Re: IPA tones

On Wed, Oct 25, 2000 at 06:15:31PM -0700, DOUGLAS KOLLER wrote:
> From: "H. S. Teoh"
[snip]
> > 55??? I'd have thought it was 33, or at most, 44, 'cos 52 *definitely*
> > starts with a higher pitch than the 1st tone. Or am I misunderstanding
> > something obvious?
>
> I don't think so. I tend to use these numbers as relatives and not
> absolutes. For me, e.g., Mandarin third tone is more 212 or 213, but I get
> the idea if one says 214. 55 and 52 work for me, but if you want to haggle
> over 55 or 44, I can understand. I think 33 pushes the envelope, however,
> for a Mandarin first tone.
OK, I think I'm *really* missing something here. Mandarin first tone, for
me, is a medium-pitched, flat-contoured tone; second is middle or low
ascending, third is low-pitched, flat tone, and fourth is high-pitch
(definitely higher than first tone) descending. Either I'm hallucinating,
or something isn't right here??

> The distinction can be made in Hokkien:
>
> ao1  is 55, it means "Europe"
OK, this one is throwing me off, I think because my particular dialect of
Hokkien doesn't seem to use a different tone for "Europe" and "back".
Either that, or I've forgotten the correct word for it :-P

> ao7 is 33, it means "after, back" (as in 'ao7mng5', back door)
>
> Mandarin has nothing comparable to Hokkien's seventh tone.
[snip]

Hmm, strange. I would consider Hokkien's 7th tone to be similar
(allophonic even, if that's correct terminology) to Mandarin's 3rd tone.
Like I said, I think I'm missing something BIG here, 'cos what you're
saying seems so contrary to what I observe. OK, for Hokkien it's
understandable, because I know that my dialect of Hokkien isn't exactly
the least divergent from the original mainland Hokkien -- having picked
up local Malay words, influences from Malenglish (Malaysian-English
pidgin), etc.. But for Mandarin, something isn't right because I have
friends from Beijing and I know how they pronounce it.


T