Re: CHAT: Chinese romanization

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.