Tonal spelling: Gwoyeu Romatzyh & TonallyOrthographicPinyin

Language Learning Chinese
41

Well, actually a problem of everyone not familiar with Chinese. “What I don’t know, I don’t need”

I actually don’t really care that they don’t write Shanghai in a western newspaper as Shànghǎi (which 99,9% of the users will not know how to deal with – also, it may look typographically ugly), but they should please use the diacritics in Taiwan for street signs etc. Maybe there it comes down to 20% (usually only tourists) who don’t know what these funny things over there are.
Actually, some scientific transcriptions are really ugly to look at. Would you like to read about Maḥmūd Aḥmadī-Nežād in a newspaper? (and I would actually count Pinyin as an ugly scientific transcription :wink: )
These transcriptions are of course useful, but you always have to look at the target audience. And the target audience of a western newspaper is quite different from foreigners in Taiwan or China. Most natives don’t seem to realize that, though.

[quote=“Chris”]
If GR was standard, I’d be pronouncing Taiwan’s capital as “tare-bee”.[/quote]

So what? Try to listen to other people (not speaking Chinese) pronouncing Chongqing, Deng Xiaoping, Mao Zedong, Sichuan etc. Also, do this for languages, where the j may be pronounced similar to i (as in Latin). I heard the radio newscaster pronouncing Jiang Zemin in the radio, and I was actually wondering what he meant… he pronounced it like (english style spelling) as Yiang Tsemin.

If people who did not learn Chinese will try to pronounce Wade-Giles, Guoyu Luomazi, Tongyong Pinyin, Hanyu Pinyin, whatever: it’s all wrong, and presumably no Chinese native will understand it. Also, if you don’t write the tones, even the ones who CAN speak Chinese cannot pronounce it correctly.

Instead, with Guoyu Luomazi: 99% of the people will pronounce it incorrectly, but at least, people who know the system can always pronounce it correctly. If it is Pinyin, it always comes down to not being able to pronounce the tone correctly because “we don’t need diacritics, because English guys don’t know what they are” guys don’t like to print them.

I always wonder why the tones are treated as some kind of minor pronounciation. “Being able to correctly pronounce zh is more important than being able to pronounce the third tone”. In my eyes, both of it is equally important (I’m not saying that I am not having problems with tones).

42

This is not a realistic comparison of the two systems, because the diacritical tone marks are as much a part of proper Hanyu Pinyin as the added silent letters or spelling changes that indicate tones are to Guoyu Luomazi. Writing Hanyu Pinyin without the tone marks is not correct Hanyu Pinyin, so you might as well compare it to writing GR without writing all the letters.

People who know the Hanyu Pinyin system, or the TOP system, can always pronounce a syllable correctly as well, provided it is spelled right and completely. The same is true with any Romanization system (or with Zhuyin.) The vast majority of people will always mispronounce random Chinese words that flit into their worlds no matter what system is used.

43

[quote=“ironlady”]
This is not a realistic comparison of the two systems, because the diacritical tone marks are as much a part of proper Hanyu Pinyin as the added silent letters or spelling changes that indicate tones are to Guoyu Luomazi. Writing Hanyu Pinyin without the tone marks is not correct Hanyu Pinyin, so you might as well compare it to writing GR without writing all the letters.

People who know the Hanyu Pinyin system, or the TOP system, can always pronounce a syllable correctly as well, provided it is spelled right and completely. The same is true with any Romanization system (or with Zhuyin.) The vast majority of people will always mispronounce random Chinese words that flit into their worlds no matter what system is used.[/quote]

That is exactly what I am saying. But you fail to see that, in practice, there is no proper Hanyu Pinyin. Except textbooks (or something like that) or hypercorrect scientific articles (often about the Chinese language), I have never seen Pinyin with tone marks.

So of course, people who know Hanyu Pinyin or your loved TOP can always pronounce it correctly. But only if it is written with tones – which it never is.

In contrast, Guoyu Luomazi will always be correctly written, because nobody dares to leave letters out, in contrast to diacritics. So the situation would be like this:

With proper Pinyin:

  • everybody who learned Chinese would be able to pronounce it correctly
  • people who don’t know Chinese will not be able to pronounce it correctly
  • it looks a bit ugly in a text.

not proper Pinyin

  • people who know Chinese cannot pronounce it correctly
  • people who don’t know Chinese cannot pronounce it correctly
  • it does not look that ugly in a text.

proper Guoyu Luomazi:

  • people who learned Guoyu Luomazi can pronounce it correctly
  • everybody else will pronounce it incorrectly
  • it also looks ugly.

