On a proposed new name for China combining Mainland and Taiwan

Xi Jinping of Mainland China and Ma Ying-jeou of Taiwan, two top leaders on each side, had a historic meeting on November 7, 2015. It was an unprecedented event to ease the tension across the Taiwan Strait since one government split into two in 1949. Some people on the Internet are excited about making up new names for a possible merger of the two governments.[note1] It would be unfair to reuse either of the current names

• 中华人民共和国, People's Republic of China, used in Mainland
• 中华民国 (中華民國), Republic of China, used in Taiwan (but 中华台北, Chinese Taibei, in certain international events)

if such merger were to happen. Of all possible names proposed in the half-serious half-hilarious online discussions, "中华共和国" merits linguistic and historical analyses. The first component of this neologism, "中华", combines the central theme of the names from both Mainland and Taiwanese governments, and represents the common cultural element that ties both sides together. Generally translated as "China", it literally means "central" or "middle" (as in "Middle Kingdom") and "flowery beauty" (see Name of China).

The latter component of "中华共和国", i.e. "共和国", is not that straightforward. It is the third component of the compound word "中华·人民·共和国", but superficially differs from the second of the compound "中华·民国". But are they truly different and how? Confusingly, both governments take "Republic" as part of the official English name. While English "republic" most commonly maps to "共和国" in Chinese, the Wikipedia 共和制 article states that "在東亞有一些共和制國家也以舊譯「民國」为名" (In East Asia, there are some republican states that take an old translation "民國" as their names.) So "民国" as a general term (as opposed to a proper noun) is simply an alternative translation of "republic". The problem of this one-to-many relationship, "republic" translated as both "共和国" and "民国", is that "中华共和国" will have to be translated as "Republic of China". But that English phrase has already been taken; it's the official English name for "中华民国". While the Mainland government may be happy with the Chinese name "中华共和国", its potential English name "Republic of China" would be a horrible choice precisely because of the conflict with the English name of the current Taiwanese government. (This reminds me of cybersquatting in which people register Internet domain names in the hope of selling them for a good price later. But the Taiwanese government of course didn't do this intentionally and had no intention to make money out of such good English name.) I have not found the originator of this English translation for "中华民国". A message was sent to taiwan.gov.tw asking for help but I have yet to receive a response. Apparently, soon after 中华民国 was established in 1912, both "Republic of China" and "Nationalist China" were used, but the former prevailed as time passed by, even though "Nationalist China" is literally closer in meaning.

The English word "republic" comes from Latin "res publica", meaning "public affair(s), public matter(s), public thing(s)" (not "people's public affairs" or "people's affairs" as some sources claim). Over time, it has evolved into the modern sense of "a form of government or country in which power resides in elected individuals representing the citizen body and government leaders exercise power according to the rule of law" (from Wikipedia Republic). The Latin source of the word does not inherently conceive its modern meaning, nor does it map to Chinese "共和国" or "民国". So we just need to examine the relationship between the modern meaning of "republic" and the two Chinese translations. "民国" is an easy term, literally "people's country" or "people's state", or a country "of the people, by the people, for the people". On the other hand, "共和国" is more complicated. "共和" as the name of the political system was coined by Japanese scholar Bankei Otsuki (大槻磐溪) referring to Gonghe Regency when the Zhou Dynasty was ruled jointly by two dukes more than 2000 years ago.[note2] This translation using Kanji characters was later brought into the Chinese vocabulary as a loan word. Now, it's clear that neither "共和国" nor "民国" is a perfect translation of "republic" in its modern sense, in terms of intension (not intention) of the words. But "民国" as "people's country" is definitely closer than "共和国" if understood literally; why a country ruled by two dukes would in any way be likened to a modern republic is beyond me. Unfortunately, for unknown historical reasons, the Chinese word "共和国" is actually very much more common as a translation of English "republic" and "民国" has fallen out of fashion.[note3]

In short, the proposed name "中华共和国" is a good one in Chinese. But its translation in English and all other languages with a writing system not directly based on Chinese characters pose a curious challenge.

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[note1] The Mainland government calls the Taiwanese counterpart "authority", not "government". But that's a point beyond my interest.
[note2] Nowadays more historians seem to attribute another event at the very beginning of the Chinese chronology, i.e. 841 BCE, as the source for "共和". This is called "共伯和干王位" (The Count of Gong named He ruled as a regent.).
[note3] As a proper noun, "民国" is short for "民国时期", referring to a historical period, either from 1912 (beginning of ROC) to 1949 (beginning of PRC) used in Mainland, or from 1945 (beginning of ROC's rule of Taiwan) on.

