A System without a System: Cantonese Romanization Used in Hong Kong Place and Personal ames 1 Shin Kataoka Cream Lee Dept of Chinese Language & Literature Chinese Language Centre The Chinese University of Hong Kong The Chinese University of Hong Kong Abstract From the colonial period (1842–1997) to the SAR period (1997–present), Hong Kong has used romanized Cantonese forms for local place and personal names, which can be found on identity cards, business cards, maps, street signs, as well as in underground and railway stations. This Cantonese romanization, generally called the Government system, may look systematic at first glance. However, as we carefully observe the ‘system’, we find it is inconsistent at times, which leads us to a series of questions like ‘Is there a system? If so, why is it inconsistent?’ or ‘Who designed this romanization in the first place?’ These questions triggered our research interest, so we started collecting data from various primary sources. Our analysis reveals that Cantonese romanizations are closely related to the presence of early protestant missionaries in China. This paper attempts to prove that the Government system is substantially a hybrid of three romanization systems those of Eitel, Dyer-Ball and the Standard Romanization all of which are legacies of nineteenth-century missionaries in China. Brief History of Protestant Missionaries in China Christianity in China started in the seventh century with the arrival of the Nestorians. However, no solid foundation for Christianity was built until the sixteenth century when Roman Catholic missionaries, such as Ricci, Valignani, and Xavier, were allowed to preach and build churches in two southern Chinese cities, namely Macao and Guangzhou, after gaining the trust of the Ming dynasty government. With the arrival of the Portuguese in China in 1553 for trading purposes, eight Jesuits and over 5,000 Christians were recorded in Macao in 1565 (Zhao, Lei & He, 2002, p. 5). Macao later became an important missionary base for the Portuguese in the Far East. In the sixteenth century, Guangzhou was not only a trading port, but also a stepping-stone for missionaries to go further into other parts of China. A survey by Stauffer (1922) showed that during the period 1807–1860, 37% of all missionaries in China were located in Guangzhou, thus outnumbering other cities. After the Treaty of Nanking in 1842 and the Treaty of Peking in 1860, China opened more trading ports to foreigners, and thus missionaries had freer access to other parts of China. Nevertheless, statistics showed that during 1807–1920, Guangzhou was still the largest centre in terms of the number of missionaries. After 1917, independent Chinese churches started to develop and the churches in China entered the indigenization era. Because of political turmoil, missionaries were forced to evacuate from Mainland China in the early 1950s and so they moved to Hong Kong Journal of Applied Linguistics 11,1 (2008); pp. 79 −98 | 80 S. Kataoka & C. Lee Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao to await the opportunity to go back to the Mainland again. Hong Kong attracted missionaries mainly from Britain, America and Germany after Hong Kong was ceded to Britain in 1842. Unlike in Mainland China, missionaries had considerably more freedom to develop their missions. In order to communicate better with the local people, western missionaries devoted themselves to the study of the written Chinese language and local varieties. However, as it turned out, Chinese was not an easy language to learn. In fact, when Morrison started learning Chinese in Macao and Guangzhou, he described the difficulties of learning Chinese as follows: But if he goes to Chinese, he finds no letters nothing to communicate sounds no similarity, the method radically different, and not one word like what he has known before, and when he knows the pronunciation of words and sentences, the sound does not at all direct to the character which is the sign of the same idea. If my statement be correct, it will appear that the Chinese is more difficult than any of the European languages. 2 Missionaries intending to work in southern China usually first landed in Hong Kong or Macao and then started to learn the Chinese language before commencing their missionary life. They soon realized that the Chinese dialects greatly differed among themselves and the written variety did not correspond to the speech they heard in daily life. No systematic learning aids were available except for simple phrase books or coastal Chinese Pidgin English conversation books. There were manuscript dictionaries edited by Catholic missions, but they were not accessible to every missionary, because only big libraries, such as national libraries or the library of the Royal Society, owned them. 3 Even if they luckily obtained one, the Chinese romanization that was employed was so unfamiliar to the English-speaking protestant missionaries that it was not a great help in learning Chinese. 