Sinowikinese/Gradual Karma

Introduction

My hypothesis on the reason why Pinyin and Wade Giles isn't widely used among native Chinese speakers and not widely understood by native non-Chinese speakers is similiar to the reason why Esperanto never took off and Wikipedia's growth has been exponential... it's organic. It evolves. It grows over time to reflect the people who use it and understand it. Artificially made/maintained ideas, particularly languages and lingustic systems, have had a very poor track record compared to those that can adapt as needed from outside stimuli.

The Idea

1. A certain number of Chinese speakers(a certain number for each dialect most likely), will say a word in Chinese, enough so it can be understood despite any differences of speech patterns from the speaker(young girls sound different from old men from other people and so on). However, there shouldn't be too many so the listener doesn't get overloaded.

1. Then, a certain number of non-Chinese speakers (from a wide range of sources, perhaps different languages or perhaps just English since it's becoming a global lingua franca), will listen to each word and then write the word down.(via a Double-blind study)

1. The composite/consensus spelling of the word will become the way the word is spelled in Latin script.

1. If a clear spelling cannot be attained or is the same as another word (no homonyms), the number of non-English speakers will be raised in the hope that eventually there will be a consensus. If there still isn't a consensus, all the options accumulated to this point will be whittled down through an instant run-off system.

Polls

Outside Views

Good things, bad things, etc.

Starting The System

If it's a good idea, eventually this page will be the starting point this system and we'll put up some words.

Special Thanks

• John Lennon for his song Instant Karma, although this system definately won't come instantly, the variation of the song name does make it sound cool.