Chinese writing and language

[raydpratt]

Wade-Giles romanizations of well-known historical names and terms persist, but today we would spell this Yi Jing in Pin-Yin, coaching Westerners to pronounce it a tiny bit more authentically. . ..See, we've already made headway by writing Dao instead of Tao. Again, the modern romanization is Dao De Jing or Daodejing.

I have or have partly read books using Wade-Giles and Gwoyeu Romatzyh, and its a real pain to figure out the correct pronunciations. I just figured out today that the difference between K and K' in Wade-Giles is unaspirated and aspirated respectively, which is G and K in pinyin.

Long live pinyin!

[Fraggle Rocker]

I have or have partly read books using Wade-Giles and Gwoyeu Romatzyh, and its a real pain to figure out the correct pronunciations.

I had never heard of GR, so thanks for the introduction. It looks like a well-crafted experiment to improve on Wade-Giles. Indicating the tones by changing the letters would obviously be intuitive to a Chinese speaker, since A1 and A2, I3 and I4, etc. (I'm not going to fight with this software's character set!) are different vowels to them. But to speakers of non-tonal languages like us, most of whom never stop needing to be constantly reminded that tone is phonemic, the superscripts are surely better. IMHO the modern placement of diacritics directly on top of the vowels is best of all since it provides the reminder at the earliest possible moment. Well I suppose we could write 1guo and 3jiang, but surely somebody already thought of that and discarded it for a good reason.

I just figured out today that the difference between K and K' in Wade-Giles is unaspirated and aspirated respectively, which is G and K in pinyin.

I'm sure that was an earnest academic effort to transcribe the phonemes as accurately as possible. But unless everyone who needs to read these transcriptions is provided with a reference card explaining that: 1) Like tone, aspiration is phonemic in Chinese and 2) Chinese has no voiced consonants; it's pointless. And of course most anglophones would also need to have the concept of "aspiration" explained since they don't notice any difference between the T in "top" and the T in "stop" until you teach them the trick of dangling a square of toilet paper in front of their mouth and watching for the puff of air.

For speakers of Spanish, Russian, and the many other languages that have no aspirated stops, this explanation would need to be much more elaborate. Czech is one of the few languages in that group that even has the consonant H, which would at least make a good starting point for the lesson.

Long live pinyin!

My professor, and the textbooks he chose for us, used the Yale romanization system. It was very helpful for learning the proper sounds quickly: The vowel at the end of words like zhi and shi is written R, and the one at the end of zi and ci is written Z, very intuitive for anglophones. But its inconsistency drove the student of orthography inside me batty. Pinyin zhang is "jang" and jiang is "jiang." But Pinyin shang is "shang" and xiang is "syang." And ri is simply written "r".

I can read Wade-Giles, Yale and Pinyin. But I can't write reliably in W-G and to do so in Yale is an arduous effort with lots of correction. Only in Pinyin can I always get it right the first time.

I content myself with micro-crusades. Why don't we stop writing the name of one of the most popular dog breeds Shi-tzu, begging for a constant stream of vulgar jokes, when it should be written Shizi and pronounced Shrrr-dzzz? And my biggest peeve: Beijing is not a French city, so will newscasters please stop pronouncing that J as if it were French!!!

[Search & Destroy]

My professor, and the textbooks he chose for us, used the Yale romanization system. It was very helpful for learning the proper sounds quickly: The vowel at the end of words like zhi and shi is written R, and the one at the end of zi and ci is written Z, very intuitive for anglophones. But its inconsistency drove the student of orthography inside me batty. Pinyin zhang is "jang" and jiang is "jiang." But Pinyin shang is "shang" and xiang is "syang." And ri is simply written "r".

I still find Rs at the beginning of a word like ren(people) or renminbi to be quite difficult. It's like taking the zhhh sound in usually and putting it before an R. That one doesn't come very naturally.

[Fraggle Rocker]

I still find Rs at the beginning of a word like ren(people) or renminbi to be quite difficult. It's like taking the zhhh sound in usually and putting it before an R. That one doesn't come very naturally.

It's a retroflex consonant. That whole series is: aspirated affricate CH, unaspirated affricate ZH, aspirated fricative SH, unaspirated fricative R.

The correct way to produce it is to curl your tongue back toward the rear of your mouth. It is not like an English R at all! If you do it right it will feel and sound like a strange variation of the S in "occasion," not so much like an R.

All four of those consonants should be pronounced with your tongue in that position.

Czech also has one consonant formed that way, the Ř. But in addition to everything else, it's also trilled!

[raydpratt]

I still find Rs at the beginning of a word like ren(people) or renminbi to be quite difficult. It's like taking the zhhh sound in usually and putting it before an R. That one doesn't come very naturally.

After I learned that the R of Shi4, Zhi4, Chi4, & Er4 is created more by the retroflex tongue position than by a voiced sound, I could do the zhhh & R in the same sound when R is pronounced by itself (e.g., Er4), but I almost doubt that the sound is real since I only seem to hear it when it is over-emphasized. I am probably wrong on this, and more study will tell.

[Fraggle Rocker]

After I learned that the R of Shi4, Zhi4, Chi4, & Er4 is created more by the retroflex tongue position than by a voiced sound . . . .

I think it's both retroflex and voiced. At least in Beijing Mandarin.

. . . . I could do the zhhh & R in the same sound when R is pronounced by itself (e.g., Er4), but I almost doubt that the sound is real since I only seem to hear it when it is over-emphasized. I am probably wrong on this, and more study will tell.

I don't think that the ending vowel-like sound in ri4 (sun) or chi1 (eat) is the same as the ending vowel-like sound in er4 (two, son). (Again, at least in Beijing Mandarin.) The former is an extended voiced retroflex fricative, whereas the latter is very similar to American English R, an alveolar approximant. (I had to look up that term.)

[Search & Destroy]

Fraggle, I have to look up most of your terms