speaker will have no clue how to pronounce "Qian," but they might be able to make a go of "Ch'ien."

If you have plenty of time, a good dose of stubbornness, and a)someone to explain it to you, or b)a good understanding of IPA, Pinyin is much more precise. It has better diacritics for indicating tonality, and a nearly one-to-one correspondence for both consonants and vowels. Trouble is, there are way more than 5 vowel sounds, and the correspondences are idiosyncratic, and it's crazy-making to memorize all of them. That said, it's the closest we can get without actually learning Chinese.

There are also hefty political implications behind Pinyin and Wade-Giles, worse than behind Hepburn and Kunrei-shiki, if I am not mistaken.

[lordameth.livejournal.com]

There are indeed hefty political implications, as you say. I think it was only relatively recently that Taiwan adopted pinyin, given that it's a system invented by (?) or at least heavily endorsed by the PRC Communist government.

As far as I know, there aren't really any political implications behind Hepburn vs Kunrei... it's more of a linguistic and cultural thing. Hepburn is much better from an English speaker's point of view, as spellings like chi, tsu, and shi much better indicate to an English speaker how these sounds should be pronounced than ti, tu, and si. Kunrei, on the other hand, is preferred from the Japanese point of view, as it more cleanly follows the kana system, spelling out ta chi tsu te to (in Hepburn) as ta ti tu te to, without acknowledging, understanding, or caring one whit how counter-intuitive that is for anyone native to a Romance/Germanic language.