ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2 N2713
Date: 2004-03-20

ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2Universal Multiple-Octet Coded Character Set (UCS) - ISO/IEC 10646
Secretariat: ANSI
Title:

Revised Proposal for encoding A Supplemented
Set of IPA Combining Marks, Modifier Letters &Five-Degree Contour Tone Marks in the BMP of
the UCS

Source:China National Body

Action:For consideration by JTC1/SC2/WG2 and UTC

Distribution:

SC2/WG2 and UTC Experts

On WG2 #44 meeting in San Francisco, N2626 "Proposal on IPA Extensions & Combining
Diacritical Marks" from China had widely attention. Most of arguments generally support the
proposal. After reviewing the suggestions, the proposed proposal from China is revised asfollowing:
1. In the proposed proposal, 24 more phonetic symbols or marks are in three categories whereas
320 phonetic symbols or marks are in the N2626 proposal.
2. In the proposed proposal, 24 more phonetic symbols or marks are in three categories as thefollowing:
1) Keeping the No.A930 diacritic mark in N2626, a dot above right of the symbol [O], as in[O·], representing “greater openness” in vowels (lower vowel);2) A set of marks representing 8 tone categories in the Chinese languages; (A954~A95B)
3) 15 tone value marks with a five-degree tone value measurement. (A95F~A963、
AA36~AA3A、AA3B~AA3F)
3. The actual examples of three categories above mentioned are provided in the proposed
proposal.
A. Administrative
1. Title:

Revised Proposal for encoding A Supplemented Set of IPA Combining
Marks, Modifier Letters & Five-Degree Contour Tone Marks in the BMP of the UCS
2. Requester's name:
China
3. Requester type (Member body/Liaison/Individual contribution):
Member body
4. Submission date:
2004-03-19
5. Requester's reference (if applicable):
N2626
6. Choose one of the following:This is a complete proposal:or,More information will be provided later:

Yes

1

B. Technical - General
1. Choose one of the following:a. This proposal is for a new script (set of characters):
Proposed name of script:.
b. The proposal is for addition of character(s) to an existing block:
Name of the existing block:No
Yes

IPA Extensions, Spacing Modifier Letters & Combining Diacritical Marks
2. Number of characters in proposal:
24
3. Proposed category (select one from below - see section 2.2 of P&P document):
A-Contemporary __√_ B.1-Specialized (small collection) _____ B.2-Specialized (large collection)
C-Major extinct _____ D-Attested extinct_____ E-Minor extinct
F-Archaic Hieroglyphic or Ideographic_____
G-Obscure or questionable usage symbols
4. Proposed Level of Implementation (1, 2 or 3) (see Annex K in P&P document):
1
Is a rationale provided for the choice?
No
If Yes, reference:
5. Is a repertoire including character names provided?
Yesa. If YES, are the names in accordance with the “character naming guidelines”
in Annex L of P&P document?
Yesb. Are the character shapes attached in a legible form suitable for review?
Yes
6. Who will provide the appropriate computerized font (ordered preference: True Type, or PostScript format) for
publishing the standard?
Institute of Linguistics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
If available now, identify source(s) for the font (include address, e-mail, ftp-site, etc.) and indicate the tools
used:No.5 Jianguomennei Dajie, Beijing 100732, China

Email: fy_yys@cass.org.cn; baichm@cass.org.cn
7. References:a. Are references (to other character sets, dictionaries, descriptive texts etc.) provided?
Yesb. Are published examples of use (such as samples from newspapers, magazines, or other sources)of proposed characters attached?
Yes
8. Special encoding issues:
Does the proposal address other aspects of character data processing (if applicable) such as input,
presentation, sorting, searching, indexing, transliteration etc. (if yes please enclose information)?

