Firaxis needs to change Chinese cities naming!

[dc82]

hrm good point, i guess i was thinking a lot about american cities (both us and around). plus it still seems to happen more frequently w/ chinese cities, as if it's more the rule than the exception.

 

[Tomoyo]

I was always confused to why the Chinese name for Tokyo is also "east capital" (Dongjing)...

Just something I don't know a lot about: Hong Kong (Xianggang) was founded by the British, but has a Romanized name that seems to to derived from a horrible mistransliteration from the Cantonese Hernggong... or did the British use a different name for it originally, but it was the Chinese "port of good-smelling" name that stuck?

 

[dc82]

the name for tokyo is actually not based on the location relative to chinese cities (although it works out that tokyo is east of china). it was named to officiate the transfer of the capital city from kyoto to what was then edo (江&#25144　(bay door) in japan after the meiji restoration, when the shogunate ended and the emperor came to power again. edo, lying east of the old capital of kyoto (京&#37117 was then renamed tou-kyou (東&#20140 (eastern capital).

Hong Kong had existed long before the British take-over, but it's prominence didn't arise until the first opium war and the treating ot nanking, when the island was ceded to britain. the name "hong kong" does come from the "romanization" of the chinese name. it's off-romanization is prob. due to the fact that early on, during first contacts w/ europeans, sailors or explorers, w/o any scholars or translators gave poor romanizated names, so u end up with something like hong kong (as opposed to xiang gang or herng gong)

in fact, many english words today r based on these off-romanizationed chinese words such as "chow" (e.g. to chow down) - is believed to be based on "jiao" (dumpling) in mandarin; "chop chop" - from the cantonese "kap" (fast), typhoon from tai-feng. several english phrases have also developed from chinese-english pidgin (a language created usually in first contact btw two languages), such as "long time no see," "no can do," or "no go."

 

[Tomoyo]

There's a Chinese word "kap" that means fast? I can't think of a word other than Mandarin "kuai" and Cantonese "fai" that means "fast". Maybe from the Cantonese "gap", to clip with chopsticks?

I heard of a chinese-english phrase "People mountain people sea, today no see, tomorrow same."

 

[Trade-peror]

Maybe from the Cantonese "gap", to clip with chopsticks?

Doesn't that sound more like "gop"?

Yeah, I never heard of any Chinese word "gap" that means fast...

 

[Chinese American]

Cantonese 'kap' sound like 'gup' in pure English. In Mandarin, it's 'ji2' as in 'zhao ji', 'ji mang'.

 

[xo303]

Hm, I can only think of "ho gap liu" if you want to use "gap" (or "kap") as a meaning of "fast"

 

[dc82]

急: (ji2 - pinyin; gap1 - cantonese)

急 jí /hurried/worried/
急促聲 jí cù shēng /patter/
急劇 jí jù /rapid/sudden/
急流 jí liú /torrent/
急忙 jí máng /hastily/
急切 jí qiè /(adv) eagerly, used in writing/(adj) eager, used in writing/
急需 jí xū /(v) urgently need/
急於 jí yú /(adv) be eager; want to do sth right away/
急躁 jí zào /irritable/irascible/impetuous/

 

[Tomoyo]

Oh... that word... I would romanise it as "gup".... who romanises these words anyway? The sound is clearly a short "u".

EDIT: Yeah, and it means hurried, like you said, not fast.

EDIT2: Wait... I think I see some logic to the Romanisation. The "k" is kap is like the "k" in "skill".

 

[Trade-peror]

OH! Now I know what word is being referred to!

Yes, "gup" is a pretty good approximation.

Now, how did this thread come this far...?

 

[dc82]

<<shrug>> that's the official romanization i found online on a dictionary. i think in early translations (that were bad), they prob. equivicated it to fast.

 

[Reboot]

actually if nething, the southern dialects, including cantonese, taiwanese/mingnanhua r believed to be closer to what was spoken in ancient china - supposedly ancient poems and songs sound better when using a southern dialect that mandarin, which is believed to have been formed as invaders and people came from the north.


on another note, another interesting tidbit about the chinese city names is that many r not "names" in the western sense. a lot of chinese city/province names r named based on their location - such as beijing (nothern capital), nanjing (southern capital), hubei (river-north), hunan (river-south), jiangxi (river-west), shangdong (mountain-east)... in taiwan u have taipei (tai-north), taichung (tai-middle), tainan (tai-south) - that can also be applied to japan and korea as well - tokyo (east capital), kyoto (capital), yamaguchi (mountain-mouth/opening), etc.

so on a random map, i'll often hafta change the city names 'cuz heh, knowing the korean/chinese/japanese meanings, it doesn't make much sense for me, and being a stickler for detail....

but that's just me... lol

You missed Shanghai (Upper Sea), Xiamen/Amoy (Lower Gate), Xijing (West Capital).

