Tea and transcriptions

[awahlbom]

One problem you encounter as a tea drinker is with linguistics. One week ago, sunjan and Justina treated me to a very nice oolong tea that was called "Shui Cheng" (or something like that) on the package. We couldn't find it in literature, until Justina pointed out that the package used a Cantonese transcription, while the book we were looking in used pinyin and called it "Shui Xian". After some searching this weekend I finally found it at Tea Centre of Stockholm, under the name Shui Hsien.

So, in one week I have encountered three different ways of transcribing 水仙:

1. God-knows-what system: Shui Cheng


2. Pinyin: Shui Xian


3. Wade-Giles: Shui Hsien

There are conversion tables, but it would still be easier if everyone could settle on using one system. If I wasn't aware that there are differences between pinyin and Wade-Giles, I might never have found what I was looking for...

Comments

[sunjan.livejournal.com]

I decided to take a closer look at the tin, and it says "Shui Shien".
Some googling indicates that this is a transcription emanating from Taiwan.

True enough, there is at least one more romanisation system besided the abovementioned:
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/mandarin.htm

Here's a brief comparison table:
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/mandarin_pts.htm

Exactly which one used remains an open question though, since there is a lot of confusion going on in Taiwan at the moment:
http://www.sinistra.net/els/sup/transcript.html#taiwan

If the chinese letters would have been in cantonese instead (which doesn't seem to be the case for this tea), there are five other romanisation systems for that dialect!
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/cantonese.htm