Funny Chinese transliterations to help remember English words

Some Chinese guy with too much free time came up with interesting Chinese transliterations of some English words. Part of the list is as follows, with my English translation of the transliterations in parentheses.

救护车 ambulance 俺不能死 (I can't die)
雄心 ambition 俺必胜 (I must win)
强壮 strong 死壮 (die strong; this Chinese "word" only exists as a transliteration for English "strong")
羡慕 admire 额的妈呀 (Oh my God; literally, my mom; 额 is a dialectal pronunciation of 我)
脾气 temper 太泼 (too surly or boorish and rowdy)
经济 economy 依靠农民 (rely on farmers)
海关 customs 卡死他们 (block them to death)
怀孕 pregnant 扑来个男的 (a man throws himself down on me)
地主 landlord 懒得劳动 (too lazy to work)

What's special about these phonetic transliterations is that they are meaningful phrases or sentences on their own and there's semantic connection, although no equivalence, with their English counterpart. An "ambulance" doesn't mean "I can't die", but imagine what the person being transported is saying to himself. "Customs" ("custom" in the original posting) maps to "block them to death", consistent with the practice of economic protectionism.

English-speaking people learning a European language, particularly a Romance (Latin) language, can greatly benefit from etymology.[note] When etymology fails to help, some sort of mnemonics may be conjured up, unless the learner prefers rote memory, as young children tend to do. Alison Matthews and Laurence Matthews' Tuttle Learning Chinese Characters does exactly that to help English speakers learn Chinese words. The book exists because there's too little etymological connection between English and Chinese. To go in the other direction, a Chinese cramming English vocabulary has to rely on mnemonics as well. I only hope to see a more complete list of Chinese transliterations than the one shown above, ideally published as a pocket dictionary, so the student can look up a word to read the suggested mnemonic while enjoying the fun that serves to strengthen the memory.

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[note] In fact, I've been writing my book Learning Spanish Words Through Etymology And Mnemonics for almost a year, inspired by this idea. See here for more details.

Prepositional separation as a difficulty of Chinese

For ease of understanding, I call this prepositional separation: In Chinese, a concept normally denoted by a single prepositional word in most other languages must be expressed by two characters or words separated by other words. For instance, English "in" is "在...中" or "在...里面" in Chinese.[note] In short simple sentences, this is not a problem. But when a sentence becomes longer, even a native speaker begins to struggle when he crams more and more intermediate components into short-term working memory, in eager anticipation of the end marker such as "中" or "里面", to finish processing the information. Take the following as an example,

He put the ring in a bright color box that has an exquisitely decorated label on it, which reads "For Julia".
他把戒指放进了鲜艳颜色的、上有精心装饰写有“给朱莉娅”的标签的盒子。

Of course, a good translator may choose to break up the long-winding Chinese sentence, precisely because the long-winding attributive clause sounds awkward, unnatural, or simply, non-Chinese. In addition to attributive clauses, Chinese suffers from potentially long complement clauses as well. Take the following as an example.

A sophisticated computer behaves like a human in the sense that it can generate its own commands according to the current situation it encounters.
一台高级计算机（电脑）在以下意义上如人一般行动：它能根据它当场碰到的情况产生出指令。

The Chinese translation is almost forced to have two sentences; otherwise, the "in the sense that" clause would be too foreign to a Chinese ear.

Separation of a semantic structure that provides one single functionality is generally undesirable, in Chinese or any language. Winston Churchill allegedly made up a sentence, "This is the kind of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put" in response to the picky editor. German has tons of separable verbs (as well as its ending "not") that swell the brains of simultaneous interpreters. Fortunately, English and many other languages normally consolidate the words or phrases that represent one concept, or can do so as an option. You can say "put on the jacket", or "put the jacket on". But when the "jacket" becomes long due to a series of adjectives, it's unlikely you'll separate "put" and "on", and you'll definitely not do so if "jacket" has an attributive clause. In Chinese, on the other hand, the "word ... word" (e.g. "在...中") construct is the only option. A translator has to be clever enough to shorten the "..." part to a comfortable level.

The Chinese language is difficult not just because of its large repertoire of characters, but also because of other aspects such as its prepositional separation, which may become increasingly cumbersome in expressing complicated ideas in the modern world.

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[note] Technically, this preposition is called circumposition, although some linguists only use the word "preposition".

