Tonal spelling: Gwoyeu Romatzyh & TonallyOrthographicPinyin

[sjcma]

@ChouDoufu

Dragonbones, I don’t buy the homophones argument. A Chinese character dictionary is more like a syllabary. Most characters are are used in multisyllabic words. When you look at actual words, rather than characters, the number of homophones in Chinese, while greater than English, are not so high as many people have been led to believe. The Pinyin.info site contains some excellent readings about this and other Chinese language myths.

The homophones argument is not without merit. If one were to write Mandarin as one speaks, of course, homophones should be less of an issue. But Chinese writing, as it is today, is not simply a recording of how one would speak, but is a mix of the spoken vernacular and classical Chinese elements (including idioms/proverbs and word plays on the same). This makes writing and reading in a purely phonetic system difficult unless everyone were to change their writing styles.

If one wishes to preserve the eloquence and compactness of classical Chinese elements in writing and at the same time desire some sort of writing reform, then a mixed orthography a la Japanese may be the way to go.

[Dragonbones]

@ChouDoufu

Most characters are are used in multisyllabic words.

In modern colloquial spoken Chinese, yes, but even in baihua written Chinese, there are numerous homophones, and in the vast accumulated treasury of Chinese there are many many more. I’m sure the average beginner, frustrated with the writing system, would gladly chuck it out the window in favor of a simple syllabary, but I doubt anyone who reads pre-classical through 19th-century literature would concur. I don’t believe homophony is worthy of ‘myth’ status.

Sjcma above makes the point more eloquently.

[cranky_laowai]

@sjcma

The homophones argument is not without merit. If one were to write Mandarin as one speaks, of course, homophones should be less of an issue.

Not less of an issue. No issue at all.

This is important, so I’ll repeat myself: No issue at all.

There is quite simply no linguistic reason why modern standard Mandarin can’t be written with the roman alphabet – the same alphabet used to write the majority of the world’s other languages. (Theoretically, other writing systems could also work. But that’s another matter.)

@sjcma

But Chinese writing, as it is today, is not simply a recording of how one would speak, but is a mix of the spoken vernacular and classical Chinese elements (including idioms/proverbs and word plays on the same). This makes writing and reading in a purely phonetic system difficult unless everyone were to change their writing styles.

Which has been the stated desire since May 4 – the better part of a century ago. If people were finaly allowed to drop Hanzi in favor of a system that better fits modern standard Mandarin (such as Hanyu Pinyin), this would sort itself out quickly enough. Right now, though, the teaching of writing is stuck in the sludge of literary affectation. Rote copying of styles remote from the language itself. Ugh. Oh, for the wisdom of Hu Shih!

Also, plenty of chengyu are recognizable when heard because they are a part of the spoken culture, too.

If one wishes to preserve the eloquence and compactness of classical Chinese elements in writing and at the same time desire some sort of writing reform, then a mixed orthography a la Japanese may be the way to go.

I, for one, am not as impressed by many of the results of the “eloquence and compactness of classical Chinese elements in writing.” Ever seen a baguwen? Those were the style to learn for hundreds of years – even though plenty of people knew they were fundamentally bullshit.

And, anyway, the vernacular certainly has an eloquence of its own, as Dante pointed out hundreds of years ago in a not really so different context.

[cranky_laowai]

DB, you’re doing too much mixing together of Literary Sinitic and modern standard Mandarin under the heading of “Chinese.” That’s just gonna confuse people. They’re different languages.

Also, it’s well worth noting that most people literate in Hanzi do not and indeed cannot read Literary Sinitic. The vast majority of those who read classical texts do so in modern translations. But that doesn’t mean the Hanzi originals will ever cease to exist; they’ll still be there for scholars and specialists, just as Latin texts haven’t been wiped from the face of the earth.

DeFrancis said all this long ago, and much better than I could.

[sjcma]

@cranky laowai

[quote=“sjcma”]The homophones argument is not without merit. If one were to write Mandarin as one speaks, of course, homophones should be less of an issue.

Not less of an issue. No issue at all.

