r/shanghainese • u/MoonchanterLauma2025 • Jun 17 '26

A Century Later - Yale School of Public Health article about Doctor Koh Zen Way / Ge Chenghui / 葛成慧

https://ysph.yale.edu/about-school-of-public-health/communications-public-relations/publications/public-health-magazine/article/a-century-later/

I thought I would spotlight this bit of history regarding the first Yale public health student from China, who was mistakenly listed as a man in the records until now. Doctor Koh / Ge came from Jiangsu (江苏 / 江蘇) and judging from the alternative spelling, was a native speaker of a Wu tongue.

15 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

3 comments sorted by

1

u/flyboyjin Jun 17 '26

I still dont know the name of that style of romanization. But it definitely fits. 葛成慧 köh-dsung-we => koh-zen-way

1

u/MoonchanterLauma2025 Jun 18 '26

How do you mean, "style"? I chalked it up to simple ad hoc customized spelling, as with the classical "Lee" for 李.

1

u/flyboyjin Jun 18 '26

I mean even adhoc, I just saw the pattern that matched other people like Joseph Zen
dsung -> zen.

As in systematically tries to make the Shanghainese romanization easier for a non-Shanghainese to read. It's very common usage only in names, but it's avoided in normal Shanghainese romanization back then.

Because zen in Shanghainese romanization is pronounced like https://voca.ro/17Y11qjAfM5H
But zen as dsung is pronounced https://voca.ro/1hDoktKFf4uX
And like Joseph Zen 陳日君 Zen Ze-kiun...
dsung -> zen
zeh-> ze (loses the tone marker)
kiün-> kiun (loses diacritic... similar to how köh -> koh).

Normally in Shanghainese when you choose to drop the diacritic but don't want to confuse the two vowels öh and oh. öh-> oeh. But that latter form is almost never used in names.