Re: Tone Romanization: Opinions Sought

Philip Newton scripsit:

> What are permissible syllable shapes? From the nonce compounds,
> syllables are CV - in which case you could also go the Hmong way and
> use in-line letters to indicate tones: since syllable-final consonants
> are very limited there,
They are in fact non-existent:  a Hmoob syllable is an initial consonant
(or cluster), a vowel, and a tone.

> they can recycle letters for tones since at
> the end of a syllable, they're unambiguously tones rather than
> consonants. I know that at least -j and -b indicate tones there (see
> e.g. "Hmoob" for "Hmong"); I think -s may also be a tonal letter.
The tonal letters are -b (high level), -v (high rising), -j (high
falling), zero (medium level), -s (low level), -g (mid-low and breathy),
-m (low falling), -d (low rising).  A doubled vowel letter indicates
nasalization (which is why Hmoob is alternatively transliterated "Hmong").

> On the other hand, http://dedalvs.free.fr/sheli/phonology.html gives
> some examples of syllable-final consonants, so I'm not sure whether
> that scheme is workable.
Unless codas are very sparse, it probably isn't.

> I'd prefer the "1..6" convention, especially if there is a
> conventional order of tones in Sheli. (For Cantonese, for example,
> I've seen at least two methods of numbering the tones, but at least
> that's better than having no regular numbering at all.)
I tend to agree; but see below.

> I wouldn't call what you describe above "the Pinyin convention" - I
> think that the *real* Pinyin convention is better since the tone is
> marked directly on the vowel, rather than at the end of the syllable,
> and even indicates the tone contour!
The Gua\spi convention is to use a mark like / or \ or = or - *before*
the syllable, which gives you advance warning of what's coming.

> This wouldn't work quite as pictographically in languages such as
> Cantonese or Sheli which have multiple tones with the same contour
> (e.g. level) but at different pitches, but I think that marking above
> the vowel may be the best.
The To`ngwa" Lo`ma'ji romanization of Cantonese
(http://tongwalomaji.onlineblast.com) uses a", a^, ah, a`, a', and a
(or rather their diacritic equivalents) for the six tones of Cantonese
(high level, high rising, mid level, falling, low rising, and low level),
and uses digraphs to write things like rounded vowels (Cantonese has 8
vowel nuclei).  This makes the system completely representable within the
constraints of Latin-1, except for the syllabic nasals m and ng, which
have to be represented with trailing punctuation instead of diacritics.

--
A: "Spiro conjectures Ex-Lax."                  John Cowan
Q: "What does Pat Nixon frost her cakes with?"  jcowan@reutershealth.com
  --"Jeopardy" for generative semanticists      http://www.ccil.org/~cowan

Reply