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Re: Chinese Dialect Question

From:H. S. Teoh <hsteoh@...>
Date:Wednesday, October 1, 2003, 2:55
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

Replies

JR <fuscian@...>
Joe <joe@...>