Talk:K'o-shih

Maybe a mistaken transliteration?

I personally guess that the Wade-Giles derived term "K'o-shih" (which would match to Hanyu Pinyin-derived "Keshi") is a mistaken transliteration. Although the character "喀" does have the pronunciation "kè" in rare situations, I have no good evidence that Mandarin Chinese speakers have ever said "Kèshí" and been referring to Kashgar. I don't know if the locals in Kashgar might have Youbian dubian (unlikely to me) or if someone at the Army Map Service was not fluent enough with Mandarin leading to a cascading effect of decades of using a transliteration which was a mistake (extremely likely to my mind- "good enough for government work"). If "Kèshí" was a legit transliteration, I would expect "Keshi" to appear in some documents sometimes, but I haven't seen it yet. Regardless of all this, the fact that "K'o-shih" is probably derived a mistaken transliteration does not mean this term is not part of English: descriptive, not prescriptive! I have attempted to demonstrate here that "K'o-shih" was in common use in US government-related materials in the mid to late 20th century and even today, it is still considered a variant form of Kashgar in the GEOnet database. If it could be clearly demonstrated to be based on a mistake or something, I think that this information should be made into a usage note. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 04:50, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

See a parallel situation to K'a-shih-K'o-shih in Chia-shih-Ch'ieh-shih. See also Hsichih-Shihchih. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 12:03, 1 September 2020 (UTC) (Modified)