Translation of a poem "Snow falling on high branches..."

Somebody asked for a translation of this poem:

雪落高枝映蕾菲
惊洁美
卓然岂摧眉

My translation：

Snow falling on high branches befits blooming flowers
I'm amazed at this clean beauty
So demonstrative as to debase myself?

The last sentence may be a challenge. 摧眉 literally means "make lower eyebrows". But figuratively it means "lose confidence; flatter (in the bad sense)".

This poem, technically ci rather, was probably composed by a person named 啼非 in 2004.

(The image of the fan below is from Mr. Vishal Upadhayay's Facebook posting.)

English words that seem to have opposite meanings, "sanction", "bash", "bashful"

Somebody in a forum mentioned a few English words that seem to have opposite meanings. One is "sanction", which according to Wiktionary means (1) an approval, by an authority, generally one that makes something valid; (2) a penalty, or some coercive measure, intended to ensure compliance; especially one adopted by several nations, or by an international body. A quick response from another guy is "really? somebody should tell Putin that sanction can mean something better!!" That's interesting! Anyway, I've always worried about the seemingly conflicting meanings of this word and sometimes avoid using it in my writing or speech, unless it's very clear, as in "economic sanction (against a country)".

Another example mentioned is "bash". On the one hand, it has the meaning of to strike heavily, to criticize harshly (source), as in "Bashing Hillary? Don't go there, GOP". On the other hand, the word "bashful" means shy, timid (source). How could you justify these two opposite human behaviors with one single word (or word with a suffix)? This word, though, is different from "sanction", in that "bashful" actually has a completely different etymology and is related to the verb "abash", to make ashamed or embarrassed (source). In any dictionary, when two words have the same spelling but are descended from two etymological sources, they're usually listed as two headwords or entries. In case of "bashful", it's not the word "bash" with the suffix "-ful", but was formed by "abashed" + "-ful" and later lost the initial unstressed vowel (a process called aphesis). "bash" does have the same meaning as "abash" except that sense is now obsolete.

Well, some words that look like having different meanings but they don't, such as "flammable" and "inflammable". That's another topic, for now.

Thought experiment: reading speed of a trilingual

I've always wondered about this. Imagine a person perfectly trilingual[note1] in English (or any language using a phonetic writing system hereinafter), Korean, and Chinese. I predict that his reading speed is Chinese > Korean > English. The speed can be measured by reading a culture- and language-neutral passage telling the same simple story. (But see [note2].) I suppose that the information the brain and eyes acquire within a given moment is the most for Chinese, less for Korean and the least for English. Suppose the text font is about the same on three sheets of paper (or computer screens), each written in one of the three languages. The eyes scan from left to the right. Due to the nature of English, the eye movement is completely linear. The amount of information thus gained within, say, one tenth of a second, may be less than in the case of Chinese. A language- and culture- neutral passage about the same content is normally printed shorter in Chinese than in English. But the eye scanning speed is about the same. So the total reading time will be shorter for Chinese. Let's call that advantage of information density for Chinese.

Secondly, I suppose human eyes focus on circular areas, instead of horizontal lines. That is, the very focal point is a round dot, the farther away from it, the less focus; eyes do not focus on one fixed-width line, the farther away above or below or to the left or right to it, the less focus. Chinese characters have the advantage of packing semantic information in a square block, compared to English which spreads the same information out horizontally, whose acquisition requires left-to-right scan by the eyes.

The Korean language is a unique case in that its letters are arranged both in a block and horizontally. It's a perfect compromise between English and Chinese. The eyes can gain some information focusing on one spot but usually must move horizontally to gain enough for a word. So the reading by the same person reading the same content will have the intermediate speed.

On the other hand, a March 24, 2015 article reports the research by Georgetown University scientists, After learning new words, brain sees them as pictures (probably based on this publication). Indeed, our brain does not process English text strictly linearly when our eyes horizontally scan the line into our brain. This means that the distinction between a language with largely block-based information (Chinese) and one with line-based information (English etc.) is not so dramatic. Nevertheless, I would be very delighted if we could find a person perfectly trilingual in English, Korean and Chinese, or at least perfectly bilingual in two of the three, to test his reading speed. Personally I'm not sure if I'm perfectly bilingual in English and Chinese. But I do feel that my reading speed in Chinese slightly better than in English. But I have not done a well-prepared test.[note2]

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[note1] He's said to be a maximal trilingual, in the field of Second Language Acquisition.
[note2] Obviously the test must be given by another person. Since the person taking the test naturally reads the passage faster if he's already read the same content in any language, the passage actually cannot contain the same content translated into different languages in real implementation of this test. How the test can be given in the most appropriate way may be a technical challenge.

