Re: USAGE: Help with Chinese phrase

Mark Reed scripsit:

> And it looks like your SAMPA doesn't suck as much as you think.
> Indeed, as you say,  |x| is /C/, |q| is /tC_h/ and |j| is /tC/.
In fact x, q, j are [s\], [ts\_h], and /ts\/ respectively, but the
difference between [C] and [s\] is not huge.

> But who in the heck designed Pinyin?  Some of those assignments make
> no sense - |r| for /z`/?   Given |sh| for /s`/, I would have used |zh|
> for /z`/, but no, |zh| is used for /ts`/, while |ch| is used for the
> aspirated version /ts`_h/.  I think I'd have better luck learning
> Maggel. :)
Retroflexion is basically a Beijing regional feature that drops off
as one moves away from the capital, and basically doesn't exist in
most of the Mandarin-speaking area except as an artificially learned
feature.  People who don't have it pronounce sh, zh, ch as s, z, c
respectively, don't pronounce -r at all, and I'm not sure what they
do with r-.  Using -h- as a sort of retroflexion diacritic makes
sense in this context, whereas there is little connection between sh and r.

--
Go, and never darken my towels again!           John Cowan
        --Rufus T. Firefly                      www.ccil.org/~cowan

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