"Kung pao chicken" or "kong pao chicken"?

[shanrina]

I recently came across a mention of "kong pao chicken" in something I'm editing, and I can't figure out if it's a typo/misspelling or just another way to transliterate "kung pao chicken." The author is in Australia but I'm supposed to be using British English overall, so I'd appreciate input from Australian and British English speakers. Thanks!

Comments

[whswhs]

Here in San Diego, my former doctor was named K.C. Hung, but the surname was pronounced "Hong," and I could imagine its being so transliterated. The Roman alphabet doesn't represent Chinese phonemes very well.

[shanrina]

Huh. Interesting. Thanks!

[leyosura]

British English speaker here. I call it Kung Pao.

[shanrina]

Thanks!

[lareinemisere]

I'm British and would usually expect to see 'Kung Pao'... but I don't think 'Kong Pao' is wrong, as I spent long enough teaching in ethnically diverse schools to know that non-European names are transliterated in all sorts of interesting ways in English.

Googling gives 682k results for 'Kung Pao chicken' and 204k for 'Kong Pao chicken' (and a Wikipedia entry high on the first list suggests it's also sometimes transliterated as 'Gong Bao').

On that basis, I'd be inclined to leave it as in the source text...

[shanrina]

Thanks!

[muckefuck]

The Chinese for "Kung Pao" is 宫保 (lit. "palace guardian", a reference to the Qing Dynasty official for whom the dish was named). The standard transcription of this would be Gōngbǎo (Pinyin) or Kung¹-pao³ (Wade-Giles). As you can see, the conventional spelling is simply the Wade-Giles transcription without the tone marks. Kong pao strikes me as an odd sort of compromise between the two. (The actual Chinese pronunciation of the first syllable is [kʊŋ˥], so kong is nearer the mark than kung, which would generally be pronounced [ˈkʰʌŋ˥˩].)

[shanrina]

Thanks!

[sam_t]

I have seen it spelt in a number of different ways on UK restaurant menus, including 'Gong Bao' and 'Kung Po' as well as the two you mention.