Talk:Kulangsu

su

@RcAlex36 Hey- I would like to share my nascent viewpoint on the 'su' romanization vis-a-vis 嶼／屿 (yǔ). One of the frustrating things about working on islands in the Fujian/Fukien area is that 嶼 was apparently ㄒㄩˋ xù in someone's dictionary at some point. (I personally have never encountered this sound for this character in real life or in a video.) When I see 'su' here, I'm thinking that this could be a reflection of the mythical ㄒㄩˋ xù pronunciation from Mandarin for 嶼. This would be parallel to etymology 2 & 3 on the Suchow page, where a ㄒㄩ xu syllable is transliterated as 'su'. Therefore, I hesitantly disagree with the etymology here. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 16:43, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative: Are there other similar examples? If yes, you are probably correct. RcAlex36 (talk) 16:51, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

Here's kind of the phenomena I'm talking about where I think I'm seeing "Mandarin 'su'=嶼", although these could be interpreted the same way you interpret Kulangsu:

"Liehsü (Liehhsü) 烈嶼 福建省南部厦門-金門島間" (1939 Japan- A Gazetteer of Chinese Geographical Names, p.156, line 5 or 7)

"Because of the subsidence of the North Taiwan Ridge and the Pengchiasu Platform, the Taiwan Basin gradually expanded in size toward the west (Fig. 5)." (interpreting Pengchiasu as 彭佳嶼--unfortunately I can't see Figure 5, which would be helpful--1983 Geology and Hydrocarbon Potential of the South China Sea and Possibilities of Joint Development, p.426)

"It passes the south of Huapingsu in the form of a "valley" and extends further westward beyond the surveying region." (interpreting Huapingsu as 花瓶嶼--1992 Acta Oceanographica Taiwanica p.81)

Obviously this is not conclusive; I will look for more examples as I go along.

Also, the Sinkiang page has an example of Sü = 徐 --Geographyinitiative (talk) 17:37, 16 May 2021 (UTC)