Word.ws English Dictionary

Wade-Giles

Wade-Giles proper noun: a system for transcribing the Beijing dialect of Mandarin Chinese into the Latin alphabet; formally uses hyphens and the spiritus asper apostrophe.

wade-giles: a system for transcribing the Beijing dialect of Mandarin Chinese into the Latin alphabet; formally...
Image: Army Map Service, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Proper noun

Wade-Giles

  1. A system for transcribing the Beijing dialect of Mandarin Chinese into the Latin alphabet; formally uses hyphens and the spiritus asper apostrophe.
    • The pronunciation aids to Chinese names are of doubtful value. They are not phonetic, being only a slight modification of the Wade-Giles system, and become really confusing when Mandarin pronunciations are given for Cantonese or historical spellings.1947 May, Earl Swisher, “MacNair, China”, in Pacific Historical Review, volume XVI, number 2, University of California Press, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 214
    • The problem of romanizing Chinese place names is a difficult one. Solutions differ from language to language, and there are several so-called "systems" used even in the English-speaking world.
      The system most widely accepted by professionals is the Wade-Giles system. One of its key advantages is...1969, “A note on transliteration”, in Joseph Kitagawa, editor, Understanding Modern China, Quadrangle Books, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 7
    Synonyms:
    Wade

Wade-Giles meaning in Arabic and Thai

Wade-Giles in Arabic

transcription system for Mandarin
وَيْد–جَيْلْز, وِيد–جِيلْز

Wade-Giles in Thai

transcription system for Mandarin
เวด-ไจลส์ wêet-jai

Examples of Wade-Giles in a sentence

  • The Chinese titles are given in Wade-Giles romanization.1977, “Explanatory Notes”, in Robert Dunn, editor, Chinese-English and English-Chinese Dictionaries in the Library of Congress, Library of...
  • The two most prominent systems of transliterations of Mandarin are Wade-Giles and Pinyin.2018 March 12, Sophie Zhou, “The T/Daos shall meet: The failure and success of English transliterations of Mandarin Chinese”, in English...
  • Lee explains that she uses traditional Chinese characters, and both the Wade-Giles romanization system and Hanyu Pinyin to transliterate certain details from Mandarin.2020 April 24, Kristen Schott, “The Language of Self-Discovery: On Jessica J. Lee’s “Two Trees Make a Forest””, in Los Angeles Review of...

Synonyms of Wade-Giles

Origin of Wade-Giles

1943. Named after British diplomats Thomas Francis Wade and Herbert Giles, who developed the system in the 19th century.

Questions about Wade-Giles

What does Wade-Giles mean?
Wade-Giles means a system for transcribing the Beijing dialect of Mandarin Chinese into the Latin alphabet; formally uses hyphens and the spiritus asper apostrophe.
What is Wade-Giles in Arabic?
Wade-Giles in Arabic is وَيْد–جَيْلْز, وِيد–جِيلْز. See Wade-Giles meaning in Arabic.
How do you use Wade-Giles in a sentence?
The Chinese titles are given in Wade-Giles romanization.
What part of speech is Wade-Giles?
Wade-Giles is a proper noun.

Words near Wade-Giles in the dictionary

  1. wade through
  2. Wade-Dahl-Till shunt
  3. Wade-Dahl-Till shunts
  4. Wade-Dahl-Till valve
  5. Wade-Dahl-Till valves
  6. Wade-Giles
  7. wadeable
  8. Wadebridge
  9. waded
  10. waded in
  11. waded through

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Wade-Giles (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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