Re: USAGE: Cantonal spelling

John wrote:

>  > Hu: T1 (53), T2 (13) (I hear 24ish), T3 (34), T4 (5, clipped, [only a
>>  glottal stop]), T5 (24?, clipped, [glottal stop]
>
>I suppose 4 and 5 (cross-dialectal 7 and 8) can be identified with 1 and 2
>if you like.
I've said before that I lump the clipped and regular level tones
together in Cantonese because they are realized the same. However,
much as I'd like to do so in Shanghainese and Taiwanese also, you
can't because tone sandhi considerations are involved.

>My understanding is that voiced initials are identified with tone 2.
>BTW, is Hu a mere thinko for Wu, or an actual variant name?
"Hu" is the one character name for Shanghai. All the provinces and
several major cities have these one character names ("min" is Fujian,
"yue" is Canton, "gan" is Jianxi, etc.). Totally cool. And I find the
character "hu" aesthetically pleasing. And when I talk about the Wu
dialects, I use Shanghainese as my personal point of reference. That
said, "Wu" (the one character sobriquet for that entire region) would
probably have been more accurate.

>  > Min: T1 (44), T2 (52), T3 (21), T4 (33, clipped), T5 (24), T7 (33), T8 (44,
>>  clipped)
>
>Your table lists tone 2 as both yiin shaangh and yang shaangh, but here you
>list 8 tones.  ???
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. Since it's realized identically with tone 2, tone 6
is never listed in dictionaries or grammars. 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. Since three syllables in the
second line would throw the poem off, a "tone 6" is placed in the
sixth syllable. I guess the tradition is so firmly entrenched that
the 1234578 is still used though there are only seven actual tones.

Kou

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