Re: Chinese Dialect Question

On Tue, Sep 30, 2003 at 10:56:39PM -0400, JR wrote:
> on 9/30/03 9:20 PM, H. S. Teoh at hsteoh@QUICKFUR.ATH.CX wrote:
[snip]
> > This is one of the things that turn me off about Pinyin.
>
> Am I the only one who likes it? It has a very distinctive look, and in some
> ways it's very well designed, IMHO. And you do get used to it after a little
> while. It's easier than memorizing thousands of hanzi anyway.
To me, if you care about distinctive look, learn hanzi. :-) Romanization
should at least not deliberately be contrary to common Western phonetic
values for the letters.

[snip]
> > He's pronouncing it right. _Q_ in Pinyin is pronounced something like
> > [ts_h].
>
> Yes, I forgot the aspiration. But /ts_h/ would be spelled |c|, no? |x q j|
> represent the alveo-palatals.
[snip]

I have the misfortune (or perhaps not-so-misfortune) of growing up with a
dialect of Mandarin where all of these are allophonous, so while I can
*hear* the difference when a Beijing speaker says it, I have a hard time
producing it myself for the right words and keeping track of how they are
romanized.


T

--
It only takes one twig to burn down a forest.

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