Posted by Lisa C (67.113.230.217) on December 05, 2003 at 17:29:05:
In Reply to: my last name---ip posted by Peter Ip on November 24, 2003 at 06:09:59:
Chinese has tons of dialects besides Madarin and Cantonese. Each dialect would pronounce words differently. Cantonese has lots of dialects too. You can't really say Mandarin Spelling and Cantonese spelling since until recently it wasn't standardized and if you're family immigrated to other countries it just depended on the immigration officials thought was the closest spelling.
Ex. My grandma moved from China to HK in 1958 or so. Her last name is Chau. My great-aunt moved to HK earlier and her name is Chow. My great-uncle moved to Mexico and his name is spelled Chio. My dad's cousins in the US range from Jew to Joe. Our family is from outside of Guangzhou in the Sei Yap area so we pronounce it Jew. The spelling in Pinyin is Zhou. The same as Zhou En-Lai.
It's still the same Chinese character.