4 Owing to practical needs, many Cantonese romanization systems were developed. History of Cantonese Romanization In contemporary China, Pinyin is the official romanization system of Mandarin Chinese or Putonghua. Only Hong Kong and Macao still coin new words in romanized Cantonese in the form of place and personal names. 5 Below we discuss the development of romanized Cantonese systems which are divided into five groups: Morrison’s System , Williams’ System , Lepsius’ System , Standard Romanization , and Post-missionary Systems . Morrison’s System The first attempt to romanize Cantonese was by Robert Morrison of the London Missionary Society (LMS); he used his system in his Vocabulary of the Canton Dialect , which was published in Macao in 1828. This bilingual dictionary was mainly designed for the employees of the East India Company based in Guangzhou. A system without a system: Cantonese romanization | 81 His romanization has the following features: 6 1. English vowel spelling generally employed, e.g., ‘oo’ to denote [u:]; 7 2. Voiceless consonant letters for both aspirated and unaspirated Cantonese consonants; 3. No tone marks; 4. The use of diacritics to differentiate similar vowels; 5. No mark to denote aspiration; 6. Syllabic-initial velar nasal [ŋ] denoted by the letter ‘g’; 8 7. Syllabic nasals [m] and [ŋ] denoted by ‘im’ and ‘ing’, respectively; 8. Different spellings sometimes used to denote identical vowels, e.g., ‘uk’ and ‘ok’ for [ʊk]; 9. The same spelling sometimes used to denote two different vowels, e.g., ‘ok’ for [ʊk] and [ k]. (See Appendix) John Chalmers of the London Missionary Society modified Morrison’s system in his Cantonese Phonetic Reader in 1855 (see Appendix). Similar systems were employed by Devan (1847) and Bonney (1854). Although Morrison’s system made a pioneering contribution to the transcription of Cantonese, it was inconsistent at times and lacked feasible symbols to express aspiration and tones. In their later works, Devan and Chalmers changed their systems so that they were similar to Williams. 9 Williams’ System The second attempt to romanize Cantonese was made primarily by Williams of the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Mission (A.B.C.F.M.), who came to Guangzhou in 1833 to assist Morrison as a printing technician. Later he distinguished himself as a writer and a Sinologue. He adopted and altered William Jones’ romanization, the system that had been applied to many non-European languages. 10 Williams produced Easy Lessons in Chinese in 1842 and Tonic Dictionary in the Canton Dialect in 1856 in this romanized system. Bridgman (A.B.C.F.M.), who published the missionary journal Chinese Repository with Williams, also compiled the Chinese textbook Chinese Chrestomathy in the Canton Dialect , using Williams’ system in 1841. 11 This system was employed by a lot of later works on Cantonese. Eitel compiled Chinese Dictionary in the Cantonese Dialect in 1877, and Ball also produced a series of Cantonese textbooks, such as Cantonese Made Easy (1883). 12 Other publications using Williams’ system or its modification include Stedman and Lee’s Chinese and English Phrase Book (1888) and Chiang’s Practical English-Cantonese Dictionary (n.d.). Williams’ system has the following features: 1. The use of Italian- or German-like vowel spelling and English-like consonant spelling, e.g., the vowel [i] denoted by ‘i’ as in Italian or German, but not ‘ee’ as in English, the consonant [ʃ] by ‘sh’ as in English, not ‘sch’ in German or ‘ch’ in French; 2. Voiceless consonant letters for both aspirated and unaspirated Cantonese consonants; 3. Aspiration marked by using a reversed apostrophe ‘after a consonant letter’; 4. The use of diacritics to differentiate similar vowels; 5. Tones denoted by ‘fa quan (faat hyun)’, a series of half-circle signs placed | 82 S. Kataoka & C. Lee at one of the four corners of each syllable, the system traditionally used by the Chinese to mark tones. (See Appendix) Lepsius’ System The third attempt was that of the Rhenish Missionary Society (R.M.S.). The Gospel of Luke was translated by Louis of R.M.S. and transliterated in 1867 by Faber of Basel Missionary Society (B.M.S.) in the system called the Lepsius system. This was the earliest romanized gospel in Cantonese. The system was named after the German linguist Lepsius, who intended to create a standard alphabet for non-European languages. B.M.S. used this system to transliterate Hakka, another Chinese dialect, but it was never used again in romanizing Cantonese. 13 The features of this system are: 1. The use of Italian- or German-spelling to express vowel sounds, e.g., ‘i’ denoting [i]; 2. Aspiration denoted by adding ‘h’ after the syllable-initial consonant; 3. The use of diacritics for distinction of similar vowels; 4. Tones denoted after each syllable with a slash-like sign; 5.