Simplified Wade

Simplified Wade is a modification of the Wade-Giles romanization system for writing Mandarin Chinese. It was devised by the Swedish linguist Olov Bertil Anderson, who first published the system in 1970. Simplified Wade uses tonal spelling: in other words it modifies the letters in a syllable in order to indicate tone differences. It is one of only two Mandarin romanization systems that indicate tones in such a way (the other being Gwoyeu Romatzyh). All other systems use diacritics or numbers to indicate tone.

Spelling conventions

One of the important changes that Anderson made to Wade-Giles to was to replace the apostrophe following aspirated consonants with an <h>.[1] This modification, previously used in the Legge romanization, was also adopted by Joseph Needham in his Science and Civilisation in China series.[2] The table below illustrates the spelling difference.

Wade-
Giles		 Simplified
Wade		 Modern
Pinyin		 IPA
form
t' th t tʰ
p' ph p pʰ
k' kh k kʰ
ch' chh q/ch tɕʰ/tʂʰ

The indication of tones in Simplified Wade is done by adding letters to the end of the syllable. The table below gives an example.

First
tone		 Second
tone		 Third
tone		 Fourth
tone
ma mav max maz

Notes

  1. ↑ The IPA also indicates aspiration with a (superscript) h.
  2. ↑ Neither of these systems, however, used the tonal letters discussed below.

References

Anderson, Olov Bertil [comp.] (1970). A Concordance to Five Systems of Transcription for Standard Chinese. Lund: Studentlitteratur. 


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