There’s no simple way to write Chinese sounds in the characters we use in the west (a process called “romanization”, a reference to latin and the Roman Empire).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For a long time the most widespread system in the English-speaking world was one created in the 19th Century by two British diplomats, Thomas Francis Wade and Herbert Giles – the Wade-Giles system. This relied on a mark resembling an apostrophe called an asper<\/em> to show whether or not a sound was aspirated<\/em> (made with a breath, like the beginning of the word ‘happy’).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The big problem of this system is that some people were too lazy to use the asper<\/em>. For example, \u592a \u6975<\/span> T’ai Chi<\/em><\/strong>, has become Tai Chi. What could be wrong with that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The problem is that we now can’t tell the difference between \u6975<\/span> chi<\/strong>, and an even more important character for Tai Chi players: \u6c23<\/span> c’hi<\/strong>, which means energy<\/em> or vital breath<\/em> – the Chinese equivalent of the sanskrit prana<\/em>, the greek pneuma<\/em> or the hebrew ruach<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These problems were overcome in the 1950s by a system developed by the Chinese themselves called pinyin<\/em>. The new system re-purposed the letters q<\/em><\/strong>, x<\/em><\/strong> and z<\/strong>, which hadn’t been needed in the Wade-Giles system, to represent some of the different sounds. T’ai chi<\/strong> became