Re: USAGE: Help with Chinese phrase

On Saturday, September 4, 2004, at 09:25 , Tamas Racsko wrote:

>   By the way, does anybody knows here on the list, why is zero
> syllable onset transcribed by "ng-" in French transcription of
> Chinese? I found the following equivalences in a comparative chart
> of various Chinese transcriptions:
>
> Pinyin    French
> ----------------
> ai        ngai
> an        ngan
> ang       ngang
> ao        ngao
> e         ngo
> en        ngen
> eng       ngeng
> ou        ngeou
>
>   Does it reflect e.g. a glottal catch pronounced in a southern
> dialect the French first met? And why is the "ng-" prefix omitted
> from syllable "a" (Pinyin "a") and "eul" (Pinyin "er") - if it is
> not a typo?
That's interesting. In my 1960 edition of "Teach Yourself Chinese" (which
used the Wade-Giles Romanization), the author (H.R. Williamson) states:
"Eleven of the Final sounds as found in Section II are also used a rather
independent sounds. But when so used some of them are preceded by either
an -ng or a -w in certain districts of China..."

He lists precisely the same as in the French with the addition of _a_ ,
thus:
_A_ or _Nga
_Ai_ or _Ngai
_An_ or _Ngan_
etc

Except that he lists:
_E_ or _Nge_ (not _Ngo_)
_O_ or _Ngo_ or _Wo_ (the only example of w- given)
and
_Ou_ or _Ngou_ (not _Ngeou)

But interesting no alternative is given for _Erh_.

Paul Ktatochvil in "The Chinese Language Today" merely says:
"The onset of vowels in this type of syllable is either zero (the
transition from silence to sound is breathed), a glottal stop (the vowel
is preceded by a closure of the glottis and released plosively), or a
semivowel (the vowel is preceded by a semiclosure in the palatal position
[j-] or in the bilabial position [w-])."

ng- would seem to be an odd wy to represent a glottal _stop_.

So I also would be interested in any light being thrown on that initial ng-

Ray
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UMBERTO ECO				September, 2004