For Taoists of sciforums: "Lessons" for Taoists...

Generally I would like to ask you to use HanYu PinYin for transcriptions of Chinese words.

Instead of Taoism, that means Daoism.

Dao De Jing instead of Tao Te Ch'ing,

You might be surprised to find that "Zi Gong" is already in HanYu PinYin: Tzu Kung would be the way of rendering the name in the romanisation you mostly use.

Lao Zi and Lao Tzu are often used interchangably, and some people use just one or just the other.

A short list:

Dao = Tao
Daoism = Taoism
Dao De Jing = Tao Te Ching
Yi Jing = I Ching
Lao Zi = Lao Tzu
Zhuang Zi = Chuang Tzu
Sun Zi = Sun Tzu
Lie Zi = Lieh Tzu
Qi Gong = Ch'i Kung (aka Hungga, Hunggar-- these are the Cantonese terms)
Tai Ji Quan = T'ai Chi Ch'uan

however there are tones as well, but as these terms are well known I wouldn't really expect anybody to use tones unless it was a large segment of written chinese text. For example if you pasted "wei, aiqing fuchu, wei, huozhe er manglu, wei, shiyao er xinku wo zixi jilu... yong wo de shuang yan, zai, mengxian li zhao lu, gai, wenlu de shihou, wo buhui zhuang ku..." that wouldn't make much sense to a speaker of Chinese out of context, you'd have to type "wei4 ai4qing2 fu4chu1, wei4, huo2zhe5 er2 mang2lu4, wei4, shi2yao1 er2 xin1ku3 wo3 zi3xi4 ji4lu4... yong4 wo3 de5 shuang1yan3, zai4, meng4xian3 li3 zhao3 lu4, gai1, wen4lu4 de5 shi2hou4 wo3 bu3hui4 zhuang1 ku4..." which makes much more sense.

Pinyin is now recoginised as an international standard, Wade-Giles is only in use a little bit in Taiwan (T'aiwan in W-G) and still hangs around in the US and other former GB colonies to some extent, although you will see Pinyin more (historical figures such as Mao Zedong you might see as Mao Zedong or as Mao Tse-tung, Chiang Kai-shek [a Cantonese name] or his Mandarin name which I don't recall, but Deng Xiaoping you won't see as Teng Hsiaop'ing)

 

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