Qigong Meditation

Why is Qigong spelled with a Q?

Qi is pronounced ‘Chee’. English speakers often ask why it is spelled with a ‘Q.’ The enormous task of converting Chinese characters to alphabet was attempted by western missionaries in the 1800s. A system known as ‘Wade-Giles’ was popular in academia for a time, but it was far from perfect.

A better system created by the Chinese government in the 1950s. At the time, they were influenced by Eastern European alphabets more than English: the country was essentially closed to English speakers for that decade. This created some quirks, such as ‘Qi’ being pronounced ‘Chee.’ Once these quirks are retained–and there are not many, then the words are easier to sound out for beginners. It was called Pin-yin. When China re-opened to the West in the 1980s, journalists recognized this great gift of Chinese scholarship, and adopted Pinyin for all news and academic publishing in the US.

For example, in the old Wade-Giles system, the capital ‘Peking’ and the loftiest philosophical concept of ‘Tao’ aren’t recognizable to a Chinese speaker. However an English speaker can wing it with Beijing and Dao in Pinyin to sound more like the original Chinese.

You will find both systems on the internet. I recommend Pinyin for you as the most consistent for better search results.

You may see some teachers write Qi Gong as ‘Chi Kung’ and many other variations, in an attempt to have a natural-sounding transliteration of Chinese characters into alphabet. This may be necessary for promotional materials, but the matter should be clarified for deeper study. You will find many more scientific articles in PubMed on Qigong than any similar term. Today when we go to the US National Library of Medicine (PubMed) and type Qigong, there are 1,351 scientific articles going back to 1981; for Chi Kung there are exactly 4.