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"Huang" and "Wong," "Kwan" and "Guan," "Lee" and "Li," these Chinese American last names may have different spellings but they're actually the same.
"Huang" 和 "Wong"; "Kwan" and "Guan"; "Lee" 和 "Li",這些華裔美國人的姓氏,可能有不同的拼法,但事實上他們都是一樣的
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Take my family for example, my great aunts and uncles spell their last name "Lee," but my parents spell "Li."
以我的家族為例,我的姨婆舅公他們把姓氏拼法為 "Lee",但我的父母卻拼做 "Li"
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Let me explain.
讓我解釋給你聽!
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First, remember that Chinese has hundreds of dialects variations that all sound pretty different.
首先,要記得中文有數以百計不同種的方言,而且聽起來都大不相同
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For example, "let's eat" in Chinese can be
比如說,「一起吃飯吧」的中文可說:
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And that's just three dialects.
而且這僅僅只是三種方言而已
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So what happens in a country where everyone is speaking a variation of a language and not everyone understands each other.
所以,在這種每個人都說著不同語言,但不是都懂彼此在說什麼的國家,究竟會如何呢?
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Chaos. Well, sort of.
就是大混亂,大概啦
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Back in the day when Beijing was still known as Peking,
回到北京還是被拼作 "Peking" 的時候
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China hadn't yet fully adopted Mandarin as its official language.
中國還沒有採用普通話成為官方語言
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In the 1940s, most government officials used Mandarin but many other dialects were also alive and well.
在 1940 年代,大部分的政府機構都用普通話,但是其他的方言仍然存在並且有被使用的
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(各種方言)
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Because there was no one dialect that everyone used,
因為沒有大家統一使用的方言
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there was also no agreement on how to translate Chinese characters into Roman alphabet for Westerners to pronounce.
所以對於要怎麼把中文翻譯成羅馬拼音給西方人發音一直沒有共識。
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Couple of British dudes did create a phonetic alphabet to understand Mandarin called the "Wade Giles system"
一些英國人創造了一套可以用來發音中文的字母系統,稱作「Wade Giles 拼音系統」
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but was never officially recognized in the country.
但這套系統從來都沒有被官方承認過
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As a result, the earliest Chinese immigrants to the United States wrote their last names based on the dialect they spoke,
也因此,早期在美國的中國移民仍然依他們說的方言去拼出姓氏,
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say "Kwan" if you spoke Cantonese or "Guan" if you spoke Mandarin.
如果說的是廣東話,則「關」拼做 "Kwan" ,若是說普通話,則拼做 "Guan"
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But then Mao came to power, and he strengthened Mandarin as the national dialect, making it the standard language of education for all of China.
但毛澤東掌權後,他鞏固普通話的地位將之列為官方語言,使普通話成為全中國的教育的標準語言。
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(from now on, the official language is Mandarin.)
「從今天開始,我們統一說普通話。」
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He then got one of his own guys to create a phonetic alphabet and that became known as "hanyu pinyin".
然後他找了一個人創造了一套拼音系統,就是為人熟知的「漢語拼音」
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Once China had an official alphabet for spelling,
一旦北京有了官方的拼音語言
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"Peking" became "Beijing", "Nanking" became "Nanjing", "Canton" became "Guangzhou".
北京就被拼做 "Beijing",南京被拼做 "Nanjing",廣州被拼做 "Guangzhou"
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The city's actual names in Chinese do not change, just the Western spelling.
這些城市真正的中文名字並沒有改變,改變的只是英文的拼音方式。
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By the way, China aside, Taiwan still uses a mix of "Wade Giles" and "pinyin" spelling
順帶一提,先把中國擺一邊,台灣仍然使用 Wade Giles 和拼音系統
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while Hong Kong still speaks Cantonese and uses Cantonese spelling.
而香港仍然使用廣東話和廣東拼音
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All this brings us back to Chinese names in the U.S..
以上讓我們回到美國華裔的姓氏
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Based on the spelling of those names, it gives you a clue about the origin of the family.
根據這些名字的拼法,可以給你一些家族起源的線索
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Like the Lees who emigrated from China before 1958, they spell their last name "Lee",
像是在1958年移民至美國的李氏家族,他們將「李」拼為 "Lee"
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but my parents who emigrated from China after the pingyin alphabet,
但我的父母們是在漢語拼音系統後才來美國的
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they spell their last name "Li" same goes for many others such as "Lam", "Lin", "Chou", "Zhou", "Ng", "Wu"
就拼做 "Li",同樣的道理也適用於「林」、「周」和「吳」
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Same family, different spelling and now you know.
同個家族,不同拼音,現在你知道為什麼了吧!