Re: Bopomofo and pinyin

DOUGLAS KOLLER wrote:

> What I meant to express here was that a Mandarin fourth tone, a Taiwanese
> second tone, what you might classify a Cantonese falling high tone (pick the
> number of your choice), and a Shanghainese first tone are analogous
> sound-wise, if not precisely the same (varying from 53, 52, 51, or 42).
Yes, but that was my point below: it ain't necessarily so.  The variety of
Mandarin spoken in Sichuan pronounces (IIRC) 4th-tone syllables with a
low dipping tone, and 3rd-tone syllables with a falling tone, just the
reverse of the standard.  So we don't want a cross-dialect symbol for
"falling tone", but rather for "4th tone".

To incorporate the other Sinitic languages, we have to have a way to
map their tones into Mandarin ones, with additions.  Here, I think
the traditional system (backed up by comparative linguistics) is
probably the Right Thing.

> And I've argued with you before that from my
> perspective, a Cantonese middle even tone is much the same creature as a
> middle "clipped" tone, so I would mark these identically.
Yes, I agree with this.

> Mandarin     Shanghai      Canton         Taiwan      mark
>
> 1  (55)           5 (55)         1 (55)           1 (55)        _
I would think it more useful to map Wu tone 5 onto its etymological
correspondent, Mandarin tone 4 (IIRC), even though it is pronounced 55.

The same thing happens in Tai-Kadai, BTW; the first thing when
studying a new dialect is to find out how they pronounce the
tones, as dialects are usually separated by different tone
phonetics more than syntax or vocabulary.

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