Re: USAGE: Cantonal spelling

From: Douglas Koller (aka moi)

> John wrote:
> >My understanding is that voiced initials are identified with tone 2.
But in Taiwanese, the voiced initials occur in every tone. Don't know what
that means. Surely there can't have been that many tone fissures.

> You'll notice that there is no tone 6 listed. My dictionary's at
> home, so I'm not 100% sure, but yang shang was probably originally
> listed as tone 6.
Yep, I'm home, and I guessed right.

>It has been said that
> there is a mnemonic poem, two lines of four characters each, where
> each character is a different tone; first syllable, first tone,
> second syllable, second tone, etc.
Adam, since you're there, maybe you could hunt down that poem? Taiwanese
don't study Taiwanese formally in school, so you're unlikely to find an
average Joe who knows it, but if you study at TLI or Mary Knoll (does
Kaohsiung have these? they must.), a Taiwanese teacher may know.

Kou