Re: Bopomofo and pinyin

At 08:18 +0100 21.1.2000, Boudewijn Rempt wrote:
>
>I guess the first is Gwoyeuh Romaneutz (although I'm sure I've spelled
>it wrong - it's very interesting as a system, since it spells the
>tones with letters, instead of accents), the second Wade-Giles.
Obviously the way to go!  The problem with GR is that YRC's implementation
of tone-spelling is dependent on the traditional Chinese notion that the
tone is part of the "rhyme".  Tibetan, Panjabi and most South-East Asian
languages spell tones with letters -- not by design, but because in all of
them the establishment of orthography predated tonogenesis, and in all of
them tone is mainly determined by the etymological quality of the initial
consonant.  In most of them voiced stops became voiceless, turning a
previously redundant lowering of the pitch in vowels following a voiced
stop into a phonemic low tone.  Panjabi differs in that there it was
breathy-voiced stops and sonorants that merged with voiceless stops and
plain voiced sonorants, but the result is essentially the same.  In the
case of Panjabi we also have a closely related language -- Hindi -- that
didn't go through this change, but still lacks tones and has breathy-voiced
sounds.

Based on these facts, admittedly influenced by the way tone is clued in
Tibetan orthography, I devised a phonemic Romanization of Tibetan, where
the letter-pairs k/g, c/j, t/d, p/b are used to indicate high/low tone.  In
addition the apostrophe is used to indicate lower tone where no
letter-pairs are available -- and in some other cases.  I decided against
using {zh} for [C] in low-tone syllables, because (1) unlike unaspirated
stops it has no voiced allophones, and (2) {zh} /C/ may be confused with
Pinyin {zh} /tC/.  Instead I represent aspirated vs. unaspirated affricates
as {ts, ds} vs. {tz, dz}, since {tsh} /ts<asp>/ might be mistaken to stand
for /tC/.  The idea is also that the choice of symbols may be adjusted to
different target audiences; for an English-speaking audience one would use

    Pal.-Alv.  ty   ch    dy   jh    'dy
    Retroflex  tr   chr   dr   jhr   'dr

while for a Scandinavian, Dutch or German audience one may use

    Pal.-Alv.  tj   tsch  dj   dsch  'dj
    Retroflex  tr   tschr dr   dschr 'dr (Ugh, pentagraphs! :-)


I've thought on and off about adapting the general idea to Chinese.  As is
well known the tones in Mandarin may be interpreted as combinations of High
and Low (1: HH 2: LH 3: LL 4: HL), but how should the second part of each
tone be shown?  With a final apostrophe, as I use for falling tone in the
last syllable of Tibetan words, or perhaps through doubling the vowel for
low?

Anyway here is the full scheme for initial consonants, if anybody is
interested:

Tone:          High       Low        Deep
Aspiration:    -    +     -    +     -
    Velar      k    kh    g    gh    'g
    Palatal    ky   khy   gy   ghy   'gy
    Pal.-Alv.  ty   ch    dy   jh    'dy
    Retroflex  tr   chr   dr   jhr   'dr
    Dental     t    th    d    dh    'd
               tz   ts    dz   ds    'dz
    Labial     p    ph    b    bh    'b

Voice:         -    +     -          +
    Glottal    h ()                  '
    Velar      hng  ng               'ng
    Palatal    hy   y                'y
               hny  ny               'ny
    Pal.-Alv.  sh        'sh
    Retroflex  hr   r                'r
    Dental     s         's
               hn   n                'n
    Labial     hm   m                'm
               hw   w                'w

() = Glottal stop [?]onset on high-tone syllables (unmarked)
'  = Deep-toned glottal onset varies between [?], brethy-voiced
     fricative and pure vowel, depending on dialect.
     Deep-toned stops, if distinct from low-toned ones, are voiced or
     prenasalized-voiced.  The deep vs. low tone may thus be not
     *phonologically* distinct, but Tibetan speakers usually perceive
     the tone difference rather than the voicing to be most important,
     perhaps because there are high-toned voiced glides and nasals.

     ______  _______  __  ______  _______   ______ __
    / ____/ |_ _  _ | \/ /_ ___/ |__ ___ | / ____/ \/
    ||       // || ||     //___    //   || ||
    ||      //__|| ||    /___  \  //____|| ||
    ||____ |_____| ||        \ | /______ | ||____
    |____ \        ||         ||        \| |____ \
         \|        ||         ||                \|
mailto:bpj@netg.se ||         || mailto:melroch@my-deja.com