So, basically, what we have is:
With Guoyu Luomazi, we got one group who can pronounce it correctly, one group who cannot pronounce it correctly.
With Pinyin (not proper Pinyin), we got 2 groups who cannot pronounce it correctly, and no group who can pronounce it correctly.
Because in practice there is no proper pinyin, we will not have the first case.

So, seen like this, Guoyu Luomazi wins.
Of course, it would be all right, if China and Taiwan would decide to print tone marks on street signs etc., but I have a hard time seeing that.

44

Not necessarily. Much of what is “correct” depends on context and who, exactly, the Hanyu Pinyin is for. A better metaphor might be to think of writing Hebrew without vowels marks. Vowels are, of course, as much a part of Hebrew as tones (and vowels) are a part of Mandarin. But that doesn’t mean that “correct” writing in Hebrew must include vowels. Advanced speakers of Hebrew don’t need the the pointing. And speakers of Mandarin don’t need tone marks in most cases. (Example.) (Consider, too, how word stress is not indicated in English orthography.) Whether including tone marks is a good idea, regardless, would be another matter though.

45

There are some technical books out there that use Gwoyeu Romatzyh. The ones I can think of now are Chao Yuen Ren’s classic “The Grammar of Spoken Chinese” and “Chinese Dialect Classification” by Richard Vanness Simmons. The romanization system was annoying at first, but didn’t stop me from reading the books.

46

Um…TOP is ALWAYS written with tones. That’s the whole point of it. You cannot write it without tones. That’s why it’s a tonal spelling system, rather than simply using diacritics to represent the tone.

Having said that – TOP is intended for teaching. That’s it. It’s not intended to replace characters, only to provide an exhaustively tone-marked system for learners.

Anyway, I am thinking more of Romanization as used for pedagogy, not as it appears “in the big world”. Even TOP, which forces tones to be part of the syllable as a tonally orthographic system, would not “register” on people who had no clue that Chinese had tones or what those tones were. So I think you really do have to separate pronouncing Chinese correctly into two situations: students and non-Chinese speakers. No one expects people using a Chinese word in the midst of an English conversation to put a tone on it – people who code-switch between the two languages by dropping in isolated Chinese words generally do not use tones if English is the dominant language. So tone marks are sort of moot in that situation IMO (except insofar as there might be two words that are identical except for tone – which is very unusual in real situations.)

47

[quote=“Chris”]

[quote=“Kapernaumov”]
Because of Hanyu Pinyin, I spent my first month living in Taipei (Tairbeei) thinking Banqiao (Baanchyau) was pronounced Ban3qiao1.[/quote]

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.[/quote]

I don’t think it makes sense to use the system for foreign spellings of Chinese names… but neither does Hanyu Pinyin. Both systems lend themselves to 99% of the Western population badly mispronouncing everything, to the extent that when talking about China with other English speakers, you sound pretentious if you pronounce things correctly because they’re so commonly mispronounced. Shanghai and Beijing (not even really sure how to write to show that the j is rolled) come to mind; and that’s completely ignoring all the words with Qs, Zhs, and Xs as initials.

Rather, I’m just saying that for in-country Romanizations on street signs/buses/etc., I think GR would be the best system.

To add to what Hellstorm posted: While it would be as useless to Chinese speakers as Hanyu is without diacriticals, I think using base-spelling GR for foreign Romanization would do a lot to help promote proper pronunciation among non-speakers, at least in English speaking countries. Deng Shiauping, unlike Deng Xiaoping, actually looks, to an English speaker, like it should be pronounced “sh/x.” Same goes for Ju Rongji [Zhu Rongji], Chongching [Chongqing], Shi’an [Xi’an], etc.

EDIT:

With all the talk about how ugly GR is, I feel like I need to put my two cents in to defend this aspect of it. Admittedly, the the extra letters look rather alien and clunky when each syllable is examined individually, but when you look at the system as a whole it’s actually rather beautifully crafted. Just like TOP, the tone markers are not random, but designed to mimic the sound of the tone. Ping, pyng, piing, pinq; Shuei, shwei, shoei, shuey; Mhin, min, miin, minn; Tsai, tsair, tsae, tsay. First tone is base spelling, second generally changes a letter to one with a more “pushing” sound in English, third doubles a vowel to represent a fall followed by a rise, and fourth adds letters to the end to make the vowel heavier on that side.

