Re: USAGE: Help with Chinese phrase

On 5 Sep 2004 Ray Brown <ray.brown@FREE...> wrote:

> Yep - on I this agree - but, as you rightly say, it is un-German.
> And the use of |j| as an affricate is most distinctly un-German
> (but not un-English).
  I wrote "the _consonant (onset)_ notation is heavily _influenced_
by German transcription" (=GT), not "the whole romanization is an
adaption of GT" or so. Of course, it has un-German elements since
the design principle of one-letter onsets had precedence. Pinyin
(=PY) -- in terms of the onsets -- is a compromise between this
design principle and the previous source transciption(s) (whatever
they were). I do not want to extend this debate immoderately, I
just want to express my opinion that the GT agglomerates the most
elements of the features of PY intials. All the others have
similarities, too, but in a less extent. (It is possible, of
course, that these elements appeared already in previous endogenous
romanizations and therefore they can considered as inherited.)

  However, GT uses |dj-| for PY |j-| (and GT |tj-| for PY |q-|),
therefore "monographization" of the German system could result in a
solution like |j-|. (The beginning of German interjection "tja!" is
acoustically similar to Chinese /ts\_h/. |dj-| is a "regular"
unaspirate-lenis variant of |tj-|.)


> The Russian system, however, used its Cyrillic letters in exactly
> the same way that Germans used the Roman letters. More to the
> point, Gwoyeu Romatzyh used the convention of transcribing the
> unaspirated plosives & affricates by the symbols normally used for
> voiced sounds in western use.
  You are right, I left the Russian out of consideration in this
point. (I think, though, even the Russian transcription system
(=RT) might borrowed it from German. The German was the language of
science in Central and Eastern Europe. The oldest Hungarian
transciptions used also German-style voiced distinction, while the
current one is re-designed according to the "apostrophe"
convention.)

  On the contrary, RT shows voiced-unvoiced contrast in pair /s`/ ~
/z`/ as {sh-}* ~ {zh-}, while PY does not: |sh-| ~ |r-|. Moreover,
as far I know, RT does not distiguish between Pinyin |hs-| and
|s-|, it uses {s-}** for both onsets. The same is true for PY |z-|
~ |j-| vs. common RT {ts.z-}. And least but not last, note this
latter strange notation: the voiced--unvoiced contrast is not full
in RT: the unaspirate pair of aspirate /ts_h/ {ts-} is not one of
the voiced Cyrillic letters {dz-} or {z-} but a digraph {ts.z-}...

  These features are not reflected in PY.

  Notes:
* My client does not support Unicode, therefore I will use the
  Allworth system to transcribe for Russian, except {j} for /j/ and
  {é} for "e oborotnoye", cf.
  <http://ee.www.ee/transliteration/pdf/Russian.pdf>.
** Etymologically it is correct for a number of cases, since [s\i]
  could come from a previous /si/. But in other cases [s\i]
  continues /hi/. This is why -- in addition to the phonetic
  similarity -- the non-historic transcriptions, as eg. Wade-
  Giles (=WG), use |hs-| for this onset.


> I would be extremely surprised, given the politics of post-WWII
> years, if the People's Republic had been influenced by any German
> practice.
  I lived in one of these kind of countries; a lot of Germans -- as
members of a "criminal nation" -- was deported from Czechoslovakia,
Hungary etc. after WWII. However, the previous German linguistic
traditions in the science, as well as in the terminology of
craftsmanship etc. were not demolished (until the recent strong
English influence).
  Chinese kept on working Tsintao Breweries in Qingdao (former
German concession Kiautschou [Kiaochow]) maintaining German brewing
traditions.
  Moreover, Germany never attacked China, they were only a distant
ally of Japan. And before Japan, China had several wars with the
British Empire: Chinese politics was afread rather of the British
ally than of the hostile Germans. The same was true for Russia:
they were rival conquerors in Siberia for a long time. This
continuous rivalization for the local domination was the cause of
the later split between the communist China and the communist
Soviet Union. (In fact, communism was not about the people's
friendship as it were stated officially. It was a kind of Russian
imperialism, and Chinese leaders like Chairman Mao was aware of
this.)
  Therefore, political reasons could exclude British and Russian
systems, too. :))
  (You mentioned Soviet contrubution in PY project. This type of
collaboration was often rather formal than effective: Soviet
comrades delivered the Big Brother's ideological opinion and we did
our own job. We were not all Lisenkoists or Marrists. Therefore,
Soviet contribution does not inevitably mean that PY has Russian
connections.)


