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In English, the words Daoism and Taoism ( or ) are the subject of an ongoing controversy over the preferred romanization for naming this native Chinese philosophy and Chinese religion. The root Chinese word 道 "way, path" is romanized ''tao'' in the older Wade–Giles system and ''dào'' in the modern Pinyin system. The sometimes heated arguments over ''Taoism'' vs. ''Daoism'' involve sinology, phonemes, loanwords, and politics. Phonetic transcription (representing each distinct speech sound with a separate symbol) is shown with the International Phonetic Alphabet enclosed in square brackets (), and phonemic transcription (representing a small set of speech sounds that a particular language distinguishes) is enclosed within virgules or slashes / /. In articulatory phonetics, "aspiration" is an articulation that involves an audible release of breath. For example, the /t/ in ''tore'' is "aspirated", with a noticeable puff of breath, but the /t/ in ''store'' is "unaspirated". The diacritic for aspiration is a superscript "h", (e.g., ). While the original IPA did not explicitly mark unaspirated consonants, the revised Extensions to the IPA marks them with a superscript equals sign "=", (e.g., ). "Voice" or "voicing" distinguishes whether a particular sound is either "voiced" (when the vocal cords vibrate) or "unvoiced" (when they do not). Examples include voiceless and voiced . ==Phonology of 道 and its English approximations== Disregarding tone, 道 is pronounced in Standard Chinese. This pronunciation cannot be correctly reproduced by most native English speakers who are unfamiliar with Chinese. The argument between the proponents of ''Dao'' and ''Tao'' hinges not on which of the two is correct, but which of the two spellings read aloud will better approximate the Chinese. The initial of ''tao''/''dao'' 道 is a tenuis voiceless alveolar plosive, which is commonly transcribed with the IPA symbol , although some sinologists specify or with the voiceless under-ring diacritic. For example, Jerry Norman (1988:139) explains using for Pinyin ''d'', "The stops and affricates fall into two contrasting series, one unaspirated, the other aspirated. The unaspirated series (''b'', ''d'', ''z'', etc.) is lenis, and often gives the impression of being voiced to the untrained ear. The second series (''p'', ''t'', ''c'', etc.) is strongly aspirated." Although there are various degrees of "aspiration" heard in spoken English, one can simplify matters here and say that this tenuis voiceless sound exists in English—but never as an initial in a stressed syllable. It is found instead in words such as "stop" or "pat". An initial ''t'' in English, as in "tap", is pronounced —that is, an aspirated version of or , its complementary allophone. The natural English pronunciation of the word spelled ''Tao'' is therefore . In standard Mandarin phonology, however, and are not allophonic, but represent two distinct phonemes. In fact, does not merely sound wrong, it sounds like a different word—桃 (Pinyin táo, ) "peach", or 套 "cover" (distinguished by tone). The alternative English spelling, ''Dao'', results in another mispronunciation, . The initial consonant is , a voiced alveolar plosive. However, is not a phoneme in Mandarin, which has no voiced plosives, therefore the initial voicing of is not significant to the Chinese listener. What ''is'' significant is that, unlike the English , is ''not'' aspirated in word-initial position. Therefore the English-speaker's seems more similar to the desired Chinese than the alternative . Only the aspiration is significant to the Chinese listener. The linguist Michael Carr explains: The provenance of the pronunciation with of ''Taoism'' is a gap in the English phonemic paradigm for the unvoiced unaspirated in ''dào'' 'way'. This Chinese phoneme is nearer to the pronunciation of English voiced unaspirated in ''Dow'' than the voiceless aspirated in ''Taos'', but it is neither. The Chinese aspirated vs. non-aspirated phonemic contrast is almost the opposite of the English voiced vs. unvoiced contrast. In certain positions, English non-aspirated consonants can occur as variants of aspirated ones. Stops after initials in English 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Daoism–Taoism romanization issue」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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