EDIT: With all the talk about how ugly GR is, I feel like I need to put my two cents in to defend this aspect of it. Admittedly, the the extra letters look rather alien and clunky when each syllable is examined individually, but when you look at the system as a whole it’s actually rather beautifully crafted. Just like TOP, the tone markers are not random, but designed to mimic the sound of the tone. Ping, pyng, piing, pinq; Shuei, shwei, shoei, shuey; Mhin, min, miin, minn; Tsai, tsair, tsae, tsay. First tone is base spelling, second generally changes a letter to one with a more “pushing” sound in English, third doubles a vowel to represent a fall followed by a rise, and fourth adds letters to the end to make the vowel heavier on that side.

48

[quote=“Kapernaumov”]
To add to what Hellstorm posted: While it would be as useless to Chinese speakers as Hanyu is without diacriticals, I think using base-spelling GR for foreign Romanization would do a lot to help promote proper pronunciation among non-speakers, at least in English speaking countries. Deng Shiauping, unlike Deng Xiaoping, actually looks, to an English speaker, like it should be pronounced “sh/x.” Same goes for Ju Rongji [Zhu Rongji], Chongching [Chongqing], Shi’an [Xi’an], etc.[/quote]

Well, luckily English is not the only language on earth :slight_smile:

But, to some degree, I would prefer a target-language specific romanization, e.g. like it is done with Russian. Горбачёв is Gorbatschow in German, Gorbachev in English, Gorbačov in Czech.

Sadly, most reporters have no idea about Chinese, and would just adopt the English spelling. Because of that, we get “Lee” in Germany, instead of the much better “Li”. Or „Lü Xiulian“ is „Annette Lu“, even though they could at least write it „Annette Lü“ :unamused: …
For Russian, they would at least check the German romanization.

Well, 英文萬歲

49

[quote]
With all the talk about how ugly GR is, I feel like I need to put my two cents in to defend this aspect of it. Admittedly, the the extra letters look rather alien and clunky when each syllable is examined individually, but when you look at the system as a whole it’s actually rather beautifully crafted. Just like TOP, the tone markers are not random, but designed to mimic the sound of the tone. Ping, pyng, piing, pinq; Shuei, shwei, shoei, shuey; Mhin, min, miin, minn; Tsai, tsair, tsae, tsay. First tone is base spelling, second generally changes a letter to one with a more “pushing” sound in English, third doubles a vowel to represent a fall followed by a rise, and fourth adds letters to the end to make the vowel heavier on that side.[/quote]

I have a problem (for teaching purposes, which is mostly what I think about) with the addition of silent letters. It causes the loss of the relationship between syllables that are pronounced identically except for different tones – the addition of letters suggests that there are segmental phonemic differences in the syllables when the only difference that the system really wants to show is suprasegmental (tone). I don’t care if it looks ugly, but I wanted a system of tonal spelling that would preserve the real relationship of phonetics between syllables in that situation.

50

[quote=“ironlady”][quote]
I have a problem (for teaching purposes, which is mostly what I think about) with the addition of silent letters. It causes the loss of the relationship between syllables that are pronounced identically except for different tones – the addition of letters suggests that there are segmental phonemic differences in the syllables when the only difference that the system really wants to show is suprasegmental (tone). I don’t care if it looks ugly, but I wanted a system of tonal spelling that would preserve the real relationship of phonetics between syllables in that situation.[/quote][/quote]

But do letters only have to display phonemics? I’m not sure, but I guess there are some languages where letters will also display something like tones.
Even if not: you can do everything you want with the latin alphabet :wink: No rule that forbids usage like Guoyu Luomazi.

51

[quote=“Hellstorm”][quote=“ironlady”][quote]
I have a problem (for teaching purposes, which is mostly what I think about) with the addition of silent letters. It causes the loss of the relationship between syllables that are pronounced identically except for different tones – the addition of letters suggests that there are segmental phonemic differences in the syllables when the only difference that the system really wants to show is suprasegmental (tone). I don’t care if it looks ugly, but I wanted a system of tonal spelling that would preserve the real relationship of phonetics between syllables in that situation.[/quote][/quote]

But do letters only have to display phonemics? I’m not sure, but I guess there are some languages where letters will also display something like tones.
Even if not: you can do everything you want with the latin alphabet :wink: No rule that forbids usage like Guoyu Luomazi.[/quote]
In some languages like Hmong, there are silent tone letters (like b, s and v) that are tacked onto the ends of syllables. I don’t like this form of orthography because it makes me want to pronounce them even though I know I’m not supposed to.

