| Chinese language Romanization |
| MandarinFor Standard Mandarin EFEO Gwoyeu Romatzyh Hanyu Pinyin Latinxua Sinwenz Lessing-Othmer Mandarin Phonetic Symbols II Postal System Pinyin Tongyong Pinyin Wade-Giles Yale |
| CantoneseFor Standard Cantonese Barnett-Chao Canton Hong Kong Government Jyutping Meyer-Wempe Sidney Lau Yale |
| Min NanFor Hainanese Hainanhua Pinyin Fang'an For Taiwanese Pe̍h-oē-jī For Teochew Peng'im |
| HakkaFor Moiyan dialect Kejiahua Pinyin Fang'an |
| Universal General Chinese |
fr:Romanisation cantonaise zh:粵語拼音文字 Wade-Giles, sometimes abbreviated Wade, is a Romanization (phonetic notation and Transliteration) system for the Chinese language based on the form of Mandarin used in Beijing. It developed from a system produced by Thomas Wade in the mid-19th century, and reached settled form with Herbert Giles's Chinese-English Dictionary of 1912. It was the main system of transliteration in the English-speaking world for most of the 20th century, replacing the Nanjing-based romanization systems that had been common until late in the 19th century.
The Republic of China has used Wade-Giles for decades as the De facto standard, co-existing with several official but obscure Romanizations in succession, namely, Gwoyeu Romatzyh (1928), MPS II (1986), and Tongyong Pinyin (2000). Taiwanese placenames in international use have still been virtually all in Wade-Giles. Many Taiwanese Americans and Taiwanese Canadians also have their Chinese names written in Wade-Giles, while consistently ignoring some .
The Hanyu Pinyin system is the official and most widely used system in the People's Republic of China. In Singapore, Pinyin is taught in national schools and widely used in official documents, although an about-turn in government policy reversed the requirement to register people's Chinese names in Pinyin. Wade-Giles spellings for Taiwanese placenames and words long accepted in English usage are still used interchangeably in English language texts in both countries, however. The famous past Chinese men Confucius and Mencius, who became known of in Europe early, are usually known in these Latinized forms.
On the other hand, people unfamiliar with the Wade-Giles often ignore the apostrophes, even so far as leaving them out when copying texts, unaware that they represent vital information. Hanyu Pinyin addresses this issue by employing the Latin letters customarily used for voiced stops, unneeded in Mandarin, to represent the unaspirated stops: b, p, d, t, g, k, zh/j, ch/q.
Partly because of the popular omission of the apostrophe, the four sounds represented in Hanyu Pinyin by j, q, zh, and ch all become ch in many literature and personal names. However, were the diacritics to be kept, the system reveals a symmetry that leaves no overlap:
ch (Pinyin j) and ch (Pinyin q) are always before either i or ü.
What is actually pronounced as -uo is virtually always written as -o in Wade-Giles, except shuo and the three syllables of kuo, k'uo, and huo, which already have the counterparts of ko, k'o, and ho that represent pinyin ge, ke, and he.
If the syllable is not the first in a word, its first letter is not capitalized, even if it is a proper noun. The use of apostrophes, hyphens, and capitalization is frequently not observed in placenames and personal names. For example, the majority of Overseas Chinese of Taiwanese origin write their given names like "Tai Lun" or "Tai-Lun", whereas the Wade-Giles actually writes "Tai-lun". The capitalization issue arises partly because ROC passports indiscriminately capitalize all letters of the holder's names (beside the photograph). It is also due to the misunderstanding that the second syllable is a Middle name. (See also Chinese name)
Wade-Giles uses superscript numbers to indicate tone, and official Pinyin uses diacritics. The tone marks are ignored except in textbooks.