Talk:Tai'an

ngan/an
Hey - I am unfamiliar with "ngan" as a syllable in Mandarin. If 'ngan' were written in Bopomofo, would it be written with anything more than "ㄢ"? Maybe "ㄫㄢ"? If so, am I right in thinking that 'Tai-ngan' is more like a synonym of Tai'an/T'ai-an than an alternative form/alternative spelling? Thanks for any help. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 11:27, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * "ngan" is not a legal syllable in Standard Mandarin. The ng- initial has to be dialectal in origin, and it isn't Nanjing Mandarin. RcAlex36 (talk) 15:12, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your reply. Based on what you have said here, it seems that there is an initial in the second syllable of Tai-ngan that the the spellings Tai'an and T'ai-an do not attempt to represent. On that basis, I conclude that Tai-ngan is actually a synonym for Tai'an/T'ai-an and is not an alternative form/alternative spelling of those forms. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 15:43, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * This quote seems to discuss the origin of the ng- initial in these English language loan words: "The distinction between initial [ŋ] and an initial vowel (or glottal stop) is kept in Wu, as in[ŋø] 'shore', [ø] 'dark', [ŋe] 'hinder', [e] 'love'.¹ In some Mandarin dialects and in the majority-type Cantonese of Canton City, [ŋ] is added to all such words regardless, whence such 'English' forms as Nganhwei (~Anhwei), which is [øʍe] in Wu."
 * Partial list of words with this ng-: Tai-ngan, Nganhwei, Nganning. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 10:28, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for creating the new entry at Singan. Should Singan be an alternative form or synonym of Xi'an? Please compare that word to the way I'm trying to handle these other words and relationships between words here. I would like to be consistent either way. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 10:19, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Honestly I don't know and have used all sorts of descriptions for these entries. —Suzukaze-c (talk) 10:22, 12 May 2021 (UTC)