My first book

I just self-published my first book, Random Thoughts while Studying English and Chinese. The table of contents are as follows:

1 "主席" (Zhǔxí) was Chairman, is President
2 "Ni Hao Ma" (你好吗) is not a native Chinese greeting
3 Affective meaning of "中国" (China)
4 Chinese Character Usage Frequency
5 2015: The Year of "羊"
6 Why do Chinese choose uncommon English names?
7 Scholarly translation should be literal
8 "We should all be learning Chinese..." thus they say
9 "He" (他) and "she" (她) mix-up for Chinese students
10 "第几" has no English equivalent
11 New Chinese Acronyms
12 "Dragon" for "龙": a mistranslation?
13 Joke due to translation: "Oracle bone script" was registered as a software brand by Americans
14 Chinese religious language
15 "Modern" and "现代" or "近代"
16 Translation: a case study, "feminism" and "女权主义"
17 Translation of "computer", "calculator", and others
18 New Year's Wish: Less new usage of 被 (bei)
19 "谢谢叔叔!" (Thank you Uncle) said not to a family relative
20 "NBA" as an entry in Chinese dictionary
21 ESL methods: bilingual and immersion
22 Linguistic authority
23 Chinese "empty word" 虚词
24 虚词"虽然": empty word "although"
25 虚词"当然": empty word "of course"
26 虚词"很": empty word "very"
27 Interjection (叹词)
28 Why should the Chinese language not adopt a phonetic writing system?
29 Learning ... as a second language
30 Technical document needs literal translation
31 Levels of translation quality proposed by Yan Fu: A small example
32 Proper name translation: semantic or phonetic
33 Proper name translation: standardization
34 What language is popular?
35 Which English letter do Chinese pronounce wrong the most?
36 Language education to solve Chinese ethnic conflict

Any comments and reviews, good or bad, are highly appreciated. In case you ask, the landscape painting featured on the cover of the book is my hand-drawn replication of 山水图 (Picture of Mountains and Water) by 黄鼎 (Huang Ding, 1660-1730), an early Qing dynasty painter.

Excerpts from a book on second language acquisition

Second Language Acquisitionby Susan M. Gass (C) 2013, Taylor & Francis, 4th ed

It's a comprehensive literature review or overview of the academic research on second language acquisition, citing over 1000 references. Very complete, yet boring and verbose. The following are excerpts that I personally think are interesting. (Some text can be found at archive.org.)

p.11
The basic assumption in SLA research is that learners create a language system, known as an interlanguage (IL). This system is composed of numerous elements, not the least of which are elements from the NL and the TL.
Central to the concept of IL is the concept of fossilization, which generally refers to the cessation of learning. The Random House Dictionary... "to become permanently established in the interlanguage of a second language learner in a form that is deviant from the target-language norm and that continues to appear in performance regardless of further exposure to the target language."

p.56
English does not allow resumptive pronouns in relative clauses (I saw the woman who she is your son's teacher). p.71
pronominal reflexes (or pronoun retention/resumptive pronoun), a phenomenon--common in many languages (including informal English)

p.90
Table 4.1 Hierarchy of Difficulty (Source: Adapted from Stockwell, Bowen & Martin, 1965)

Category	Example
Differentiation	English L1, Italian L2: to know versus sapere/conoscere ←most difficult
New category	Japanese L1, English L2: article system
Absent category	English L1, Japanese L2: article system
Coalescing	Italian L1, English L2: the verb to know
Correspondence	English L1, Italian L2: plurality ←easiest; two forms are used in roughly the same way

p.118
In general, children have better phonology, but older learners often achieve better L2 syntax

p.164
the notion of equipotentiality, expressed by Schachter (1988). She pointed out that children are capable of learning any language.

p.165
Lexical categories...: nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and so forth. These are referred to as content words. Functional categories... (e.g., articles, possessives), or they may be categories consisting of grammatical morphemes (e.g., plurals, tense markers).

p.194
language learning is largely lexical learning (e.g., Chomsky, 1989) (Some notes on economy of derivation and representation. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics, 10, 43-74)

p.210
Oral repetition correlated with general proficiency, but visual repetition (writing words over and over, memorizing the spelling letter by letter, writing new words and translation equivalents repeatedly) negatively predicted vocabulary size and general proficiency.

