Talk:Chiang Kai-shek

"Communist version"

RJ, to describe Jiang Jieshi as the 'Communist version' of his name is absurd, and I note that you (quite properly) haven't changed other names to Wade Giles. You may not like Pinyin, but it is now the accepted scholarly system for rndering Chinese names, and I'd ask you to stick to this. Bugler 06:54, 20 September 2008 (EDT)

it is not true that historic names like Chiang are changed to pinyin. Proof: just look at the titles in the bibliography: " Boorman, Howard L. "Chiang Kai-shek in Howard L. Boorman, ed. Biographical Dictionary of Republican China (1967) 1: 319-38;

Fenby, Jonathan. Chiang Kai Shek: China's Generalissimo and the Nation He Lost (2004); Huang, Grace C. "Chiang Kai-shek's Uses of Shame: An Interpretive Study of Agency in Chinese Leadership." PhD dissertation U. of Chicago 2005. 282 pp.; Li, Laura Tyson. Madame Chiang Kai-shek: China's Eternal First Lady (2007). It's hard to find an English language article (in a scholarly) with Jiang Jieshi in the title. The Communists adopted pinyin in the 1950s as a political tool to oppose Taiwan on the linguistic front (they had not used it previously).RJJensen 07:43, 20 September 2008 (EDT)

Whether one likes it or not (and I find it much more accessible than Wade Giles), pinyin is here to stay. It is used in virtually all the CP articles on China and we need to adiopt it as a standard. Indeed it is used throughout this article. I agree that naming can be problematic, and the use of familiar non-Pinyin terms for very major figures is fine (Sun Yat-sen, Chiang) as long as the pinyin alternatives are given. Also, we need to be careful to be consistent. I have just altered Soong Meiling to Song Meiling; if we wanted the Soong version, it should be Soong May-ling (iirc). The same applies to geographical names. Bugler 07:49, 20 September 2008 (EDT)

I agree this ency should use pinying for geographical names and for events post 1950. But changing history goes against my grain (and most historians I thik) and is murder for the users. For example there are hundreds of useful articles on China in the TIME magazine archives, and they use Wade-Giles. In Chiang's case he founded a contemporary government in Taiwan that very much still exists, and which rejected pinying. books.google.com gives 8740 books with Chiang Kai-shek and only 1276 using Jiang Jieshi. RJJensen 09:03, 20 September 2008 (EDT)

To Bulger, just so you know, the name Chiang Kai-shek is actually Cantonese, not Wade-Giles. Cantonese preserved the "-k" final consonant from Middle Chinese (e.g. shek in Chiang Kai-shek) and Mandarin, which is the dialect that the Wade-Giles system was based on, does not have any final consonants except "-n" and "-ng". Anyways, I do have to agree with Bulger on this issue. Yes, I think that using Chiang Kai-shek and any other non-pinyin words could be used only when those non-pinyin words are still well known, provided that the pinyin alternative will be given for the sake of modernization. The point of pinyin, whether you think it is communist or not, is to give a consistent system for learners of Mandarin Chinese to pronounce words. It is used in many modern textbooks targeted at Chinese learners. I have yet to find a modern textbook that uses Wade-Giles as the basis of romanization. I personally find it easier to grasp than Wade-Giles, especially because pinyin lacks the apostrophes used in Wade-Giles countless times. And to RJJensen, Chiang Kai-shek did form the Republic of China which, as you know already, on Taiwan. But from what I heard, the Republic of China used inconsistent romanization systems of Mandarin Chinese, which included Wade-Giles, Tongyong Pinyin, and Hanyu Pinyin, and this was because of local governments leaning toward different romanization systems of Mandarin Chinese. Tongyong Pinyin was basically a slightly modified version of Hanyu Pinyin and Hanyu Pinyin is… well, the pinyin system that is used today. Just recently, Hanyu Pinyin was even officially adopted by Chiang Kai-shek’s government. So you can’t say that Chiang Kai-shek’s Republic of China is still rejecting pinyin because the Republic of China's Ministry of Education finally adopted this measure nationally. And, in case you don’t believe me, here’s the source: [1] --私は^{苟不教（正），性乃遷。} 19:46, 24 September 2008 (EDT)