Lupin, coins, Cho, Ginny and Lily: livered or white?

[rcraigharman at hotmail.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 21154

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Tabouli" <tabouli at u...> wrote:
> Hui: (re Cho Chang / Zhang Qiu)
> > Pinyin looks weird to western people.
> 
> Yes, I must say when I first started studying Mandarin and learnt
> pinyin, my thought was "what *were* they thinking?  C is pronounced
> TS and Q as CH??"  Then, a few years later, a mainland Chinese
> friend of mine pointed out that they were, in fact, thinking of
> their Russian allies.  Apparently a lot of the apparently bizarre
> aspects of pinyin reflect Russian pronunciation rather than English
> pronunciation.

Well, not quite.  Your mainland Chinese friend perpetuates a long-
standing myth about Pinyin, which is nicely rebuffed here:

http://www.angelfire.com/pop2/pkv/myth.html

....Craig