Re: USAGE: Help with Chinese phrase
| From: | Philip Newton <philip.newton@...> |
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| Date: | Friday, September 3, 2004, 7:15 |
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On Thu, 2 Sep 2004 15:48:38 -0400, Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> wrote:
> I'd also expect |j| to represent a voiced sound ([J\j\], maybe).
Chinese stops and affricates differ in aspiration, not voicing; AFAIK,
they're all unvoiced.
Hence the Wade-Giles ch, ch' for Pinyin zh, ch (as well as j, q) - and
similar uses of "unvoiced" characters e.g. k, k' for Pinyin g /k/, k
/k_h/.
On Thu, 2 Sep 2004 16:38:38 -0400, Mark Reed <markjreed@...> wrote:
> But who in the heck designed Pinyin?
I'm told the use of |q| may be influenced by Albanian, where it's /c/
IIRC (close enough to /tS)/ or, indeed, /ts\/, that foreigners often
confuse it with |ç| /tS)/).
Something about how Albania, being a communist country at the time,
was one of the few "European" countries with whom China had relations,
so their version of the Latin alphabet may have influenced PY.
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
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