Spelling and pronunciation
In English, the words "Daoism" and "Taoism" are the subject of an ongoing controversy over the preferred romanization. In linguistic terminology, English Taoism/Daoism is a calque formed from the Chinese loanword tao/dao ? "way; route; principle" and the native suffix -ism. The sometimes heated arguments over Taoism vs. Daoism involve sinology, phonemes, loanwords, and politics - not to mention whether Taoism should be pronounced /'tau.izem/ or /'dau.izem/.
Daoism is consistently pronounced /'dau.izem//, but English speakers disagree whether Taoism should be /'tau.izem/ or /'dau.izem/. In theory, both Wade-Giles tao and Pinyin dao are articulated identically, as are Taoism and Daoism. An investment book titled The Tao Jones Averages (a pun on the Dow Jones Indexes) illustrates this /dau/ pronunciation's widespread familiarity. In speech, Tao and Taoism are often pronounced /'tau/ and 'tau.izem/, reading the Chinese unaspirated lenis ("weak") /t/ as the English voiceless stop consonant /t/. Lexicography shows American and British English differences in pronouncing Taoism. A study of major English dictionaries published in Great Britain and the United States found the most common Taoism glosses were /'tau.izem/ in British sources and /'dau.izem/, 'tau.izem/ in American ones.