This is important, so I’ll repeat myself: No issue at all. [/quote]
No? Not even names?

[cranky_laowai]

@sjcma

[quote=“cranky laowai”][quote=“sjcma”]The homophones argument is not without merit. If one were to write Mandarin as one speaks, of course, homophones should be less of an issue.

Not less of an issue. No issue at all.

This is important, so I’ll repeat myself: No issue at all. [/quote]
No? Not even names?[/quote]
Don’t think backwards from Hanzi. Think from the standpoint of basic linguistic truths.

People can always explain in speech or in writing what the names are supposed to mean. (My Mandarin name, for example is Shi Weifan: lishi de shi, weida de wei, pingfan de fan.)

Perhaps the easiest way to think of this is that the only problems that Hanzi solve are those created by their use in the first place.

[Dragonbones]

[quote=“cranky laowai”][quote=“sjcma”]No? Not even names?[/quote]…
People can always explain in speech or in writing what the names are supposed to mean. (My Mandarin name, for example is Shi Weifan: lishi de shi, weida de wei, pingfan de fan.) [/quote]

Having to write out lishi de shi, weida de wei, pingfan de fan is absurd. :loco:

Perhaps the easiest way to think of this is that the only problems that Hanzi solve are those created by their use in the first place.

Fine, but they are already there, and pinyin doesn’t adequately solve them.

@cranky laowai

DB, you’re doing too much mixing together of Literary Sinitic and modern standard Mandarin under the heading of “Chinese.” That’s just gonna confuse people. They’re different languages.

Proponents of dropping hanzi in favor of pinyin just LOOOOOOVE to focus on modern Chinese. But literary Chinese is the traditional treasure trove of writing for those who speak modern Chinese. It is most certainly not a different language.

Also, it’s well worth noting that most people literate in Hanzi do not and indeed cannot read Literary Sinitic. The vast majority of those who read classical texts do so in modern translations. But that doesn’t mean the Hanzi originals will ever cease to exist; they’ll still be there for scholars and specialists, just as Latin texts haven’t been wiped from the face of the earth.

A move to pinyin instead of hanzi would make traditional (and I don’t just mean the early classical period) literature even LESS accessible to modern readers of Chinese than it already is. That would be a terrible loss, IMO, and too high a price to pay.

DeFrancis said all this long ago, and much better than I could.

He didn’t convince me then, either.

[sjcma]

@cranky laowai

[quote=“sjcma”][quote=“cranky laowai”][quote=“sjcma”]The homophones argument is not without merit. If one were to write Mandarin as one speaks, of course, homophones should be less of an issue.

Not less of an issue. No issue at all.

This is important, so I’ll repeat myself: No issue at all. [/quote]
No? Not even names?[/quote]
Don’t think backwards from Hanzi. Think from the standpoint of basic linguistic truths.

People can always explain in speech or in writing what the names are supposed to mean. (My Mandarin name, for example is Shi Weifan: lishi de shi, weida de wei, pingfan de fan.)

Perhaps the easiest way to think of this is that the only problems that Hanzi solve are those created by their use in the first place.[/quote]
So what you’re saying is, switching wholesale to a phonetic system will have “problems”, albeit these problems are caused by Hanzi and “their use in the first place”. Sure sounds like an issue to me, rather than NO issue at all. But if you don’t think so, that’s fine. We’ll just have to agree to disagree.

[beautifulspam]

Cranky Laowai wrote:

Right now, though, the teaching of writing is stuck in the sludge of literary affectation. Rote copying of styles remote from the language itself. Ugh. Oh, for the wisdom of Hu Shih!

My impression of classical chinese is that it’s like Old English (think beowulf, not chaucer)- most modern speakers depend on “translations” rather than read in the original. Is this correct?

[Dragonbones]

Dragonbabe wanted me to type this up for her and post it (she’s cramming for midterms, and dictated the rough gist of this to me). I told her she could type it later but she’s adamant, so here goes:

Reasons why we shouldn’t replace characters:

1. the beauty of Hanzi

We have a rich and beautiful script with thousands of years of history. The script is itself a priceless art form. Why on earth would we want to replace our beautiful characters with ugly little squiggles from foreign imperialist nations? :raspberry: The very idea is culturally insulting.

