Re: Tone Romanization: Opinions Sought

Thanks for all the replies!

Muke wrote:

<<
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?
>>
I like this solution, but I don't think it'd be practiceable, for a
number of reasons.   In the actual orthography (it'll be awhile
before I can put anything about *that* monster online...),
something like that is done.   You're able to infer the tone
based on what the coda looks like, a length marker, and extra
length marker, a "mid tone" marker, and the quality of vowel.

B. Philip Jonsson wrote (in reference to Roger's page):

<<
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.
>>
I think characters like / and ^, etc., are just a bit too clunky, for
some reason, though they are more descriptive.   Also, though
in the orthography I devised for Njaama I *do* put the tone
marker before the word, if I go with numbers, I think putting
them at the end will look more familiar, as they'll look like
exponents.

Roger wrote:

<<
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.
>>
I agree on both counts.   For that reason, I've elected to go with 
superscript
numbers *after* the word, but I'm *not* going to base the number on the
level of the tone.   Most people won't recognize that 5 = high and 1 = low,
anyway, and this way I can avoid having two numbers (or letters, which I
don't like) for the contour tones.

Additionally, this will buy me a classificatory system.   If I decide on a 
definite
number for each tone, I can classify words by their tone quite easily, and
refer to "type 1" words and "type 2" words, etc.

By the way, thanks to John for putting up the exact description of
the Hmong/Hmoob tonal orthography!   I always wondered
exactly how it worked, and now I know.   :)

-David
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