Re: USAGE: Cantonal spelling

laokou scripsit:

> Just asking: Is there a reason behind this particular ordering? 'Cause it
> diverges from the traditional standard:
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.

Note:  When I wrote ying and yaang before, I of course mean yiin and
yang -- it's damn hard to remember, for some reason, that in JCPY
it is tone *2* that looks normal, and tone 1 has the bizarre spellynge...

> T1  55
> T2  35
> T3  33
> T4  21
> T5  13
> T6  11
Your order looks like the yiin tones followed by the yang ones.

Anyhow, here's the first cut at the system I worked out.

The initials are encoded b d g gw, p t k kw, l m n ng, f h, z c s, w y.
The main vowels are encoded a aa, e, eu, i, o, oo u, ue.
(I would have preferred uu to oo, but I accept Lau's usage here.)
Finally, the rest of the final and the tone are encoded thus:

1       2       3       4       5       6       (mine)
1       4       2       5       3       6       (Kou's)

---     h       r       rh      x       xh
i       ih      ir      irh     y       yh
u       uh      ur      urh     w       wh
m       mh      rm      rmh     mm      mmh
n       nh      rn      rnh     nn      nnh
ng      ngh     rng     rngh    nng     nngh
p       ph      rp      rph     b       bh
t       th      rt      rth     d       dh
k       kh      rk      rkh     g       gh


Here's a sample passage:

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.  Six tones and nine terminations is
a lot harder than four tones and three terminations.

--
John Cowan           http://www.ccil.org/~cowan              cowan@ccil.org
Please leave your values        |       Check your assumptions.  In fact,
   at the front desk.           |          check your assumptions at the door.
     --sign in Paris hotel      |            --Miles Vorkosigan

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