2. their integral role in the culture of greater China

Chinese characters are an integral part of our culture. They are part of what link our past to our present, and we can’t even read our literature without them. Getting rid of them is a stupid idea which could only be supported by foreign devils.

3. the bridge they create between speakers of various fang1yan2

While it’s not true that speakers of different fangyan (regionalects; dialects) can just look at a newspaper and understand it without any training in, it IS true that the content words like 家 jiā ‘home/family’, 牛 niú ‘cow/bull/ox’, and so on can be used to write Mandarin as well as fangyan and can be understood across these boundaries. We can see the sign for a bookstore and understand it, even in Japan, no matter how it is pronounced locally. That wouldn’t be true for a Romanized version of the local pronunciation.

4. the need to know Hanzi to make pre-bai2hua4 literature accessible, and the fundamental importance of that literature to the culture of greater China

More than many others, Chinese civilization is in large part defined by its rich literary history. Teaching all the people how to read the characters is important so that more of those people will be able to read that literature. Maybe only a few actually get to the point where they can read it like an expert, but many DO get to the point where they can read some of it, and that valuable goal would be impossible to reach if we didn’t teach characters to all the students. Only a few master calculus, so does that mean we should stop teaching math? If we stopped, then almost NO ONE would master calculus, and our science and engineering would suffer. The same is true for the culturally valuable field of literature. Would you really throw away Shakespeare so that a few more snot-nosed farm boys in rural England could learn to write their shopping lists? The solution to illiteracy in rural China is better education, not throwing away the beautiful, meaningful characters which make our literature, a fundamental part of our culture, accessible. The idea is infuriating.

5. the inability of pinyin to reflect the meanings of different homophones, for example in personal and place names, in poetry and pre-baihua literature, and to a significant extent in baihua as well, despite denials of this by proponents of reform

Our words aren’t just sounds. They have meaning which goes beyond the sound. The words 得 and 德 dé don’t mean the same thing, and the meaning of the 2nd one is important when it’s part of a person’s name; the same is true of 小 and 曉 xiao3 , and so on. Even if it exists to a lesser extent in modern baihua writing, this homophony is still a fundamental part of the language, and you can’t just make it disappear with wishful thinking. Only a foreigner could come up with such a ridiculous notion.

6. I don’t believe there is a “problem” to be solved. Statistics about how many mainland peasants are illiterate are not convincing. The problem isn’t the difficulty of the writing system, as can be seen in the high literacy rates in several places like Taiwan which use hanzi. This point is made stronger by the fact that the form used here is even more complex than the one used in China. The problem is that the PRC government has failed in the task of teaching them, probably so it can keep them ignorant and oppressed. And even if they did learn to write, all they’d have to read is bullshit communist propaganda anyway, so is their illiteracy really a problem?

In sum, the idea is aesthetically abhorent, culturally insulting, ridiculously impractical, and downright stupid in every way.

Have a nice day!

[Chris]

@Dragonbones

We can see the sign for a bookstore and understand it, even in Japan

本屋
?

[ironlady]

[quote=“ChouDoufu”]Thanks for explaining the TOP system to me. Actually, I like it a lot. It’d be kind of ugly to read as writing system; sentences would be difficult to distinguish and the like. But as a learning tool to use on flash cards, taking notes on new words and phrases, etc. It is a great idea.

Problem is that all of the tools that I have (software, pre-printed flash cards, books) all use Pinyin and/or Zhuyingfuhao. So, I really wouldn’t get much use from it other than when making my own flash cards. I guess I could re-write the TOP system next to all Pinyin. Since it is so easy (heck, I learned it in the time it tool to read Taffy’s post), I’ll try it for a week and see if I feel it is helping.[/quote]

TOP is totally ugly. But heck, so is Ironlady. And both of them work.

