I decided to have a separate discussion from the “Waishen” thread, because I think there’s a lot of bickering there, and I want a thread where people can explore the possibility of having a unified romanization for all languages native to Taiwan together.
I don’t know if we can get a simple and unified system out of this, I really don’t. I just think it’s better for Taiwan, and people who are interest in Taiwan and learning Taiwan’s languages if such a system existed. That’s why I am sharing my progress with everyone, hopefully discussion will create a better system, or even declare such a system impossible.
I’m been compiling a chart of phonology of all Taiwan’s languages. So far, I’ve only completed the task for Holo, Haka, and Mandarin. I’ll fill in Aboriginal languages as we go along. I left many TUR fields blank (with green flood-fill), because I am not certain what should be used. However, I would like to see a complete list, and that list will make deciding easier.
I’ve notice there are notable differences from how I say 4 tones and what PY teaches 4 tones. If I’m close to the Taiwan standard, that means Taiwanese speak 4 tones a bit differently than the Chinese. Namely, Taiwanese speak in a lower pitch with a small range, and the 3rd tone for standard Taiwanese Mandarin is 11, at most 112 or 212…
As for Holo, there are two sources of tonal numbers that I’ve found. They are basically the same, except one has a wider range, 5 to 1, as opposed to 3 to 1. I think that really depends on the people. In any case, tones are relative to each other for a speaker, so as long as a speaker can separate the tones within his/her range, it doesn’t really matter about the absolute values.
The Hakka tones is trickier, but I think it would be relatively simple if we simple separate Si-yen from Hoi-liuk.
My thought is to separate the tones into 13 tones, at most 14 if we add a special tone for Mandarin’s 3rd tone.
33, 23, 11, 31, 12, 22, 24, 41, 44, 42, 14
4ʔ high-stop, 2ʔ low-stop
Revise that, maybe we can further simplify it to 9 tones. It can be mapped to all Taiwanese native Sinitic languages.
TUR, Holo, PY, Hakka
high-high ◌ , ◌ 1 陰平 , ◌̄ 1, ◌ 陰去 (四縣) / ◌̀ 陽平 (海陸)
high-low ◌́ , ◌́ 2 陰上, ◌̀ 4, ◌́ 陰上 陽上 (四縣)
low-low ◌̀ , ◌̀ 3 陰去, ◌̌ 3, ◌̀ 陽平 (四縣) / ◌̊ 陽去 (海陸)
low-stop ◌ʔ , ◌ʔ 4 陰入, , ◌ 陰入 (四縣) / ◌̍ 陽入 (海陸)
low-mid ◌̂ , ◌̂ 5 陽平, , ◌́ 陰上 陽上 (海陸)
mid-high ◌̋ , ◌̋ 9, ◌́ 2, ◌̂ 陰平 (四縣)
mid-low ◌̌ , ◌̌ 6 陽上, , ◌̂ 陰平 (海陸)
mid-mid ◌̄ , ◌̄ 7 陽去, , ◌ 陰去 (海陸)
high-stop ◌̍ʔ , ◌̍ 8 陽入, ◌ 0, ◌̍ 陽入 ( 四縣) N/M 陰入 (海陸)
Here’s the link to my google spreadsheet:
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ … sp=sharing