Re: Chinese Dialect Question

----- Original Message -----
From: "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2003 3:56 AM
Subject: [OT] 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_.

Actually, I quite like |x| as a sibilant.  That's quite easy to get used to.