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Your original statement was:
"As the "names" originate with chineses characters, worrying about an english spelling is meaningless."
Meaningless to you. Clearly there are those to whom it is not, and a system (from among several created) has been settled upon as an international standard. That alone shows a need. Effort has been put into creating it, and standardizing it. That effort indicates it's not meaningless. Choosing not to follow it is a personal choice, which still doesn't make it meaningless. The consequences of not following an excepted standard of any kind, not just this one, can be detrimental.
And again, you focus on pronounciations when this has far more to do with spelling (which is about visual recognition of a word, not its spoken recognition.)
I will give you an armchair psycholgical evaluation of myself. My mother was an "old school" English teacher in the state of NY. It was like living with a frickin' Webster's Dictionary, lol. She could give you the definition, two synonyms and an antonym, and the Latin/French/Middle English (as the case may be) root of practically any word you asked about. We quickly learned not to ask her what anything meant. She was "all about" linguistic standards, and I have had that sort of mindset drilled into me. If myself or my siblings departed from "the standard" (slang, incorrect grammar, or--heaven forbid--the word "ain't") we would receive a tirade. I recall being given an "emergency tutorial" by my very worried mother who had just heard sounds of a non-standard accent from me. I got at least 15 minutes of being told the proper pronounciation of all the words she'd just heard me say wrong. As part of the lesson, I also was told why it was important to know and speak "standard" English, and not "talk like a local." If I did, then only locals would understand me. I would have difficulties in the wider world.
So, I then find myself in disagreement with your original statement, from this background. There are various linguistic standards (London English, Parisian French, High German, Mandarin Chinese, etc.) and they are not meanigless. Their intent is to overcome myriad local variations, and promote communication beyond any specific area. They aren't meaningless. They also aren't necessarily learned nor useed by everyone. Those who have not learned them are more limited than those who have.
There's a "correct" way to spell a Chinese word with the romanized alphabet. (It's not an "English" spelling. It's an internationally used method to convert from one alphabet to the other.) All meaningless to you, and that's fine. It exists, however.
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the one spoken by a majority of Chinese. Look it up. So, what in fact is being promoted? Some system to facilitate interaction with the west while supposedly "unifying" Chinese speech with a common language? Westerners will make the pronunciation unintelligible to Chinese people anyway. The bastardizations to the pronunciation Americans will create will further make the "names" useless.
Our "anti-woke" movement wants to eliminate cursive writing from school along with a whole lot of inconvenient truths. People don't speak any more. They just stare at a cell phone and text in abbreviations.
You clearly favor the "definitive", however it is created or presented. Total codification has never happened and never will.
Am I now to expect another insulting, armchair psychological evaluation?
Showyer, Shawyer, Shoe'er, Shwerer, Shower, Schever. All good American pronunciations of a single, definitive spelling.
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Yas, bud eef eye spel mai wordz deeferant from dah standard, I alzo half bullpoop. Uncodified, but bullpoop. Spelling matters. There are official spellings for words. Pronounciation is another matter. Cripes, English is the greatest example I know of a language where words are correctly/properly spelled a "standard" way, often based on how they were pronounced hundreds of years ago, then pronounced multiple ways, with multiple dialects. Witness a word like "night." The "gh" actually was pronounced "way back when." I can make the sound, but I wouldn't know how to write it. It doesn't exist in English anymore, except as a spelling holdover. It's all more about spelling than pronounciation. A given Chinese character, is a syllable. That is then "properly transcribed" to the romanized alphabet by an internationally recognized system, and admittedly based on its Mandarin form. Mandarin is itself a standard.
I'm talking standards and spelling. You're talking pronounciation. (I say tomato, and you say tomato.) It's still spelled tomato, not towmateoh or towmahtow, etc.
We were indeed advised not to address each other. Cerainly on the subject of political views, we have both have "a control issue." I would like to think we both value each other enough as individuals that we can be civil to each other on other topics. I don't disagree with what you've written at all. You are 100% correct. But, there's a reason for the codified bullpoop, which is "where I am at." Oh for the days of Chaucer when there were no rules nor standards for English.
(And that reminds me of a Michael Wood documentary on Shakespeare. He was reading a contemporary court record of Shakespeare's troop arriving for a performance. He was amused by how Shakespeare's name was recorded, and pointed it out. "Look. One can just imagine a fine Scottish fellow writing it out...Shaksbeard performed for the court.") Until the last several hundred years, the English themselves didn't worry about their spelling. Then, we all got standards (and crappy grades in school...)
Which is why there really were no particularly good systems for transcription until both sides got "anal" about their standards. And it's still not perfect, by any means, and for the reasons you've given. The bullpoop had to be codified. Chaos, or codified bullpoop. One is at least helpful to a degree in permitting communication.
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Chinese is NOT a phonetic language. They also have several dialects. In english one only has to look at how pronunciation of the same word differs from region to region and country to country rendering a "spelling" as definitive for pronunciation meaningless. Chinese languages further have subtle inflections that "western translations" cannot possibly capture. Codified bullpoop is still bullpoop.
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There is actually a "correct spelling."
Modern Pinyin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin
For those who like to be "technical."
Peking was an earlier (more careless) system. Beijing is the new Pinyin system, which is more accurate.
If I say "Gouzou" when I mean Gouzao, it matters to a Chinese speaker. Not the same words. "Close enough" doesn't work with languages if you actually want to communicate with them. Like schiessen and scheissen in German, or bitch and ditch in English. Change some sounds, you make different words. Convert the Chinese characters incorrectly, you've got babble (not bubble.) 🙂
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Witness Peking vs. Beijing. A company I worked for was doing a steam plant design in "Hur Bey" province. Problems included "not to Chinese standards" and providing enough bicycle racks. Steam heating was to supplant the myriad of coal burning stoves in the nearby towns to improve air quality. The steam lines were NOT going to be insulated. "Chinese standard"??? This is about 30 years ago.
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Ralph don't worry about it . I doubled checked my spelling as well. lol.
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That's like "Doggy Industries" (a Chinese resin kit company) is actually Gouzou, its Chinese name (which--literally translated--means "dog flea.") Not exactly a "good fit" for the Western market.
Some years after Nixon's China trip, I read a Reader's Digest article on how eager new businesses in China were struggling to learn "how to fit in" in Western markets. The article was by an emoployee of a Western company trying to advise the Chinese companies. They had to struggle themselves to explain why things like "Fang-Fang" lipstic and "White Elephant" auto parts were not good names.
The difficulties of two greatly differing cultures trying to do business. That article has always stuck with me.
Thank you for their Chinese name. I wonder if it's just a "straight-forward name," or if it's one of these "interesting translation affairs."
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The company who makes this kit of the Pennyslvania ,Walker,and Arizona is officially called Chuanyu DaligeJian Models hope that helps.
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The Pennyslvania kit is a follow up using the Arizona hull from Dali Model of Taiwan . The 3 kits
instruction sheets are of their line :USS Arizona and the Destroyer USS Walker (WW1) with this release of the Pennyslvania.
I remember Dragon a few years back announced about
4 1/350 kits that included this version of the Pennyslvania.The previous mentioned kits that appeared look familiar so I looked around.
Hope that helps.
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