Romanization of Tea Phrases · Tea Epicure

Surprisingly little is understood all through the tea commerce by way of the romanization of tea phrases. This to me is troubling because of confused tea distributors result in confused tea buyers. On account of the Chinese language language have contributed the vast majority of tea info to the world, quite a lot of the romanization factors embody Stylish Regular Chinese language language, though I’ll contact on Korean and Japanese as properly.

You’ll need to understand the excellence between transliteration and translation. You’ll need to understand the excellence between transliteration and translation. Transliteration tells us the best way to say the other language’s phrase using our private writing system. Translation offers us a phrase in our private language that means the equivalent issue as the other language’s phrase.

Most non-English origin phrases used throughout the tea commerce proper now had been romanized in one amongst 3 methods:

1. That they had been accurately romanized by means of a standard romanization system
2. That they had been romanized using older, non-standard romanization methods
3. That they had been haphazardly transliterated by retailers sooner than romanization methods had been in place, often from native dialects

Chinese language language, Japanese and Korean are languages made up of characters that signify a mix of ideas and spoken syllables, and we romanize these languages by expressing the spoken syllables with the Roman alphabet (our ABCs). Let’s take 茶 as an example, the Chinese language language and Japanese character that interprets to tea in English: that translation simply is not an appropriate transliteration! The overwhelming majority of Asian cultures do not pronounce the phrase meaning; the Mandarin pronunciation of 茶 throughout the Roman alphabet is certainly cha.

The place then did the phrase tea come from? You could possibly uncover {{that a}} bunch of languages have phrases for 茶 that sound like cha and a bunch of languages have phrases for 茶 that sound like tea. That is because of there are quite a lot of dialects of Chinese language language; te is the pronunciation of cha in Southern Fujian’s Amoy dialect. It is believed that early Dutch and English tea retailers wrote down what they heard of their very personal language whereas shopping for and promoting in that space, giving us tea. So 茶 interprets to tea in English due to unhealthy romanization of a selected dialect to date, regardless that the extensively accepted transliteration is cha.

Most variant spellings you see on tea packages are a outcomes of inconsistent romanization. Even well-known tea producers fail at appropriate romanization, and their errors make it extra sturdy for the everyday shopper to precisely set up teas. Each nation and space has their very personal challenges regarding romanization, though
it might be most powerful with Chinese language language names.

China

The Chinese language language commonplace for romanization is Hanyu Pinyin. Hanyu Pinyin turned the worldwide commonplace for romanization of Stylish Regular Chinese language language in 1982; earlier to 1982, Wade-Giles was the primary strategy of romanization. Although Hanyu Pinyin is the de facto commonplace, there are nonetheless many phrases that had been haphazardly transliterated from native dialects or romanized by means of the Wade-Giles system nonetheless in use proper now.

Taiwan

Hanyu Pinyin turned the nationwide commonplace for romanization of Stylish Regular Chinese language language in Taiwan in 2009. On account of this was a modern alternative, Wade-Giles stays to be very prevalent there.

Japan

Though the Kunrei-shiki romanization methods are taught to schoolchildren proper now, the Modified-Hepburn system stays to be the acknowledged commonplace.

South Korea

Revised Romanization, or RR, is at current probably the most well-liked strategy of romanization present for Korean. The RR method may be sometimes generally known as the MCT method, which stands for Ministry of Custom and Tourism.

A variety of the variance in spelling we see throughout the tea world will likely be attributed to the blended utilization of the Hanyu Pinyin system and the older Wade-Giles system for Chinese language language. Listed beneath are just a few of the frequent phrases the place we nonetheless see loads of Wade-Giles utilization:

Way more confusion arises with the prevalence of haphazard transliterations. One of many essential frequent examples of that’s the phrase “oolong,” which in Hanyu Pinyin is “wulong.” Frequent nonetheless incorrect transliterations harking back to this are unlikely to go away. Listed beneath are one other frequent haphazardly transliterated phrases that are nonetheless prevalent proper now:

Helpful Romanization Devices

There are numerous devices on-line which will allow you collectively together with your romanizations, listed below are some which have helped me to date:

http://www.chinesetools.eu/devices/zhuyin/ (Simplified Chinese language language -> Hanyu Pinyin or Wade-Giles)

http://www.mandarintools.com/pyconverter.html (Hanyu Pinyin -> Wade-Giles)

http://babelcarp.org (Chinese language language Tea Time interval Lexicon)

http://www.lexilogos.com/keyboard/korean_conversion.htm (Korean -> RR)

http://nihongo.j-talk.com/ (Japanese -> Modernized Hepburn)