Talk:Annette Lu

Thanks Wik. Stargoat 03:32, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Surname Spelling

You have got to be kidding me

Why was there a name change, without consulting the community at all, on this article? If the person who did this changing were to look at Annette Lu's personal website, he would discover that she does not use an umlaut when spelling her own name. Why is it necessary to add an umlaut then? Are we going to start with all Chinese who have names in different tones? Are we going start on Lucy Liü next?

(I mean, she's cool enough to have an umlaut, like Motörhead or something, but come on.)

Change it back. Stargoat 12:22, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

No kidding

Ok, sorry for this move. But there's a reason for this.

As a surname, LU is pronounced differently from Lü. LU rhymes with "shoe", "do", "who" etc, but this is not explicitly how this surname is pronounced. Her surname is pronounced as Lü, this is how it is reflected in pinyin (see her pinyin transliteration). There is no equivalent in English, hence the umlaut. (Know French? Pronounce as a French 'u' [1] (http://french.about.com/cs/pronunciation/ht/u.htm) or as German ü)

With Lucy Liu, there is no difficulty, it's always pronounced as a Liu. But there IS a LU (as in Lu Xun) and a Lü difference in (this is not a tonal difference) Chinese, and in English, the surname Lu and Lü are not just different surnames but pronounced differently. Writing her name as LU could easily mean a mispronounciation.

I'm not kidding you. Go check this out.

I didn't bother to consult because I didn't thought it was this controversial. Mandel 09:00, Jul 20, 2004 (UTC)

I believe Stargoat is aware of the pronunciation matter. But that's not the issue here. Anette Lu has chosen to spell her surname in a non-WG, non-Pinyin manner -- and that's her official choice. You can't get any more official and public than this -- vice-president for ages. --Menchi 10:46, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Fair enough. But he seems to think the umlaut a tone; so I don't think he knows about it. Mandel 09:34, Jul 21, 2004 (UTC)

This is the English language encyclopedia, not the Romanized Chinese one. So are you going to move Kuomintang too because Wade-Giles bastardizes the real Mandarin pronounciation? --Jiang 22:58, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I don't see how Wade-Giles has bastardized the real Mandarin pronounciation?? You completely misunderstood me. If one were to replace Annette Lu with the correct Wade-Giles transliteration, it would still be Annette Lü; see Wade-Giles for "Lu Xun" (ie. "Lu Hsün"). Furthermore all Chinese --> English are Romanization.

I would take Menchi's point, that Ms Annette chose to spell her name as Annette Lu instead of Lü, neither WG or pinyin way. And please, no more of the Mainland-vs-Taiwan (pinyin-vs-Wade-Giles) political argument. I'm sick and tired of petty politics on Wikipedia and if you are going into it I'm raising my hands in defeat. But in both transliteration, pinyin and Wade-Giles, the correct form would be Lü.

My reason for changing it is not because I advocate for pinyin of some red Communist (yah, yah, blah, blah), but simply out of respect for her real surname. Lü is not just the correct pinyin and Wade-Giles form, but also distinguishes it from Lu. I always feel that she spells it without the umlaut out of convenience. It's the same that most spell Lu-Hsün as Lu Hsun out of convenience.

Maybe someone can email her to tell her the more correct form and suggest the change. :p.

And some courtesy please. I don't think there is room for coercion here. Must we run a courtesy compaign here every time we disagree on matters? Mandel 09:34, Jul 21, 2004 (UTC)

Pinyin seems to compose the letters leading to the closer Mandarin pronounciation for cases such as Kuomintang v Guomindang. As a Mandarin speaker, I don't see how this is not the case. I also don't see how politics jumped into this. No one is accusing anyone else of being a communist or communist sympathizer/propagandist. My mention of Kuomintang/Guomindang is to show that article titles are not meant to represent the actual prnounciation in the best possible way. In wikipedia, we list articles in their most common names in English. Oftentimes, the bastardized romanization (no tones or ulumats) is more common over the pure romanization ( so no, the English form isnt automatically romanization; it could also be translation, or in this case English name with bastard romanized surname). Adhereing to certain notations is not part of our criteria for naming articles - it has to do with whether everyone else does too. --Jiang