Yue/Cantonese (was Re: "...two Moscovites conversing in English" )

In a message dated 23.09.2001 07:55:48 PM, cowan@MERCURY.CCIL.ORG writes:

>J Y S Czhang scripsit:
>
>>     More strange is _bok qwai_* more fluent in my dialect weighin' the
pros &
>> cons of various Romanizations of Cantonese.
>
>So weigh in already.  And hey, I don't speak a word of Cantonese, and I'm
>the one hacking about with the "Cantonal spelling"...
>
    Okay, I am usta the Yale Romanizations of Yue (Cantonese) & personally
recall that there was a Berlitz-style system that I read in one of the Lonely
Planet travel survival phradebooks that struck me as bein' pretty damn good
_ruff ahproixieashuns_ of Yue.

    som t'ing liek:
        _nEe Gah pÿNhG-YAWh_ for _n'eih ge pa'nhg-ya'uh_

    Then again I like things like Tok Pisin/Bislama's orthography, Nue Spelin
Inglish, the phonological change as seen in Sanskrit's mutation to Pali [i.e.
_Dharma_ to _Dhamma_, _karma_ to _kamma_,etc.] , etc ;)

    czHANg, ponderin' the "poetic beauty" of Archaic & Classical Chinese,
wonderin' how to appropriate some of this terseness into his conlang creole
(kreol) _Trÿpang_

"It would be ironic if the answer to Babel
were pidgin and not Pentecost."
- George Steiner,  _After Babel:
  Aspects of Language & Translation_

<< One thing foreigners, computers, & poets
have in common is that they make
unexpected linguistic associations. >>
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    - creative cyberneticist *