From: uphhswh@Msu.oscs.montana.edu
Subject: Re: pinyin reform
Reply-To: uphhswh@Msu.oscs.montana.edu
Organization: Montana State University
Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1992 19:54:09 GMT

In article <01GSHVLNZ18W96VMQR@CWU.BITNET>, TAN@CWU.BITNET writes:
>A way to make tone indicators part of spellings in pinyin
>
>In the pinyin system, the four tones are arranged in the order of: level(-),
>rising (/), dipping(V), and falling (\). They are also conveniently called
>first tone through fourth tone. When characters in dictionary are entered
>alphabetically by pinyin, this sub-order is adopted for each spelling. In
>addition, the the light tone is defined as fifth tone.
>
>The present rule is that the diacritical mark is placed above the main vowel
>of a spelling.  A spelling without diacritical mark is in light tone.
>It is impossible to type the diacritical marks to right position on standard
>English keyboard. Therefore, I suggest the following rules of tone indication
>without diacritical marks.
>
>Example 1:
>
>1. zhe, 2. zzhe, 3. zhhe, 4. zhee, 5. zhe
>
>The first tone (#1) and light tone (#5) are in regular pinyin spelling. As
>none of characters in light tone are independent semantically, such as a,
>le, ya, ma, ne, ba, de, guo, li, me, etc., and usually are placed at either the
>beginning or end of a sentence, they will easily distinguish from the
>first-tone characters.
>
>If a letter is doubled, the POSITION of second doubled letter indicates the
>tone. In above instance, the position of second z in zzhe (#2), second h in
>zhhe (#3), second e in zhee (#4) indicate second, third, or third tone
>respectively.  All the five spellings are pronounced 'zhe' when the tones are
>ignored.
>
>Difficulties come up for spellings that consist of only one or two letters.
>For instance, it is impossible to express the third- and fourth-tone e's, and
>fourth-tone ba (\, father).  It would look awkward if a letter is tripled or
>even quadrupled, writing as eee, eeee, and baaa. Here I provide a tentative
>solutions.
>
>Select two letters to indicate the third and fourth tones respectively,
>for spellings that are less than three letters.  I select 'h' for
>third tone, and 'v' for the fourth.
>
>The reason to choose 'h' is it is preferrably placed at end of some spellings
>in the Wide-Gile system, such as 'yeh'.  'v' is not used in pinyin, but it is
>on the English keyboard.  So I use it for tone.
>
>Example 2:
>
>e=e(-)=e(light tone), ee = e(/),  eh = (v), ev=(\).
>
>Example 3:
>
>ba=ba(-)=ba(light tone), bba=(/), baa=(v), bav=(\).
>
>Woo shii zhong gguo rren. Woo aiv woo de zuv gguo.
>(I am a Chinese.  I love my home country.)
>
>Following are two Ttang poems:
>
>cchuang qqian mming yuee guang,
>yyi shii div shaang shuang,
>juu ttou wanng mming yuee,
>di ttou si guv xiang.
>
>(The moonlight is shining my bed,
>It looks like frost on the floor,
>Looking up the bright moon,
>Looking down, I miss my home town.)
>
>cchu hhe rii dang wuh,
>hann di hhe xiaa tuu,
>sshui zhi ppan zhong can,
>liv li jie xin kuh.
>
>(In the burning sun, I am weeding the rice field,
>And is my sweat dripping to soil under the sprouts.
>Few know the grains of rice in their bowls
>that were produced with great hardship!)
>
>If interested, please send suggestions, comments, and criticism directly to
>TAN@CWU.  I have no access to usenet.
>
>Julian Zhang

* completely destroy the spirit and advantage of spelling language.
* train children into ssstttaammererrrrrrrrr......s.

W.Huang

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