CHAT: Chinese romanization

Douglas Koller wrote:

> If the point of romanization is to make the Chinese language more
> accessible to non-speakers, it fails.
I don't think *any* romanization scheme could do that.  :-)  Besides,
which non-speakers?  The vowels are bad for English-speakers, but
then all Latin vowels are bad for English speakers.

> Pinyin 'x' and 'q' aren't
> especially intuitive,
Well, "x" is good for Portuguese-speakers, and "q" is really a
borrowing of CYRILLIC LETTER CHE, slightly reshaped.  (1/2 :-))

> If GYRMT can be "picked
> up" at all, I doubt it's with speed, and I suspect it's more likely that
> you have to hunker down and consciously "learn" it.
It's a lot simpler than most traditional spelling systems in Latin-alphabet
languages, except those (Croatian, Spanish, Czech, Turkish) which
are recently adopted or reformed.

Its chief virtue is that it "locks in" tones.  All too often, Pinyin
and W-G just leave off the tone marks, which certainly impedes
learning for CSLs and sometimes leaves natives confused too, by
all reports.

> [S]ince tone gets
> alphabetized along with everything else, like-sounding words with
> different tones are scattered to different parts of the dictionary
> index
Yi and Hmong tonal spelling represent the tone in the last letter or
two, which helps quite a bit.  There are a couple of Pinyin variants
out there which are tonal-spelling also (typical example:
tang1 = tang, tang2 = taang, tang3 = tarng, tang4 = tahng), but none
at the end.

ObConScript:  How about a Pinyin-based scheme with final tone
letters?  Things like -s, -h, -x would be plausible (-h is silent
in many Western languages, and silent -s and -x appear in French).
Though I admit -ngx is unaesthetic (worse yet, -ngrx).

--
John Cowan      http://www.ccil.org/~cowan              cowan@ccil.org
        You tollerday donsk?  N.  You tolkatiff scowegian?  Nn.
        You spigotty anglease?  Nnn.  You phonio saxo?  Nnnn.
                Clear all so!  'Tis a Jute.... (Finnegans Wake 16.5)