Indeed, its high time Civ get on with the times and use the official wording for Chinese cities.

 

[Reboot]

OH! Now I know what word is being referred to!

Yes, "gup" is a pretty good approximation.

Now, how did this thread come this far...?

Given the influence-due-to-proximity of the Colonial British and the Cantonese in Hong Kong (and the prominence of that city), its not unlikely that many English words of Chinese relevance were affected by the Cantonese dialect. "Chopsticks" is probably a very good example.

Add:
BTW speaking of HongKong... I think thats one exception that the Chinese would be happy to keep the current naming based off the Cantonese dialect (instead of the Chinese name, which is "Xianggang"/Fragrant Harbour)...

 

[dc82]

You missed Shanghai (Upper Sea), Xiamen/Amoy (Lower Gate), Xijing (West Capital).

Indeed, its high time Civ get on with the times and use the official wording for Chinese cities.

yeah, i cud've done more but, eh, figured people got the point. same goes for japanese and korean cities too.

yeah i agree w/ the hong kong thing - but then again, the argument was never for the cities to be named in their chinese romanized spelling, but for their official english names (which almost all r in their romanized hanyu pinyin forms). so cities like hong kong, lhasa, macao, etc. wudn't reflect the actual chinese pronunciations.

 

[Aion]

Don't know if it has been mentioned here before (I didn't read the whole thread), but one reason for Pinyin's lack of popularity is that it was introduced by the communist governement. IIRC, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Chinese diaspora in America uses Wade-Gilles because they didn't want to recognize the communist governement. Same thing about traditional and simplified chinese characters.

EDIT: I didn't realize I was bumping an old thread, sorry.

 

[dc82]

that't not really that true, at least especially now, at least when it comes to pinyin. i think as a whole hanyu pinyin is generally accepted as the official romanization for standard chinese, with a few exceptions, such as taiwanese and cantonese cities/locations. otherwise, chinese schools, classes, dictionaries have generally accepted hanyu pinyin. in terms of traditional and simplified characters, that's a bit more of a an issue, since the cantonese and taiwanese still use traditional. however, as china continues to rise, simplified characters will prob. be more and more accepted.

 

[Tomoyo]

By the way, Canton and Tientsin have made their way into cIV.

 

[Lockesdonkey]

That can be changed. I hope.

 

[TVA22]

I'm a huge fan of China, and Chinese civilization in general. I've been to Taiwan and the Mainland twice each, and studied abroad in Taiwan, so China is by far my fav. civ to play in these games. So that said, I'm not trying to be offensive to Chinese people, or their language here, but I really don't think this is an important issue at all. Some names are given in Pinyin, others in different methods. There are no doubt people from the mainland who play this game, as well as people from other chinese speaking areas who are more familiar with different names.

Further, Civ is a game about history, in a way. These unofficial names are part of world history, and I kindof like it. I like playing scenarios about ww2 in asia and seeing chinese cities named the way they were on an english map back in that time period. I don't think it's a deliberate effort on Firaxis' part to insult Mainland China by not totally adopting the modern hanyu pinyin system, and I don't think it's miseducation on the part of the franchise.
I played civ2 back when I was maybe 13 or so, and it was one of the major reasons I got interested in real world history and travel. These games serve to get people interested in places they wouldn't otherwise think about.

To close up, I'm majoring in International Business, and a couple of days ago in this International management class I gave a presentation on China, and afterwards the teacher pulled down a map of the world with country names replaced by numbers, and asked people to call out where China was (he's from Hubei province). One girl called out the number for brazil, another for Iran, and another, no joke, I kid you not, called out the number corresponding to Australia. So if we're worried about miseducation, we should start out with a basic geography requirement for people to reach college. That's my rant for the day.

 

[tcjsavannah]

That can be changed. I hope.

Indeed. It's called 'Rename city.'