You’re right, though. It was never intended as a “writing system” in the sense of providing a body of literature – except maybe short stories for pedagogical purposes. It’s more for making a strong impression of the tone, and making sure that the tone is intrinsically part of the syllable, rather than a tacked-on and frequently scratched-out afterthought (like it was with me for the first 14 years of my Chinese career.)

If you use TOP and add some kind of kinesthetic learning to your mix – like associating a single gesture to each new item and making sure that the gesture moves in the same direction as the tone (so that a first-tone syllable always has its gesture straight across at forehead level, a second-tone syllable gesture has to move upward, etc.), you’ll probably forget the phonetic form of the syllable before you forget the tone. (I’ve actually had students remember the tone and forget the word…weird!) And if you’re truly dedicated/crazy, you can color-code your words in TOP. The more layers of memory-stimulus you add, the more likely things will stay in the old bean. Since my brain is akin to a sieve when it comes to remembering tones, I needed all the help I could get, and this helps me.

Anyway, it’s nice to see more than two of us even thinking about using it. Heck, give me another dynastic cycle or two (Han length or similar) and I’ll change the way textbooks Romanize!!

[Changjiang750]

Gwoyeu Romatzyh spellings of famous Chinese and Hong Kong people:

Chiang Kai-shek
Hanyu Pinyin: jiang3 jie4shi2
Tongyong Pinyin: jiang3 jie4-shih2
GR: Jeang Jieh-shyr

Jackie Chan
Hanyu Pinyin: chen2 gang3sheng1
Tongyong Pinyin: chen2 gang3-sheng1
GR: Chern Gaang-sheng

Sun Yat-sen
Hanyu Pinyin: sun1 yi5xian1 (“yi” is neutral tone here)
Tongyong Pinyin: sun1 yi5-sian1
GR: Suen I-shian (probably no GR equivalent for neutral tones?)

Michelle Yeoh
Hanyu Pinyin: yang2 zi3qiong2
Tongyong Pinyin: yang2 zih3-cyong2
GR: Yang Tzyy-chyong

Ziyi Zhang
Hanyu Pinyin: zhang1 zi3yi2
Tongyong Pinyin: jhang1 zih3-yi2
GR: Jang Tzyy-yi

~Ben

[Hellstorm]

Even if this message is so old:

@ChouDoufu

I disagree about not using phonetic spelling or diacritical marks on signs. Why not use tone marks when using Pinyin on signs? Perhaps others on the board familiar with other languages that use diacritical marks (for tones, vowel sounds, or whatever else they are used for) can remark on whether those are used on signage in the countries where the languages are used.

Of course the diacritics are used on signs and other similar places. They are as important as an ordinary letter. There will never be a case where the diacritics are dropped.
It is just a matter if you are accustomed to them or not. If you would see them every day, you would think toneless Pinyin is completely wrong.
So if everybody would write Pinyin with tones on street signs etc., nobody would think of it as weird.

@ Changjiang750
I don’t see the point in writing some Guoyu Luomazi und „showing“ that it looks weird. This is just because almost everybody is now used to Pinyin.

I also think that „Gaoxiong“ looks weird.

[Chris]

@Hellstorm

I also think that „Gaoxiong“ looks weird.

Especially when it’s flanked by mis-oriented quotation marks.

[ironlady]

For anyone who is following the whole TOP romanization system:

At this point, the use of TOP has evolved over a few years of classroom testing. I just completed an intensive adult Chinese course (8 hours) in which I used the “new” TOP, and the results were very good. I had native Chinese speaking teachers in the back of the room observing and they were saying that they couldn’t get their second-year students to pronounce tones as well as these people did after 8 hours – without any explicit tone instruction other than explaining when a word came up with a first tone in it that the blue/overlined/all-caps words were high, etc. etc… This seminar also used directional gestures, so that also helped to reinforce the tones. I did not explicitly teach Pinyin or tones at any point, other than “popping up” comments when a feature was encountered along the way.

TOP now incorporates three markers for tones:

1. Capitals and small letters to indicate tone;
2. The usual diacritical marks over vowels, as used in Hanyu Pinyin;
3. Coloring of the text (tone 1=blue, 2=green, 3=black, 4=red, 5=grey).