The Thai language has tone marks but also consonant classes and other phonological rules that determine tone in a complex but predictable way (barring a handful of irregularities). Presumably the rules were simpler centuries ago before numerous phonological changes took place in the language.

52

The fans of Gwoyeu Romatzyh here should find this of interest: Shin Tarng no. 1.

This is a journal from the 1980s. This particular issue is written almost entirely in GR.

53

GR looks like someone got Borat to design a Romanisation system. Also, if you think non-Chinese mispronounce Chinese words now, imagine that system. Tell me shoei wouldn’t be pronounced like footwear + ee. The whole thing looks like Polish gone wrong. Ever see a native English speaker try to pronounce Polish or Czech? It’s all c’s, z’s, s’s and y’s in a big jumble with no vowels, which naturally leads to a random stab. The more letters you add, the worse it’s going to be.

Also, in terms of various other Romanisation forms getting it wrong, you’re assuming that Taiwanese wouldn’t screw GR up on signage. Given the often mixed Romanisation systems here, not to mention the abundance of Chinglish, I’m not so sure a letter or two wouldn’t go astray here or there, or that a b and a d wouldn’t be reversed. If people can’t figure these things out with the current systems (including making the effort to correctly copy something that’s written down correctly for them and write it on a sign), I don’t think another system would necessarily be the solution.

54

[quote=“cranky laowai”]The fans of Gwoyeu Romatzyh here should find this of interest: Shin Tarng no. 1.

This is a journal from the 1980s. This particular issue is written almost entirely in GR.[/quote]
That’s pretty cool, though it doesn’t seem to be GR. It follows the same spirit of GR but breaks a couple of the spelling rules in favor of other spellings. For example, “Jiaanhuah Rormaatzyh’de Tehdiaan” should be “Jeanhuah Romatzyh.de Tehdean.”

Actually, now that I look at it more, it seems the authors of appear to have adapted GR so that the main spelling rules apply in all cases, not just some. 沒, normally “mei” (because of sub rule for initials l, m, n, and r that makes their base spelling second tone instead of first) is changed to “meir” in this publication, apparently so it fits the broader rule that second tones have an “r” on the end. They seem to have applied a similar process to words like 簡 “jiaan” (normally “jean”), 有 yoou (normally “yeou”), and several others. They also replace the “h” at the end of 不 (normally written “bu” even though it’s fourth tone for simplicity’s sake) and write out spellings to represent their pronunciation after tone sandhi kicks in, not how the character is normally pronounced (as is standard in GR).

It’s rather interesting; it’s readable because it follows some of the rules of GR, but it most definitely isn’t GR because they’re applied differently (and some are dropped altogether). Except for “shyyyuhng;” I have absolutely no idea what they’re trying to say there :astonished:

55

Also “Neihrurng,” that just looks silly.

EDIT: Also, it uses ‘u’ for the GR ‘o’ sound, as in 中 “jung” (normally jong)

EDIT2: Jungguor is a nasty looking way to spell 中國… this is a very strange system.

56

I’m guessing that’s Lin Yu-tang’s revision of GR. And I wouldn’t be too surprised to see some typos because there were no GR spell-checkers then (or now, to my knowledge) and because GR is, IMO, much more susceptible to typos than systems that don’t use tonal spelling.

57

I agree, and for me, this renders such a system unacceptable from the outset; it shouldn’t even be considered. Diacriticals, tone numerals and creative use of lower and upper case, colors, fonts, textures*, etc. to reflect tones are all inherently superior.

*I vote for fuzzy blue for 3rd tone.

58

Love the texture idea. We need to collaborate on a new system: “Exhaustively-Tone-Marked-Romanization”, or something like that. The four tones should also be scented differently, of course…scratch and sniff workbooks… fourth tone, chou doufu… :smiley:

59

Now there’s a system I think we can all agree on. Heck, as long as we don’t get into flavors it might even work!

60

Scratch 'n Sniff! :roflmao: