Talk:Shi-jia-zhuang

Variant Pinyin Nomeclature
I am extremely interested in the history of the early stages of the use of Hanyu Pinyin in English- see Talk:Chungnanhai, Talk:Beijing, and Citations:Beijing where I elaborate my "Semi-Implementation Period (1958-1978)" concept. And I have over time noticed that there are a very small number of publications, usually from the 1970's or what I might term the "early adopters", that use hyphenation in English in Pinyin-derived words. As I interpret it, this entry, "Shi-jia-zhuang", is one of those words. When I created this entry just today, I assumed this was merely a type of absurd, lowly variant. Wiktionary has all kinds of crap on it, since it is a descriptivist dictionary (and that's a good thing). But I was really dumbfounded and shocked to see that an authoritative source like the Encyclopedia Britannica from 1981 would include such a variant as the main form of Pin-yin- no mention of Shijiazhuang! I have never seen this category of spellings discussed anywhere on Wikipedia or elsewhere. My pure speculation is that as hyphenation of Wade-Giles was in flux during the period, with the elite publications using the hyphens and the crass publications removing them, there were some who thought that elite versions of Pinyin in English would very naturally use hyphens. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 13:49, 11 December 2023 (UTC)