Re: Tone Romanization: Opinions Sought

On Fri, 1 Oct 2004 02:17:27 EDT, David Peterson <ThatBlueCat@...> wrote:
> 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?
The all-numbers one, though probably only because numeration is more "familiar" than letteration.

> (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?
Better.

> (3) Can you think of any different ideas?
The Yale Romanization for Cantonese gets by with just acute and grave (and
macron), even though Cantonese has six (or seven) tones, by marking the lower
end of the tone scale with an extra letter ("h") and leaving some vowels
undiacritiqued:

1  High-flat     sï   sïn   (macrons here)
1  High-falling  sì   sìn	
2  Mid-rising    sí   sín	
3  Mid-flat      si   sin   sik	
4  Low-falling   sìh  sìhn	
5  Low-rising    síh  síhn	
6  Low-flat      sih  sihn  sihk

[Examples out of Wikipedia.]

Would something like that be feasible? Seeing that your vowels already bear
diacritics, maybe not directly. But perhaps the role of the diacritics could be
performed another way, such as orthographic doubling: sii, siih, sihh, or with
a freestanding diacritic such as ', like maybe:

Superhigh   baa
High        ba
Mid         bah
Low         baah
Falling     bà  (or ba`)
Rising      bá  (or ba´)


	*Muke!
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