the Chinese Cho

[celeste_827 at yahoo.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 21077

> And I can't remember if it's mentioned in the book whether Cho's
> a pure-blood or a muggle-born? After all, there're a huge amount
> of stories and folklores about magic arts and such in old China.
> (My best friend still believes in ghost!) I'd like to imagine that 
Cho's
> from a family full of powerful Chinese witches and wizards. Could
> be fun since they wouldn't be using Latin-based spells!

Yeah. I think Latin-based spells are only in use by those who speak 
Romance languages or English. I would imagine that a Chinese wizard 
would speak his spells in his own native tongue.
  
> Actually "Chang" would be "Zhang" in  standard pinyin. And if "Cho"
> means "to surpass" it'd be "Chao." ^^; 
> I know. Pinyin looks weird to western people.

It looks weird to me, and I'm Chinese too. ^^;; I'm an American-born 
Chinese, however, so I can't say anything. *is still struggling to 
remember that 'C' in pinyin replaced the 'Ts' in Wade-Giles or 
romanization or whatever it's called now* *has got 'Q' down though*
 
> > As her family are presumably
> > living in England, they could well be Hong Kong Chinese, prior to 
the return of
> > Hong Kong to China in 1997, which would make them Cantonese 
speakers.  "Cho
> > Chang" looks more like a romanised Cantonese name than a Mandarin 
name to me.

Well, Chang/Zhang is a common name, so I can't really argue with that.
 
> I agree. I guess I never thought much about it because I've never
> seen a western book using pinyin for a Chinese character's name.
> I never expect pinyin.

My history textbook uses pinyin. Except for names like Chiang 
Kai-Shek... well, actually, yeah, it uses Jiang Jieshi now.

I'm thinking it is pretty likely Cho is originally from Hong Kong, as 
it's the place which was originally British.

- Celeste, at the end of a very meaningless post