Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: CHAT: Chinese romanization

From:John Cowan <cowan@...>
Date:Thursday, December 24, 1998, 16:42
Douglas Koller scripsit:

> Well, there's just so much you can do to keep non-speakers from mangling > a language (to hear my stepmother pronounce "karaoke" as "carry-yokie" > makes my flesh crawl - she can spell it, though).
Get used to it. That will be the standard English pronunciation soon enough, if it isn't already.
> Where would one do this?
In newspapers, on the Internet, etc. The trouble is that if one does know a little Chinese, trying to decode pinyin stripped of tones is about 4 times harder than with tones, which is damned hard enough.
> No major problem with this, but how is that much different from tacking > a number on the end like we in cyberspace do (well, maybe faster typing > speeds, but I'm not sure)?
Conceptual unity. "Ma2" looks like a word with a number attached. "Mah" looks like a word. It would be easy for alphabet users to lose the apparently unnecessary digit, just as it's easy to lose the tone mark. Losing a whole letter is far less likely. -- John Cowan cowan@ccil.org e'osai ko sarji la lojban.