Saying Ximending the right way

Ximending is the name of the district change into Roman/English letters. Of course the real name is : 西門町 : but it is normal to change it into English letters for use in English documents. But there are more than one way to do that, using the pinyin system it would be Xīméndīng, which has some unusual accented vowls, while the once popular system called Wade–Giles says it should be Hsi-men-ting. You will also see "She-men Ting", which is a phonetic translation with no particular system. Also Se-mn̂g-teng and Japanese may consider Seimon-chō more accurate.

The truth is that there is no real way to translate a Chinese sound into English letters with absolute accuracy, and the various sytems only work as a guide if you know that system.

Do you know how "X" in "Xemending" should be spoken? In fact it is nothing like "x" in "axel" nor like "xylophone". This "X" is more like the "sh" in "shelter", but with a stronger sound.

While Ximen Ting or "She Men Ting" conveys something of the sound, although it is three Chinese characters the last one starts with a hard "T" sound so seems like a separate word to some people, while the first two words are closer.

Finally, people now say "XMD" sounded out as "eks – em – dee" !