Where did the romanization of 熟 as "shou" rather than "shu" come from? I see it all over the tea community, but I don't know of a Mandarin romanization scheme that represents the syllable in 熟 as <shou>. I don't know much Chinese; I'm just curious.
Re: Romanization of 熟 / shu / shou
Posted: Sun Dec 31, 2017 10:19 pm
by S_B
I'm going to keep this really short. Somebody's going to come along and pull an "Actually, it's *this* way" on me.
Both ways are acceptable. Generally speaking "shou" is common in colloquial speech, and "shu" is common in narration of text. This may vary from place to place. Some people like to say it is only "shou" in certain specific situations. This is not the case in many places. If I type "shou" into a pinyin IME I will get the character 熟. Likewise, with a Zhuyin IME, ㄕㄡˊ produces the same character. Say what you'd like, they are both the same. I won't argue which is more "correct" or "common"
time stamped example of "shou" being used in Chinese discussing tea:
here is a video about some dayi pu'er that the gentleman calls "shu" cha. Whatever floats your boat!
Source: I teach and tutor Mandarin Chinese, and have asked colleagues in "Chinese Studies" from my Taiwanese University this same topic question.