Re: USAGE: Help with Chinese phrase

On Friday, September 3, 2004, at 07:59 , Mark Reed wrote:

> MJR> But who in the heck designed Pinyin?
>
> RB> A committee of the People's Republic of China (it was
> RB> approved by the Communist National Assembly in 1958).
>
> Ah, design by committee.  That explains much. :)
Indeed   :)

> RB> Gwoyeu Romatzyh (in Pinyin that would be written: guóyŭ
> RB> luómăzi)
>
> minor point - you're using breves for tone 3.  I thought Pinyin used the
> wedge?
Interesting point. I first encountered Pinyin way back in 1966 when I
followed the BBC radio course 'Introduction to Chinese' (followed by
'Speaking Chinese' in 1967). In the BBC publications it is most definitely
written as a breve. So I've always assumed it was so.

In my copy of "Modern Chinese: A Basic Course" of the 'Falculty of Peking
University' [sic] and published by Dover in 1971 it certainly looks like a
breve; but using a magnifying glass I can see the darn thing is more wedgy.
  I've looked again at other books I have and I think you're right. I guess
the BBC's use of the breve way back in 1960s was probably for
typographical convenience.

Now I guess i'd better be searching Unicode for vowels with wedges.

> MJR> Some of those assignments make no sense - |r| for /z`/?
>
> RB> Except that in the Bejing dialect the sound is retroflex [ʐ].
>
> That's also what CXS /z`/ denotes.
Sorry - too lazy to check against CXS, I guess.

> RB> |r| was used this way in GY also (I'm not sure about
> RB> Ladinxua).
>
> Interesting.  Is there something rhotic about that sound which I'm
> imissing?
Well as Andreas wrote: "[z`] is actually a common realization of Swedish
/r/." I believe it occurs in some Gaelic dialects as a realization of
palatalized /r/. Isn't the Czech r-hacek a similar sound? In view of the
wide range of different sounds given to |r| across the continent & islands
of Europe, I personally have no problem with using |r| to denote a voiced
retroflex fricative.

>
> RB> Yes - we can all come up with our own schemes - I've done
> RB> it  myself many times. But I do think one ought to leave it to
> RB> the Chinese.
>
> I have neither the desire nor the /'xUts.pa/ to replace Pinyin with a
> scheme of my own devising, even in personal use; I was simply placing
> myself in the role of designer to try and better understand the
> choices that were made.
OK - I probably expressed myself poorly. What I meant is that it's not
difficult to come up with schemes that personally seem better than Pinyin,
  but I'm sure others would point out flaws. What I meant is that Pinyin
may have weaknesses (e.g. I personally dislike the double use of |h| to
denote both the phoneme /x/ and to denote retroflexion in the combos |ch|,
|zh| and |sh|), but it's reasonably systematic and quite simple to learn.

The double use of |h| is part of the GR influence on Pinyin, tho in GR the
combos |ch|, |zh| and |sh| did duty both for Pinyin |ch|, |zh| and |sh|
and Pinyin |q|, |j| and |x|.

But Pinyin is more consistent then the old Wade-Giles, cf.
Pinyin		WG
q			ch'
j			ch
x			hs  [sic]
ch			ch'
zh			ch
sh			sh

[snip]
>
> MJR>  I think I'd have better luck learning Maggel. :)
>
> RB> Rather unfair IMO - Pinyin is systematic & regular in itself.
>
> My statement was, I thought obviously, an example of (intended-to-be)
> humorous hyperbole.
Yes, I did realize it was hyberbole & that you were being humorous. But I
still thought you were being a little unfair. I mean Mangel even makes
English seem almost regular    :)

Ray
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