Using all three of these at once (sometimes just the first 2, if you’re dealing with a black-and-white printer setup) seems to be far more effective than any element by itself, based on the anecdotal evidence from the observers in the class. I have opinion feedback from the attendees and (as expected) pretty much everyone had a different preference for what was most helpful to him/her – which suggests to me that we have to make an effort to cater to all of these people, which the newer version of TOP seems to do pretty well.

(Strangely, the most popular element of phonetics/tones were my awful mnemonic stories. In terms of purely tone mnemonics, these preliminary results of the survey data show that the capitals/small letters were the the most memorable to the attendees, followed by Pinyin diacriticals, then colors.)

We have a group of Chinese teachers in the US who will be piloting my new textbook this coming year. It uses TOP throughout. I will also be publishing two more readers this year (with luck), both of which will use the new TOP romanization (and will be available in both simplified AND traditional characters, this time.)

[Hellstorm]

@Chris

[quote=“Hellstorm”]I also think that „Gaoxiong“ looks weird.

Especially when it’s flanked by mis-oriented quotation marks.[/quote]

Oh, sorry
I always wonder why English uses so weird quotation marks. Thats why I always write the other ones.

[Kapernaumov]

Sooooo… no one here actually uses GR? I had the great luck of studying Chinese 101 at what’s probably the only university left in the US that uses GR (mainly because the oldest prof in the East Asian department studied under the daughter of YR Chao), with probably the only Mandarin textbook in the world still printed in GR (Harvard University Press’ Chinese Primer)… and I have to say I love the system. Sure, it took almost a month to learn (and I’m still occasionally stumped when I have to write a uncommon sound like xue3 - sheue [although even in those cases it’s easy enough to write the first tone spelling and drop a little V over the top of the word]), but it’s so much better than Hannyeu Pin’in. Because of Hanyu Pinyin, I spent my first month living in Taipei (Tairbeei) thinking Banqiao (Baanchyau) was pronounced Ban3qiao1.

I guess it’s actually not Hanyu Pinyin’s fault that it’s such a faulty system; it’s really more the fault of the people who make all the signs without actually using the system correctly - in this case, without the diacriticals. This seems to be a general problem when native Chinese speakers right Romanization. First we had Wade-Giles, where apostrophes and numbers were dropped whenever romanizing signs and names, thereby not only removing the tone but actually changing pronunciations of places like T’aipei (in Hanyu Pinyin, Taibei) to Taipei (in Hanyu Pinyin, Daibei). Then it carried over to Hanyu and Tongyong with dropping the diacriticals. The cool thing about tonal spelling then is that it’s impossible to Romanize without including the tone.

[ironlady]

@Kapernaumov

Sooooo… no one here actually uses GR? …The cool thing about tonal spelling then is that it’s impossible to Romanize without including the tone.

A teacher I work with in a nearby district learned Mandarin using GR, and still likes it (she even wrote her Master’s thesis on it). In the interest of unflagging promotion of TOP, though, I’ll mention that she has jumped ship to TOP and prefers it to GR now (although that may have a lot to do with the fact that she’s teaching beginners and that now there are simple conversion scripts available to change whole texts from Pinyin with numbers to TOP without pain.)

Script to do that: http://www.chinesepronto.com/triple/flash.php

Just enter Pinyin using a number at the end of the syllable to represent the tone (use 5 for neutral tone) and the system will output color-coded TOP either for text use (like pasting into a word processor and printing) or for the Internet (HTML code for use on a Web page; I use it on my Moodle pages for student readings or vocab lists.)

[Chris]

@Kapernaumov

Because of Hanyu Pinyin, I spent my first month living in Taipei (Tairbeei) thinking Banqiao (Baanchyau) was pronounced Ban3qiao1.

If GR was standard, I’d be pronouncing Taiwan’s capital as “tare-bee”.

Personally, I think GR is down there with Tongyong in the “What were they thinking?” category of spelling systems.

I’m OK with TOP in certain circumstances, but I far prefer Hanyu with diacritics. And I still think Wade-Giles is kind of classy.