Re: USAGE: Chinese Romanization (was: USAGE: Help with Chinese phrase)

On 8 Sep 2004 Ray Brown <ray.brown@FREE..> wrote:

> I have always been struck by certainly resemblances between Turkish and
> Volapük orthography (the use of the trema and the peculiar value of |c| =
> [dZ] are obvious examples), that I had long wondered if Atatürk had known
> Volapük. But it appears that these resemblances are just co-incidental.
  Turks has a long connection with Venice. Italian use |c| for /tS/
before front vowels, and common Italian /tS/ is often voiced in
Venice dialect, cf. |duce| ~ |doge|. IMHO it was the possible
source of Turkish |c| /dZ/. It was supported by other previous
Balkan solutions as Rumanian |c| for /tS/ and Albanian |ç| for
/tS/.

  Cedilla (or comma below) as an accent had traditions on Balkan,
cf. former Croatian solution for |lj| as l-cedilla. This, supported
by Romance |ç|, made cedilla as a general accent mark in Rumanian,
cf. |s,| s-cedilla /S/ and |t,| t-cedilla /ts/. Rumanian and
Turkish share not only |s,| /S/ but |j| /Z/ in the same value and
circumflex accent on |a| and |i|, however, with different value.

  For |ü| and |ö|, I am sceptical about Hungarian relations.
Hungarian has a solution for marking long vowels with acute,
however, Turkish uses circumflex for long /a:/, /u:/ and /i:/. It
is more likely that they were borrowed from German, since it has no
monographs for long vowels.

  Therefore Turkish system is a balkanized amalgam of various
Romance conventions plus German for un-Romance front round vowels.
Schleyer faced a similar problem as Turks with a similar phoneme
inventory. And similar circumstances may lead to similar solutions
even independently, cf. dolphins and sharks, hummingbird hawk moth
and hummingbird, thylacines and canines etc.


> Pinyin does allow the alternative spelling _lyu_ and _nyu_. One
> wonders why they didn't simply adopt the alternative forms as
> standard.
  IMHO _lyu_ and _nyu_ is a bit odd, off-system solution. It
implies a velar glide ending (the first palatal glide of the coda
is rendered as |i| in other finals). Russian solution is a bit more
appropriate since the final glide is palatal: Russian {n'u} for PY
|nu| and {n'uj} for |nü|. This could be |nui| or |lui| in PY.

  French is much more systematic: PY final |iu| is always |ieou|
here, therefore they can use |iu| for /y/. In Pinyin there would
have been also possible a |niou| /nju/ ~ |niu| /ny/ contrast. This
solution would be solve also the problem in Pinyin that the same
final is written differently in |you| vs. |jiu|, |liu| etc.

  And of course, simple |ly|, |ny| would be also better choice than
|lyu|, |nyu|.

  IMHO also they were not satisfied with |lyu| and |nyu|. I think
that they defined only for special media such as telegraph.
Hungarian also has a special convention for telegraphic usage, i.e.
vowel doubling instead of acute accent, |oe| for |ö| and |ue| for
|ü| (optionally |ooe| and |uue| for long variants).

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