Re: USAGE: Cantonal spelling

From: "John Cowan"

> It is the standard cross-dialectal order, corresponding to the Middle
> Chinese order and the Mandarin order: ping, shaangh, quh, and ruh
> for syllables ending in stops.  These are conventionally numbered
> 1, 3, 5, 7, leaving 2, 4, 6, 8 for the tones which have appeared by
> tone splits.  By this rule the Mandarin tones should be numbered
> 1, 2, 3, 5; but of course it is conventional to use 4 rather than 5
> for the descendant of the quh tone.
Do you have a central source for this info? I know Karlgren went nuts on
stuff like this, and some of my sources are still in Taiwan, but I feel like
I'm reinventing the wheel by making my own observations on the matter.
Here's what I've gotten so far:

                        Mandarin        Hu        Yue        Min

yin ping                 1                 1            1            1

yang ping              2                 2            4            5

yin shang              3                  3           2             2

yang shang           3                  2            5             2

yin qu                  4                  3            3             3

yang qu               4                   2           6             7

yin ru               1234                4            3             4

yang ru               24                 5             6             8


Mandarin: standard values
Hu: T1 (53), T2 (13) (I hear 24ish), T3 (34), T4 (5, clipped, [only a
glottal stop]), T5 (24?, clipped, [glottal stop] (rising tones are marked by
voiced initial consonants)
Yue: T1 (55), T2 (35), T3 (33), T4 (21), T5 (13), T6 (11) (I haven't figured
out where clipped first tones fit into all of this)
Min: T1 (44), T2 (52), T3 (21), T4 (33, clipped), T5 (24), T7 (33), T8 (44,
clipped)

(Looks good from here, but I'm awful at making columns in email, hope this
comes out reasonably decent.)

> > T1  55
> > T2  35
> > T3  33
> > T4  21
> > T5  13
> > T6  11
> Your order looks like the yiin tones followed by the yang ones.
Yes. I'd never thought of this.

> 1       2       3       4       5       6       (mine)
> 1       4       2       5       3       6       (Kou's)
It's not *my* order :) Dictionaries from several divergent sources all use
it (both sides of the Strait, even), so I assume it is some sort of
standard, if not the cross-dialectal standard you cite.

> Bakfong tonghmaaih yadhtauh, yaurh yatcix haihsuex zangleunnh keuirh
leurnghkox
> zizong pin yatkox purnsixh taayh.  Sikzigh korzannh sir, yaurh yatkox
yanh,
> zeugzuexh yatkinnh nuernhnuernhkex zeunghpour haih kox suex ginggwox.
> Not pretty, but this is only the first cut.
"Bakfong" was the key, and since we seem to have all the same books :), it
was easy to find the text you're using. Without cheating, however, it would
have been impossible for me decipher ("bakfong" and "tonghmaaih" are rather
transparent, but it unraveled after that for me). I appreciate the
difficulties you face, and look forward to the second cut.

Kou

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