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Re: Bopomofo and pinyin

From:John Cowan <jcowan@...>
Date:Thursday, January 27, 2000, 17:20
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. -- Schlingt dreifach einen Kreis vom dies! || John Cowan <jcowan@...> Schliesst euer Aug vor heiliger Schau, || http://www.reutershealth.com Denn er genoss vom Honig-Tau, || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Und trank die Milch vom Paradies. -- Coleridge (tr. Politzer)