Ken Arneson jumps over from Catfish Stew to provide this linguistics lesson.

There is some debate in the comments on Dodger Thoughts about whether Hong-Chih Kuo's last name should be spelled/pronounced Kuo or Guo. For those who are interested, I believe I can shed some scientific light on the issue.

First of all, let us begin by stating that there are not two, but three different sounds involved in the discussion. Let us define those sounds using the terminology of linguistic science.

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When linguists describe consonants, there are three primary attributes that they use to distinguish one consonant from another.

Voice: With some consonants, we vibrate our vocal cords, and others we do not. Compare the English sounds of f and v. The only difference between the two sounds is that f is voiceless and v is voiced.

Place: The place of articulation indicates where you restrict the airflow out of your mouth, using either your tongue, lips or teeth. Compare the English sounds of d and g. The sounds are identical except for the location of the tongue in the mouth.

Manner (airflow): The manner of articulation indicates what kind of restriction you are making on the airflow. Compare the English sounds of b and m. Both sounds are made by closing the lips together, but the former temporarily stops the airflow through the mouth, while the latter redirects the airflow through the nasal cavity.

Those are the primary attributes of consonants. There are others. For example, with the manner of articulation called a "stop", there is an additional attribute:

Aspiration: When pronouncing a "stop" consonant, the release of the stop may or may not be followed by a short puff of air. This puff is called "aspiration".

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Now before we move on to the issue of Kuo/Guo, we need to understand one more concept: the difference between phonetics and phonemics.

Phonetics refers to the actual pronunciation of a word. Phonemics refers to our mental classifications of these sounds. Our mental classification affects how we hear a pronunciation.

In English, for example, we use two distinct "k" sounds, but we only hear one. The "k" in the word "kin" and the "k" in the word "skin" are physically different sounds. But we think of them as the same sound.

In other languages, such as Taiwanese, those two "k" sounds are mentally classified as two separate sounds, two different phonemes.

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OK, now to the Kuo/Guo issue. As I said there are three sounds involved in this issue. Here they are, along with their International Phonetic Alphabet symbols:

As you can see, we're dealing with three velar stops. That means that each of these sounds are made by placing the tongue at the back of the mouth, and temporarily stopping the airflow out of the mouth. The differences are in voice and aspiration.

Kuo's name is pronounced with the sound in the middle of these three columns, a voiceless unaspirated velar stop.

English Phonemes

The English language has all three of these sounds. However, we mentally group the voiceless sounds together into one phoneme, spelled in our orthography with the letter "k". Here's a chart of how English speakers mentally organize these sounds:

So while the English language does have the sound used in the correct pronunciation of Kuo's name, that sound is never used in this context. English pronunciation "rules" state that when a "k" sound is the first sound in the word and is followed by a vowel, we always aspirate the "k". These rules get hardwired into our brains as we learn our native tongues, and are extremely difficult to override. That's why non-native speakers of languages nearly always speak with an accent.

This gives us hardwired English speakers a choice between two mistakes: we can can choose to incorrectly aspirate the sound (k^huo), or we can choose to incorrectly voice the sound (guo). The natural thing for an English speaker to do is to choose aspiration, since we mentally classify the correct sound as a "k".

Mandarin Phonemes

Mandarin Chinese, which I believe is Kuo's native tongue, only has two of these three sounds. It lacks a voiced velar stop. It only has two voiceless ones: aspirated and unaspirated. If a Mandarin speaker hears a voiced unaspirated velar stop such as the English "g" sound, s/he will mentally classify it as being the same phoneme as the voiceless unaspirated velar stop.

And in fact, Pinyin, the most common roman orthography for writing Chinese, uses the letter "g" to symbolize the voiceless unaspirated velar stop.

To a Mandarin ear, when given the choice to incorrectly aspirate the sound or incorrectly voice the sound, the choice is obvious: choose the voice. guo is closer to kuo than k^huo, because voice is an irrelevant attribute in this context. Aspiration is the attribute that differentiates the sounds, so that's the most important element to get right.  Even if it's off phonetically, choosing "guo" is choosing the correct phoneme and the correct spelling.

Taiwanese Phonemes

The situation is further complicated, however, in that Kuo comes from Taiwan. 70% of Taiwan residents speak Taiwanese, which is a member of the Sino-Tibetan language family with Mandarin and other Chinese languages. Taiwanese has an important difference from most other members of this language family: unlike Mandarin, and like English, it does have a voiced velar stop.

Unlike English and Mandarin speakers, who mentally cluster these three sounds into two groups, Taiwanese speakers consider these three sounds as three separate phonemes. The most common Taiwanese orthography, POJ, uses "k" to symbolize the sound used in Kuo's name:

So here's the issue for Kuo/Guo. If he spells his name "Guo", his fellow Taiwanese-speaking, POJ-reading friends will go all up in arms because, well, his name is clearly spelled Kuo and pronounced Kuo. And if you were Kuo, who would you rather keep happy, your fellow Taiwanese, or those dumb Americans who can't say Kuo, only Khuo or Guo?

It may seem easy and obvious just to ask Kuo how he pronounces his name. But who's going to hear his response? If you just sent three reporters in, one English, one Mandarin, and one Taiwanese, to hear him say his name, unless they knew what to listen for, the three reporters are going to have three different interpretations of what they heard. That's how language and the brain works.

Without asking Kuo to settle the issue once and for all, perhaps the optimal solution for English-speaking media is this: spell it Kuo, but pronounce it Guo. Taiwanese ears will be unhappy no matter how we mispronounce it, but at least it'll keep the Mandarin ears happy. And we can make the Taiwanese eyes happy by getting the spelling right, if nothing else.