Re: Tone Romanization: Opinions Sought

Roger Mills wrote:
> David Peterson wrote:
>
>
>>As I said in an earlier post, I'm developing a tone language....(snip)....
>>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., 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.)
>
>
> I encountered the same problem with Gwr.  Diacritics would be the desirable
> solution, but since I'm using "è" (e-grave) or "æ" (ae-lig) for /E/,
> "ò"(o-grave) for /O/ and "ÿ" (y-uml) for /1/, it's not possible (within my
> abilities), nor particularly attractive. I don't want diacritics following
> words, that looks messy, and acute and grave are sometimes hard to see.
>
> So for purely mnemonic purposes, and to enable readers (and me) to pronounce
> things accurately, I went with superscript letters, as you can see in my Gwr
> text at: http://steen.free.fr/relay10/gwr.html   In recent emails, and for
> my own temporary purposes, I've been using in-line _hyphen plus letter_...
> well, it works :-(
>
>>From a professional, descriptive and aesthetic POV, superscript numbers
> would be best; but that would present problems for the casual reader, who
> might not know, or might tend to forget, the number=tone correlations. (Just
> as I, for ex., have no idea how "zhong1guo2" should be read.)   Also, of
> course, superscripts are so easy to do in HTML, though cumbersome in normal
> typing.
Actually I prefer the / \ ^ _ - system you used on your webpage,
since you don't have to think in English to make them work,
only I would put the diacritics (other than the hyphen, maybe)
*before* the syllable.  Alternatively you may devise digraphs
for /E O i\/ and use diacritics _é è ê ë e_ for those tones.

>>
>>http://dedalvs.free.fr/sheli/tone.html
>>
>>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?
>
>
> As I say, I think superscript numbers are desirable, but superscript letters
> are more practical. One problem with your examples, is your italic
> type-face, which makes them a little too small, hard to read. (The font Jan
> used for the relay texts is particularly clear.)
>
> As to how you correlate number=tone, 1 - 5  hi-lo or 5 - 1 etc. is a matter
> of choice AFAICS.
Not really.  YR Chao always used 1 for lowest and 5 for highest.
I once read a book on Lhasa Tibetan which used the opposite and
was utterly confused...  The problem with numbers is that _1_ looks
too much like _l_ (lowercase L) in Courier.

> Maybe you will find something within the language that
> would justify one choice over another. ----Needless to say, in native Gwr
> script, tone marking is not a problem; after much thought, I've decided to
> go with the largish, rather representational marks that embrace the syllable
> character (I tried smaller diacritic-type things, which didn't work, didn't
> look good).
>
>>(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).
>
>
> Agreed.
>
>
>> Do you think this is better or worse
>>than the Pinyin convention?
>>
>
> The Pinyin isn't all that bad; I just don't like numbers interrupting the
> flow of text.
>
>
>>(3) Can you think of any different ideas?
>
>
> No :-(
I have on occasion used the following for Tibetan:

pa	na	high level
pa`	na`	high falling
ba	'na	low level
ba`	'na`	low falling
'ba		low with voiced stop
pha		high level with aspirated stop
bha		low level with aspirated stop
'ngaa		low level with long vowel


--

/BP 8^)
--
B.Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se

         Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant!
                                             (Tacitus)

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