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Re: USAGE: Yet another try at Pinyin-compatible tonal spelling for Mandarin

From:Adam Walker <dreamertwo@...>
Date:Tuesday, September 18, 2001, 8:24
Oh, no!  Please, no!  This is worse than Tong Yong pin yin!  It has all the
nastiness of Gwoyeu Romatzyh with none of the virtues of Pinyin.  I shivver
just looking at it.  And to thing I've been ranting about Tong Young.

Adam who HATES tonal spelling, but still inflicted it on a conlang once.

So lift the cup of joy and take a big drink.
In spite of it all it's a beautiful world.
-------Suzanne Knutzen




>From: John Cowan <cowan@...> >Reply-To: Constructed Languages List <CONLANG@...> >To: CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU >Subject: USAGE: Yet another try at Pinyin-compatible tonal spelling for > Mandarin >Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2001 00:54:02 -0400 > >The virtues of tonal spelling are well-known for languages like Hmong, >which can >add otherwise unused finals like -b and -s to indicate the tone. Mandarin >has >too many sounds for that: the standard Pinyin orthography uses every basic >Latin letter except v, and five diacritics: symbols for tones 1, 2, 3, and >4, >and diaeresis over u when it represents /y/. > >Gwoyeu Romatzyh is a tonal spelling requiring no diacritics, but it is very >complex and messy. This proposal is meant to add the virtues of >diacritic-lless >spelling to the comparative simplicity of Pinyin. > >The tonal McGuffin here is to represent the long tones 1 and 3 by a doubled >vowel, and the low(-ending) tones 3 and 4 by an -h suffix. Thus >ma1, ma2, ma3, and ma4 are respectively maa, ma, maah, mah. >The h is placed after the final (hen3 is written heenh, shang4 as shangh). >However, the retroflex r remains after the h, since it is not really >part of the final, except in the case of the final "er". > >A few special cases: > >1) If one syllable of a compound word ends in h, and the next begins >with a, e, o, or u, then an apostrophe is inserted, similar to the >aprostrophe used between finals ending in -n and initials beginning with g. > >2) In syllables like dui, where the main vowel is not written, it is >"doubled" by being written: so dui2 is dui, but dui1 is duei. > >In Pinyin, the u-umlaut is used only after l and n; in all other cases, >its presence can be inferred from the other letters, and it is written u. >In this proposal, the forms lyu and nyu are used. > >3) Toneless syllables are written as if in tone 2. > >Here's a sentence: > >Waihbian jinhlaile yi ge ren liaangh ge hong yaanhjing, yi fuh dah yuan >liaanh, daih zhe yi ge xiaaoh maohzi, taa xingh Xiah. > >-- >John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org >Please leave your values | Check your assumptions. In fact, > at the front desk. | check your assumptions at the >door. > --sign in Paris hotel | --Miles Vorkosigan
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John Cowan <cowan@...>