p.257
A comparable example took place at a G8 summit in Okinawa, Japan. Prior to the summit, Prime Minister Mori of Japan spent time brushing up on his English. Upon meeting President Clinton, he apparently became flustered and, instead of saying, How are you?, said instead: Who are you? President Clinton responded: I'm Hillary Clinton's husband. However, Prime Minister Mori, unaware that he had asked the wrong question, was anticipating a response something like I'm fine, and you? and responded I am too.
p.538
Thanks go to Caroline Latham for bringing this example to our attention.

p.266
Focused attention was most beneficial for syntax and least for the lexicon. In addition, there was a diminished effect for proficiency, with focused attention having a greater effect in early stages of learning.

p.435
The original formulation of CPH (Critical Period Hypothesis) came from Lennenberg (1967), who noted that "automatic acquisition from mere exposure to a given language seems to disappear [after puberty], and foreign languages have to be taught and learned through a conscious and labored effort. Foreign accents cannot be overcome easily after puberty"... The Sensitive Period Hypothesis predicts sensitivity, but not absolute drop-offs, such that a learning decline might be gradual.

p.438
Their (Bialystok and Hakuta (1994)) recalculations also revealed a deterioration in proficiency starting after age 20--well after the proposed biological changes suggested by the CPH.

p.439
Examples of easy structures are word order in simple sentences and pronoun gender; examples of difficult structures are articles and subcategorization features. Easy structures did not show age-related effects, whereas difficult structures did. He (DeKeyser (2000)) ties this to explicit and implicit learning, claiming that younger learners have intact the ability for implicit and explicit learning, whereas adults have lost their ability to learn implicitly.

p.440
DeKeyser and Larson-Hall (2005)...: Children necessarily learn implicitly; adults necessarily learn largely explicitly. As a result, adults show an initial advantage because of shortcuts provided by the explicit structure, but falter in those areas in which explicit learning is ineffective, that is, where rules are too complex or probabilistic in nature to be apprehended fully with explicit rules. Children, on the other hand, cannot use shortcuts to the representation of structure, but eventually reach full native speaker competence through long-term implicit learning from massive input. This long-term effect of age of onset is most obvious to the casual observer in pronunciation, but on closer inspection appears to be no less robust in the domain of grammar.

p.442
The primary difference between children and adults is in the mastery of phonology, which can hardly be due to input differences.

p.458
Studies indicate that motivational arousal is greatest for tasks that are assumed to be of moderate difficulty (see the discussion in Brehm and Self, 1989)

p.462
Anxiety is not always a negative factor in learning. ...: low levels help, whereas high levels hurt.

p.463
Hoffman (1986) notes that anxiety can direct attention away from meaning and toward pure form (acoustic properties, order of presentation, phonetic similarities).

p.470
strategy instruction was found to be substantially more effective when ... when the strategies targeted reading, speaking, and vocabulary, rather than writing, listening, and grammar.

p.473
Although adults show a faster speed of learning an L2, children seem to have an overall advantage in terms of ultimate attainment, at least for phonology and, possibly, syntax.

pp.480-1
Table 18.1 Definitions of Bilingualism

p.484
Cook (2005, Multi-competence: Black-hole or worm-hole?) argued that there are effects of multilingualism on how individuals process their NL, even individuals with a minimal knowledge of an L2.

p.488
in early L3 production, certain functions, such as prepositions, articles, and conjunctions, tend to come from the L2 and not the NL. This may occur even when the two languages are not phonetically similar.

p.489
Cenoz (2001)... cross-linguistic influence... linguistic distance is one factor. This was the case for all learners, regardless of language dominance... Age is another (factor), with older learners showing more cross-linguistic influence than younger children. There are language-related factors as well, with more transfer of content words than functional words.

Affective meaning of "中国" (China)

"中国" (China), literally "Middle Country" or "Middle Kingdom", probably acquired its affective meaning quite late in history. This means that the word was used as a pure geographical term for a long time in Chinese history, unlike a few other terms such as "华夏", or during the Tang dynasty "大唐" (Great Tang, 618-907 CE). Mention of the latter two subconsciously arouse an emotional sense of national pride among the contemporaries.

