Legge romanization is a
transcriptionTranscription is the conversion into written, typewritten or printed form, of a spoken-language source, as in the proceedings of a court hearing. It can also mean the conversion of a written source into another medium, as by scanning books and making digital versions...
system for Mandarin Chinese, used by the prolific 19th century sinologist
James LeggeJames Legge was a noted Scottish sinologist, a Scottish Congregationalist, representative of the London Missionary Society in Malacca and Hong Kong , and first professor of Chinese at Oxford University...
. It was replaced by the
Wade-GilesWade–Giles , sometimes abbreviated Wade, is a Romanization system for the Mandarin language used in Beijing. It developed from a system produced by Thomas Wade during the mid-19th century, and was given completed form with Herbert Giles' Chinese–English dictionary of 1892.Wade–Giles' was the main...
system, which itself has been mostly supplanted by
PinyinPinyin , or more formally Hanyu Pinyin , is currently the most commonly used romanization system for Standard Mandarin. Hanyu means the Chinese language, and pinyin means "phonetics", or more literally, "spelling sound" or "spelled sound"...
. The Legge system is still to be found in Legge's widely-available translation of the Yijing, and in some derivative works such as
Aleister CrowleyAleister Crowley , born Edward Alexander Crowley, was an English occultist, writer, mountaineer, poet, yogi, and possibly a spy...
's version of the Yijing.
Legge transcription uses the following consonants:
f h hs k kh k kh l m n ng p ph r s sh sz t th w y z z з зh з z
And it uses the following vowels:
a â ă e ê i î o u ui û ü
The vowel letters also occur in various vowel digraphs, including the following:
âi âo âu eh ei ih ui
Features of the Legge system include:
- the use of 'h's to signal consonantal aspiration
In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say tore ...
(so that what Pinyin spells "pi" and Wade-Giles spells "p'i", Legge spells as "phî"),
- the use of the Cyrillic/Fraktur
Fraktur may refer to:* Fraktur , a specific kind of blackletter typefaces* Fraktur , a kind of Pennsylvania German folk art...
letter "з" distinct from "z", and
- the use of italicized consonants distinct from their normal forms.
Comparing words in the Legge system with the same words in Wade-Giles shows that there are often minor but nonsystematic differences, which makes direct correlation of the systems difficult.
NB. Although frequently improperly called a "transliteration", Legge's system is a
transcriptionTranscription is the conversion into written, typewritten or printed form, of a spoken-language source, as in the proceedings of a court hearing. It can also mean the conversion of a written source into another medium, as by scanning books and making digital versions...
of Chinese, as there can be no
transliterationTransliteration is the practice of converting a text from one writing system into another in a systematic way.-Definitions:From an information-theoretical point of view, transliteration is a mapping from one system of writing into another, word by word, or ideally letter by letter...
of Chinese script into any phonetic script, like the
LatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Roman conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe...
(or
EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century,...
)
alphabetAn alphabet is a standardized set of letters basic written symbols or graphemes each of which roughly represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or...
.
Legge romanization is a
transcriptionTranscription is the conversion into written, typewritten or printed form, of a spoken-language source, as in the proceedings of a court hearing. It can also mean the conversion of a written source into another medium, as by scanning books and making digital versions...
system for Mandarin Chinese, used by the prolific 19th century sinologist
James LeggeJames Legge was a noted Scottish sinologist, a Scottish Congregationalist, representative of the London Missionary Society in Malacca and Hong Kong , and first professor of Chinese at Oxford University...
. It was replaced by the
Wade-GilesWade–Giles , sometimes abbreviated Wade, is a Romanization system for the Mandarin language used in Beijing. It developed from a system produced by Thomas Wade during the mid-19th century, and was given completed form with Herbert Giles' Chinese–English dictionary of 1892.Wade–Giles' was the main...
system, which itself has been mostly supplanted by
PinyinPinyin , or more formally Hanyu Pinyin , is currently the most commonly used romanization system for Standard Mandarin. Hanyu means the Chinese language, and pinyin means "phonetics", or more literally, "spelling sound" or "spelled sound"...
. The Legge system is still to be found in Legge's widely-available translation of the Yijing, and in some derivative works such as
Aleister CrowleyAleister Crowley , born Edward Alexander Crowley, was an English occultist, writer, mountaineer, poet, yogi, and possibly a spy...
's version of the Yijing.
Legge transcription uses the following consonants:
f h hs k kh k kh l m n ng p ph r s sh sz t th w y z z з зh з z
And it uses the following vowels:
a â ă e ê i î o u ui û ü
The vowel letters also occur in various vowel digraphs, including the following:
âi âo âu eh ei ih ui
Features of the Legge system include:
- the use of 'h's to signal consonantal aspiration
In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say tore ...
(so that what Pinyin spells "pi" and Wade-Giles spells "p'i", Legge spells as "phî"),
- the use of the Cyrillic/Fraktur
Fraktur may refer to:* Fraktur , a specific kind of blackletter typefaces* Fraktur , a kind of Pennsylvania German folk art...
letter "з" distinct from "z", and
- the use of italicized consonants distinct from their normal forms.
Comparing words in the Legge system with the same words in Wade-Giles shows that there are often minor but nonsystematic differences, which makes direct correlation of the systems difficult.
NB. Although frequently improperly called a "transliteration", Legge's system is a
transcriptionTranscription is the conversion into written, typewritten or printed form, of a spoken-language source, as in the proceedings of a court hearing. It can also mean the conversion of a written source into another medium, as by scanning books and making digital versions...
of Chinese, as there can be no
transliterationTransliteration is the practice of converting a text from one writing system into another in a systematic way.-Definitions:From an information-theoretical point of view, transliteration is a mapping from one system of writing into another, word by word, or ideally letter by letter...
of Chinese script into any phonetic script, like the
LatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Roman conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe...
(or
EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century,...
)
alphabetAn alphabet is a standardized set of letters basic written symbols or graphemes each of which roughly represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or...
. Any system of
romanizationIn linguistics, romanization or latinization, alternately spelt as latinisation or romanisation , is the representation of a written word or spoken speech with the Roman alphabet, or a system for doing so, where the original word or language uses a different writing system...
of Chinese renders the
soundSound is a travelling wave which is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibrations.- Perception of sound...
s (pronunciation) and not the characters (written form).
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