This bit, at least, is consistent; Wade-Giles would render it Ssu-ma Ch'ien, and thus it's only the ch/x collapse that you've identified anent the prior example.
The fifth is Mandarin sh
This one does seem a bit like willful ignorance, insofar as English sh ~= pinyin x (the converse).
Agreed that he seems to've collapsed graphemes without sufficient attention to the phonemes underlying them, perhaps more simply than you outline. Does it seem possible that the intended effect is to consolidate unfamiliar things for people who don't know any Mandarin or Greek? (Or Latin--I haven't studied Greek but your examples there are clear enough.)
no subject
This bit, at least, is consistent; Wade-Giles would render it Ssu-ma Ch'ien, and thus it's only the ch/x collapse that you've identified anent the prior example.
The fifth is Mandarin sh
This one does seem a bit like willful ignorance, insofar as English sh ~= pinyin x (the converse).
Agreed that he seems to've collapsed graphemes without sufficient attention to the phonemes underlying them, perhaps more simply than you outline. Does it seem possible that the intended effect is to consolidate unfamiliar things for people who don't know any Mandarin or Greek? (Or Latin--I haven't studied Greek but your examples there are clear enough.)