Re: Chinese Dialect Question

On Tue, Sep 30, 2003 at 07:25:32PM -0700, JS Bangs wrote:
> H. S. Teoh sikyal:
>
> > On Tue, Sep 30, 2003 at 06:42:43PM -0400, JR wrote:
> > > on 9/30/03 5:20 PM, JS Bangs at jaspax@U.WASHINGTON.EDU wrote:
> > >
> > > > In the department I work at, we just got a new grad student from China
> > > > named "Quan Zhou". We naturally pronounced the first part of that as
> > > > /kwan/, more or less, until he arrived and said something more like
> > > > /tSwEn/.
> >
> > Sounds like it's not Guang Zhou (traditionally "Canton"), but a different
> > province.
> >
> > > > This is such a bizarre difference that I had to make a theory
> > > > about why. Either (1) "Quan" is just a truly awful Romanization,
> >
> > This is one of the things that turn me off about Pinyin.
> >
> > > > or (2) "Quan" is a pretty decent Romanization for Mandarin, but
> > > > /tSwEn/ is speaking and pronouncing his name in a different dialect.
> >
> > He's pronouncing it right. _Q_ in Pinyin is pronounced something like
> > [ts_h].
>
> Sheesh. That defeats most of the purpose of a Romanization, as {Quan}
> gives me about as much information about the proper pronunciation as the
> original character does.
Well, back in the Good Old Days, when they used a saner transcription, it
would probably have come out as _chuan_ or _chuen_ instead, which is at
least more likely to be understood as [tsHEn].

> So I guess the "awful Romanization" theory is correct.
[snip]

I'm all for sticking with the original transcription, which, although
imperfect, is at least not pathological, like Pinyin's usage of _q_ for
[ts] and _x_ for a *sibilant* (I believe [s`] or some variant thereof), of
all things. I wish they'd spend their creative efforts on uniquely
representing vowels like [M] (*) or differentiating between [@] and [E],
instead of coming up with such silly uses of _q_ and _x_.

(*) Which is currently represented as _i_, as is [i], making it impossible
to know what is the right pronunciation unless you already know Mandarin
to begin with.


T

--
If you compete with slaves, you become a slave. -- Norbert Wiener

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