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

>From: John Cowan <cowan@...>
>Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2001 07:55:52 -0400
>
>Adam Walker scripsit:
>
> > 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.
>
>What's that?  And if you think my poor little scheme has all the nastiness
>of GR, then you have not grokked in fullness just how nasty GR is....
>
Tong Yong is the nasty little politico-linguistic beasty that the gov in
Taipei has chosen as the "official" romanization in Taiwan.  It *is* HYPY
sans "q" and "x".  Which makes for nothing but confusion if you ask me.

As for the full nastines of GR, no, I'm sure I have not grokked it in its
fullness since I took one long look and ran screaming in terror for the
nearest exit! LOL

> > Adam who HATES tonal spelling, but still inflicted it on a conlang once.
>
>The few words of GR that I actually remember, I have no trouble with,
>whereas I am constantly stuffing the wrong tone mark on HYPY syllables!
>Of course, *deciphering* the GR in real time is no joke either.
>
I find the tone marks for HYPY very intuitive since they are the "shapes"
the tones have for me when I visualize them.  The tone marks used in the
Presbyterian romanization of Taiwanese, however, are a pain in the
posterior.  That system makes slight use of tonal spelling by using an "h"
to differentiate the 1st from the 4th tone when there is no final stop
consonant.

>But what's really wrong with my scheme is that it isn't *distinct*
>enough.  It's still too easy to lose the tone.  I must think further.
>
Well, good luck with your project.

Adam

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