One piece of evidence for this observation comes from its occurrence in a book written in the Eastern Jin Dynasty (317–420). Faxian (or Fa-Hien, Fa-hsien) (337–c. 422) "was a Chinese Buddhist monk who traveled by foot all the way from China to India, visiting many sacred Buddhist sites." His 《佛国记》 (Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms) (a.k.a 《法显传》, Biography of Faxian) states that "从是以南，名为中国。中国寒暑调和，无霜、雪。人民殷乐无户籍官法。" (The place from here toward the south is named the Middle Country. In the Middle Country, cold and heat are harmonized, and there's no frost or snow. The people are well-to-do and happy. Household registry or government laws do not exist.)

Why does Faxian's book serve as evidence for lack of the affective sense of "中国" in early China? The word "中国" first occurred in the earliest book in Chinese history, 《尚书》 (Book of Documents)[note], which was compiled by Confucius (551–479 BC) and read and memorized by every pupil that could afford minimum education in ancient China. Monk Faxian definitely knew most if not all words in the book. But he used the word "中国" to denote the central area of today's Indian subcontinent, to be precise, to translate the Sanskrit word "Madhya-Des", paraphrased as "central territory" or "central kingdom" or "midland country" by various scholars, which existed during the Gupta period (approximately 320 to 550 CE). It's hard-pressed to imagine that Faxian would have chosen "中国" if it had already had acquired a sense beyond its literal meaning. If "中国" had been used dearly as words such as "夏" or later in history "大唐", Faxian would have considered a different character combination to translate the Sanskrit word, or perhaps added a translator's note if "中国" had to be used.

More than a millennium later, 《四库全书总目》 (Annotated Catalog of the Complete Imperial Library, completed in 1798 by the Qing dynasty) criticized Faxian's word choice by saying that he "以天竺为中国，以中国为边地" ("considered India as the Middle Country and China as the frontier"; note the same word "中国" could mean both "Middle Country" and "China"). What we can read off of this critique is that the word "中国" had acquired its affective sense by the late 18th century. From now on, it's not to be used to mean just the middle part of some land, or any country in the middle of something larger. It uniquely refers to the Middle Country or the Middle Kingdom or China, with its rich culture and history. Yet two centuries later, it's our turn to criticize the editors of the imperial encyclopedia for their lack of the sense that one born later in history should only judge a historical figure from the historically contemporary perspective.

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[note] 《尚书·卷十四·梓材》: "皇天既付中国民，越厥疆土，于先王肆" (The heaven already obliged [the Zhou family] to govern the people in the Middle Country. If we extend and develop the territory, our ancestor's Dao will flourish.)

Which English letter do Chinese pronounce wrong the most?

The answer to the titled question depends on how much the Chinese has already studied English. If he knows almost nothing about the English language, it's likely he pronounces letter "A" as [ɛ] instead of [eɪ], "C" as [sɛ] instead of [si] (or [si:] if you want to emphasize the long vowel), and "K" as [kɛ] instead of [kei]. Let's ignore these people and focus on those that have learned enough English and have probably been living in an English-speaking country for some time and whose level of English as a second language has fossilized.

In my observation, the most commonly mispronounced English letter is "N". Instead of [ɛn], many Chinese pronounce it like a prolonged [n], missing the vowel [ɛ], or the vowel is too short and weak to be heard. This is particularly evident when he/she spells a word on the phone, where a very clear, distinct pronunciation of each letter is expected, e.g., "His name is Wang, W-A-N-G" (['dabulju:], [eɪ], [n], [dʒi:]). Due to the nasal nature of [n], with the initial vowel [ɛ] stripped off, the other side of the telephone would likely ask "W-A-What-G?" Of course giving an example word solves the problem, such as "N like in Nancy".

Note the IPA symbols for the mispronounced letter "W" in the above example sentence. The first vowel I wrote is [a] and the second [u], while the correct pronunciation of "W" is ['dʌbə(l)ju:] (parentheses for the optional phoneme). Too many Chinese pronounce [ʌ] as [a], because [ʌ] does not exist in Chinese. This substitution also occurs for [ɑ], which again does not exist in Chinese. So letter "R" is read like [ar] instead of [ɑr]. Fortunately, [a] alone does not occur in English; it only exists in diphthongs (e.g. [ai]). Mispronunciation by substitution of it for [ʌ] or [ɑ] won't cause misunderstanding, just a distinct foreign accent.

I'm not sure why "N" is read by Chinese as [n]. If you know why, I'd like to hear your comments.

Note: The difference between [ʌ] or [ɑ] and [a] is clearly indicated in the International Phonetic Alphabet vowel chart. Both vowels not existing in Chinese are pronounced in the back side of the mouth.