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Tone Romanization: Opinions Sought

From:David Peterson <thatbluecat@...>
Date:Friday, October 1, 2004, 6:17
As I said in an earlier post, I'm developing a tone language.   I've
come up with tones and derived them in a way that satisfies me
[to be read: don't fact-check me, linguists!   I'm defenseless!], but
I've been pretty much forced into using exponents for tone.   The
reason is that I really don't like the Pinyin convention of putting
a full-sized number after the word, e.g., "zhong1guo2".   Looks
too monolinear to me.   This is why I decided on exponents.
(Well, that combined with the fact that using any system of
diacritics proved impossible.)

Anyway, I've come up with three possible systems, and I've listed
them here:

http://dedalvs.free.fr/sheli/tone.html

I'm in the process of creating this page, and I've kind of gotten
stuck on this romanization issue.   On this page you'll see three
lists.   Each list will show what the exponent for each tone is, and
below each list will be an example of a nonce six syllable compound
with each of the six different tones.

Anyway, if I may, I'd like to ask for the following info from
anyone who wants to offer their opinion:

(1) If it had to be one of these three systems, which would you
prefer just based on the look of it?

(2) The reason I wanted to use exponents is so the tone letter is
on a different level than the word (especially important for a
sytem that uses letters).   Do you think this is better or worse
than the Pinyin convention?

(3) Can you think of any different ideas?

Thanks in advance!

-David
*******************************************************************
"sunly eleSkarez ygralleryf ydZZixelje je ox2mejze."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."

-Jim Morrison

http://dedalvs.free.fr/

Replies

Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
Muke Tever <hotblack@...>
Roger Mills <rfmilly@...>