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

John wrote:

>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.
I'm always a little leary when "h" gets a thorough workout like this,
but this was surprisingly easy to read. "xingh Xiah" and "yuan
liaanh" threw me for a loop, even after Weiben transliterated it to
Pinyin, but then I had an aha moment. Still, the whole sentence
strikes me as a little choppy and weird, but maybe that's just
because I, non-native, wouldn't express it this idea this way. GR is
hell spawn, Yale doesn't thrill me aesthetically but it's useable
enough, John's system took only a quick scan of his original post to
grasp. My peeve isn't so much which system is used (I teethed on
Pinyin and Wade-Giles, have worked with Yale through one of their
textbooks one semester, learned Bopomofo, and have given it the
college try to see the virtues of GR [and failed]), it's consistency.
While I realize it may be well nigh politically impossible, it'd be
great if they'd just pick one and use it. A couple of systems
floating around out there is manageable, but it's a drag to buy what
looks to be a cool new dictionary or reference only to find that the
compilers have devised their own "improved" system. "Oh great {sigh},
*another* romanization to tackle." And then there's Taiwan. Don't get
me started, don't even get me started.

Kou

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