> |c| is used consistently to represent /ts/ in all the Slavonic
> Roman orthographies and the Russian Cyrillic transcription
  Hungarian uses, too, but this is due to the German cultural
influence (the early universities of the area were in Germany).
However, if Slavonic notation would be significant, PY would
implement Czech-style diacritic marks even on consonants. This
would increase the phonetic legibility of e.g. /z`/ as compared to
PY |r|. Indeed, Polish has a monograph solution for /ts\/ as
|c| with acute...
  Moreover, small Slavonic nations never had cultural influence on
Russia, even Pan-Slavism was an opposite process. The "Latin" (i.e.
European) culture was mediated by French (arts and social culture)
and German (science) languages from Peter the Great. Therefore I
found it unlikely that Russian would mediate Latin-based Slavonic
solutions into China, even partially.


> the Russian Cyrillic transcription also used monographs
  According to my sources, it is not true for /dz_0/ |z-|, I found
digraph {ts.z-} for it, cf.
<http://www.daochinasite.com/study/pallad.shtml>
  A Google search supports this: 3780 hits (93%) for {mao tszé-dun}
and only 263 hits (6%) for {mao dzé-dun} and 25 for {mao zé-dun}.


> The use of |z| = [dz] is found in Italian (tho I don't suppose
> the People's republic was unduly influenced by that).
[...]
> The writing of the diphthong /aw/ as |ao| is surely an Italian
> conventio and, I guess, goes right back to Matteo Ricci's
> transcriptions.
  If we consider |z| as an Italian tradition (and why not, IMHO, it
is of Italian origin in German itself), we should raise the
question, what traditions did preserve this until recently? Italian
language lost its early influence and they were not present in
China in the 19-20th century. Notation "ao" was kept in near all
transcription systems -- except German though -- but "z" only in
German.

  It could be important that historical transcriptions distingwish
between codas "-iao" and -io" that are merged in PY and in WG, cf.
PY |jiao| is [kiao|, |tsiao|, |kio| or |tsio| in French
transcription. Probably this double origin is reflected in "ao".
Moreover, according to my sources, |ao| is rather [aU] than [aw],
ie. has an opener glide element, therefore, "ao" is an acceptible
solution and does not invoke native language bias in French,
English etc. speakers (in contrast with "au").

  However, I wrote about German influence only in case of onset
consonant notation. Coda notation is a bit mess (especially in case
of codas containing /u/ element). However, German-style |ü| for
instances of /y/ can be also a sign of taking German into
consideration. They could choose |y| instead to maintain the
unaccented notation of basic vowels. (Its coincidence with initial
|y-| is not really significant, since |r| has also different
reading in the onset and in the coda.)


> ...or both. But wasn't |q| used this way in Latinxua? I would've
> been surprised if Albanian had contibuted to that.
  Personally, I do not like the Cyrillic theory of |q|: it seems to
be a post quem explanation. On the contrary, you might be right
about Albanian. However, I have found a more likely solution (i.e.
more likely for me). In historical transcriptions -- as French or
Hungarian scientific -- |k| stands for a number of Pinyin |q|
initials (if followed by an |i|) and in Latin traditions |q| is a
variant of |k|. Cf. PY |quan| ~ French |k'iuan| (and |ts'iuan|).


> My understanding (I'm not a sinolog) is that:
  Basically I agree with these opinions but I consider the German
traditions more stressed than the others in case of initials (maybe
this traditions were present already in Gwoyeu Romatzyh, or
Latinxua as well).

  And I think this "German theory" even more important in terms of
comprehension of Pinyin for Anglophones.

------------------

> Except that he lists:
> _E_ or _Nge_ (not _Ngo_)
> _O_ or _Ngo_ or _Wo_ (the only example of w- given)
  According to my OUP Chinese dictionary PY |e^| (e with
circumflex) = [E] and |o| = [o] are subphonemical sounds found in
interjections (and they are out of the syllabic system just as
|ei|, |hng| etc.) I wonder whether this makes the distinction in
this notation, or they are the equivalents of PY |e| and |wo|,
respectively.


> _Ou_ or _Ngou_ (not _Ngeou)
  In FT |ou| reads as in French, i.e. /u/, therefore diphthong /@U/
is rendered as "eou".

Reply