Wudang
11-30-2002, 02:00 PM
A little question!
What's the differences between Gongfu and Kung Fu if only the spelling?
What's the differences between Gongfu and Kung Fu if only the spelling?
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View Full Version : Gong fu?? Wudang 11-30-2002, 02:00 PM A little question! What's the differences between Gongfu and Kung Fu if only the spelling? chufeng 11-30-2002, 02:16 PM It is just the spelling. The older Wade Giles system of phonetically spelling out the term was Kung Fu... The Pinyin system (which is the standard today) spells it Gongfu. The Chinese characters remain unchanged...the meaning is the same. :asian: chufeng theneuhauser 11-30-2002, 05:29 PM also worth noting is that the southern chinese dialect sounds more like "gung fu" while in the northern more staccato inflection sounds like "kung fu". Cthulhu 11-30-2002, 05:37 PM Another explanation I've seen is that 'kung fu' is Mandarin and 'gung/gong fu' is Cantonese. Cthulhu MinnieMin 11-30-2002, 08:44 PM Kung Fu and Gong Fu mean the same thing. Gong Fu is Mandarin. Kung Fu is the English translation for Gong Fu, I guess, like Gongbao Chicken is translated as Kung pao Chicken. Antares33 12-19-2002, 04:32 AM Basically, any time you're trying to translate a language based on a completely different system into our alphabet you're gonna get every possible variety of spelling you can imagine. Add that to the confusion added by the different dialects used in china and you've got one heck of a mess. |