Quote ="tigertot"I heard a Chinese person on the tele once saying it is pronounced in different ways across the extent of China.'"
Well yes, it would be.
oring nasal voice
The two main languages in China are Cantonese and Mandarin.
They don't even sound alike, as they are different languages not just different accents or slight variations in pronunciation.
However, they use the same pictograms for the same words.
Hence, the same word sounds totally different when spoken in each language.
oring nasal voice
So, when written in our alphabet, we have to write the Chinese word in a phonetic spelling, as best we can.
Regardless of which Chinese accent we choose to phoneticise [size=40(new word of my invention)[/size ... why spell it Feng Shui if they want us to say Fung Shway?
