Re: CHAT: Zhongwen (Chinese) Question

On Fri, Jan 04, 2002 at 10:23:25PM -0500, Adam Walker wrote:
[snip]
> The Taiwanese dialect is normally romanized using a system that renders
> these phonemes b, p, ph.  Personally, I would prefer mb, b, p since the [b]
> is so strongly voiced that it often seems to be prenasalized.  I came across
> a Hakka (Kejia) Chinese page once that used <d>, <td>, <t> for the [d], [t],
> [t'] distinction.  That kinda worked for me as well.  I just don't like the
> <ph>, <th>, <kh> convention since I'm eternally trying to pronounce them as
> fricatives!
Well, to *my* ears, "b", "p", and "ph" makes a lot of sense. :-) Except
for the unfortunate fact that "ph" in English is usually the fricative.

Of course, I have my theory on how /p'/ tends to become /f/ over time, so
this notation makes all the more sense, but I'm no linguist, so I'll keep
my mouth shut :-) I have to say though, I've observed a Korean speaker
trying to differentiate between the English /p'/ and /f/, and it's quite a
painful experience for the poor guy. Especially with lame dinner-table
jokes about passing the "fork" vs. the "pork".

I must say, I'm glad my L1 (which is another variant of Taiwanese) has the
three-way distinction. Makes it much easier to learn the different stops
out there. (Not to mention my obsessive compulsion to have even more
distinctions in my conlang -- 6 labials, 6 velars, 6 alveolars, each with
4 stops and 2 fricatives based on distinctions in aspiration and voicing.)
My L1 also distinguishes between nasal and non-nasal vowels too. (As well
as vowel length, if you'll allow me to regard the clipped tones as
basically short vowels.) I'm quite proud of that! :-)


T

--
War doesn't prove who's right, just who's left. -- BSD Games' Fortune

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