Discussion of romanized vowels

[color=green]Mod note: this was split from the Cranky attribution thread here. – DB[/color]

I was a little surprised to see the “wong” entry in the Tongyong column here:

Is that correct? If so, how bizarre.

[quote=“Omniloquacious”]I was a little surprised to see the “wong” entry in the Tongyong column here:

Is that correct? If so, how bizarre.[/quote]

It is correct. And bizarre.

In Taiwan -ㄥ ending sounds are pronounced differently. Most of the time it’s “eng”, like 等 (deng), 成 (cheng), 橫 (heng) etc., but sometimes it’s “ong” as in 風 (feng). I reckon it depends on whether there’s a corresponding “ong” sound or not - “dong” exists as a legitimate sound and so “dong” and “deng” are differentiated, but there’s no “fong” sound in Beijing Mandarin, so Taiwanese Mandarin feels free to shift “feng” to “fong” (maybe because it’s more a more comfortable sound for Minnan speakers, who knows?).

Anyway, it seems like the bright spark behind Tongyong has decided to represent some of these changes, but not all. So HP weng becomes TP wong and feng becomes fong, but beng and meng are left alone, even though Taiwanese Mandarin speakers shift the vowels in these syllables too.

No, it doesn’t make sense to me either. :idunno: Tongyong is a mess.

Well, we can just call it Tengyeng Pinyin then, can’t we? :laughing:

Thanks for the excellent explanation, Taffy.

I must say, I have never noticed local people pronouncing engs as ongs, but I have a poor ear for picking up such things. And perhaps it’s also because I mostly listen to BCC (中國廣播公司) broadcasts, where the news readers and program hosts all speak impeccably standard Mandarin (which is, of course, the main reason for my listening to it, even though I often bristle at their dreadfully distorted reporting on political matters).

Oh, definitely! Feng1 ‘wind’ and tai2feng1 ‘typhoon’ become fong1 and tai2fong1; Meng2gu3 ‘Mongolia’, ning2meng2 ‘lemon’ and zuo4meng4 ‘to dream’ become Mong2gu3, ning2mong2 and zuo4mong4, and so on.

One thing I can’t figure out about TYPY is the following series of labials:

ben, pen, men, fen, wun

They all rhyme, but for some reason the “architect” (cough) of TYPY decided to spell wen “wun”, even though it doesn’t rhyme with dun, tun, gun, kun, sun, etc.

Actually, it’s not just Taiwanese, or even just southerners who pronounce the meng in 檸檬 and 蒙古 as mong, although I sure thought so until knowing a couple of older Beijingers. A Chinese phonology hobbiest with whom I work says she’s pretty sure that some syllables that are rendered in HYPY as meng were and perhaps still are pronounced closer to mong in Beijing and some other northern dialects. She figures that teachers in Taiwan and a few in the mainland may have taught their students to pronounce these syllables as they would have been pronounced in the prestigious Beijing dialect rather than according to the way they’re written in MPS or HYPY.

I’ve only noticed these two older Beijingers pronouncing the -eng in meng as more like -ong. I’ve never noticed them saying feng as fong.

Interesting, JT - I’d always just assumed it was characteristic of southern Mandarin. Thanks for setting me straight.

And damn, there’s a thread bashing Tongyong and suddenly Chris decides to kick the poor bugger when it’s down! What are the odds? :laughing:

That wen > wun is the oddest of the lot, I reckon. No logic in that whatsoever. Unless it’s the vanguard of a gradual transition to Taiwan Goyi - eventually we’ll have ben > bun, leng > nen and fen > hun. :bravo:

Taiwanlen ei Goyi huichang biaozun nei!

The mong pronunciation of meng is so prevalent here and has lodged in my head so firmly that that’s how I nearly always pronounce it myself now, though there was a time when I was rather confused and alternated between the two.

But despite having lived here for so long, I’ve never noticed feng being pronounced as fong, and was unaware that it ever is. I suppose that’s because the people here who speak fairly standard Mandarin, mainly waishengren, don’t do it, whereas those who speak strongly Taiwanese Mandarin pronounce so much of it so strangely that I can barely understand what they’re saying and don’t particularly notice the fongs among all the other hard-to-catch oddities of pronunciation.

My wife’s Mandarin is strongly localized (I find it easier to understand a random stranger speaking standard Mandarin than to understand her or the in-laws’ version of it), so I’ll put it to the test later when she gets back: I’ll write a sentence containing a couple of fengs and ask her to read it for me.

Ditto. Hadn’t even realised it until I started reading about it here. :blush:

HG

Why go for a couple when you can use so many more. Try something like this:
每逢風吹, 豐滿瘋婆馮鳳發夢, 夢中鳳與蜂隨風飛向朦朦朧朧的楓林高峰
. It’s got feng’s, meng’s and long’s. Now say it three times as fast as you can.

I thought I was re-reading that kiddies classical/poetry book they used to hand out at Feng Chia, now I know why they did that!

But the really, really annoying stuff is the Taiwanese “ong” for hong or feng.

HG

Don’t you mean Fong Chia? Or Hong Chia if you want to go totally native. :wink:

Why go for a couple when you can use so many more. Try something like this:
每逢風吹, 豐滿瘋婆馮鳳發夢, 夢中鳳與蜂隨風飛向朦朦朧朧的楓林高峰
. It’s got feng’s, meng’s and long’s. Now say it three times as fast as you can.[/quote]

That’s great, SJ - I must try it out on her today.

I did test her on the couple of fengs (pretending I wanted her to give me the correct pronunciation of two chengyu’s), and sure enough, she pronounced both as fongs.

I also listened extra carefully to a news report and a current affairs program on BCC, and all of their fengs were clearly pronounced “correctly” as fengs.

[quote=“Chris”]One thing I can’t figure out about TYPY is the following series of labials:

ben, pen, men, fen, wun

They all rhyme, but for some reason the “architect” (cough) of TYPY decided to spell wen “wun”, even though it doesn’t rhyme with dun, tun, gun, kun, sun, etc.[/quote]

I have an unpleasant surprise for you: In opposing Tongyong here you’re actually sort-of supporting it. :astonished:

This one’s a little complicated. The reason is that wen/wun really does belong with dun, tun, etc., not with ben, pen, etc.

Two things are operating here:
[ol][li]One of Hanyu Pinyin’s spelling conventions is to abbreviate uen as un. Thus, dun, tun, nun, lun, rather than duen, tuen, nuen, luen, etc. (But keep in mind that jun, qun, xun are operating under different rules, the -un in these cases really being -ün simplified as -un.)[/li]
[li]Another Hanyu Pinyin convention is that at the beginning of a syllable u is written as w. HP’s wen is thus the equivalent of uen.[/li][/ol]
But in the case of wen/uen, abbreviating uen as un and then transforming the u into a w would leave us with wn, which obviously wouldn’t fit with the rest of the system. So the e got put back in, leaving wen.

It might be easier to see how this works by searching my comparative chart of zhuyin and Mandarin romanization systems for ㄨㄣ.

Hey, back on topic!