Re: triphtong

Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> wrote:
> Quoting Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>:
>> Ah, yes, those are triphthongs indeed!  Now that you say it, Mandarin
>> has a few: e.g. -[wEI] in 'shui' - 'water' (|ui| is a misleading
>> spelling) and -[waI] in 'kuai' etc.
>
> Is it known why they chose |ui| rather than |uei| or something else more
> intuitive?
It's an abbreviation, since the equivalent of |ui| doesn't occur.
Apparently this is also done with |iu| for |iou| and |un| for |uen|.

The sensibility of this is entirely countered by silent initial |y|, |w|,
and final |i| in certain cases (yi, ying, wu, z(h)i, c(h)i, s(h)i, ri)

It seems intuitivity wasn't first on the list of design goals for the
system.


	*Muke!
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