No
9. Additional Information:
Submitters are invited to provide any additional information about Properties of the proposed Character(s) or Scriptthat will assist in correct understanding of and correct linguistic processing of the proposed character(s) or script.
Examples of such properties are: Casing information, Numeric information, Currency information, Display behaviour
information such as line breaks, widths etc., Combining behaviour, Spacing behaviour, Directional behaviour, Default
Collation behaviour, relevance in Mark Up contexts, Compatibility equivalence and other Unicode normalization
related information. See the Unicode standard at http://www.unicode.org for such information on other scripts. Also
see http://www.unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/UCD.html and associated Unicode Technical Reports for informationneeded for consideration by the Unicode Technical Committee for inclusion in the Unicode Standard.
C. Technical - Justification
1. Has this proposal for addition of character(s) been submitted before?

Yes

If YES explain N2626 "Proposal on IPA Extensions & Combining Diacritical Marks for ISO/IEC 10646 in
BMP”
2. Has contact been made to members of the user community (for example: National Body,
user groups of the script or characters, other experts, etc.)?
If YES, with whom?
If YES, available relevant documents:
3. Information on the user community for the proposed characters (for example:
size, demographics, information technology use, or publishing use) is included?

Yes
National Body

Yes

Reference:
4. The context of use for the proposed characters (type of use; common or rare)

CommonReference:
5. Are the proposed characters in current use by the user community?
If YES, where? Reference:

2

Yes
Worldwide6. After giving due considerations to the principles in the P&P document must the proposed characters be entirelyin the BMP?
Yes
If YES, is a rationale provided?
If YES, reference:No

7. Should the proposed characters be kept together in a contiguous range (rather than being scattered)?
8. Can any of the proposed characters be considered a presentation form of an existing
character or character sequence?

No

If YES, is a rationale for its inclusion provided?
If YES, reference:
9. Can any of the proposed characters be encoded using a composed character sequence of either
existing characters or other proposed characters?

No

If YES, is a rationale for its inclusion provided?
If YES, reference:
10. Can any of the proposed character(s) be considered to be similar (in appearance or function)
to an existing character?

No

If YES, is a rationale for its inclusion provided?
If YES, reference:
11. Does the proposal include use of combining characters and/or use of composite sequences?

No

If YES, is a rationale for such use provided?
If YES, reference:
Is a list of composite sequences and their corresponding glyph images (graphic symbols)
provided?
If YES, reference:
12. Does the proposal contain characters with any special properties such as
control function or similar semantics?
No
If YES, describe in detail (include attachment if necessary)
13. Does the proposal contain any Ideographic compatibility character(s)?
If YES, is the equivalent corresponding unified ideographic character(s) identified?
If YES, reference:

3No

D. Proposal
Part I. Introduction
Designed by the Institute of Linguistics of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and made public
on Dialect (Fangyan) No. 2, 1979, the notational set of 494 IPA extensions and 106 tone marks
has always served as the actual academic as well as industrial standard in China. At present, it is
widely used by the communities of linguistics, education, and the publishing industry inlanguage survey, linguistic research, language teaching, dictionary compilation, and publicationsin those fields. With the advent of the digital era, this notational set is also adopted in thetypesetting integration platform by Founder Electronics, the largest pre-print software developerof Chinese electronic publishing.
The present IPA Extensions, Combining Diacritical Marks for the Chinese languages in ISO/IEC
10646 cannot fully meet the actual needs of the Chinese communities of linguistics, culture andeducation, publication, and information technology. After careful examination and reviewing of
the present IPA notational set, we find it urgent to add 24 more phonetic symbols in three
categories as the following:
1. A combining dot above right representing open vowel featuring lower tongue position;
2. A set of modifier letters representing 8 tone categories in the Chinese languages;
3. 15 five-degree contour tone marks, including 10 five-level dotted forms for neutral tones and
5 five-degree contour tone marks.
Part II. Progress
The present 1979 Dialect (Fangyan) notational set was a meticulous design with reference to therules and standards made by the International Phonetic Association on the basis of an extensive
collection of the IPA symbols or marks ever used to represent the Chinese languages by Chinese
linguists and publishers. In the recent years, the Institute of Linguistics of Chinese Academy ofSocial Sciences has called on for several times specialists in this area to discuss the writing
standard and number of combining diacritical marks and modifier letters. It has been proposed
to supplement and finally consummate the present set by determining the coding rules of IPA setof symbols and adding combining marks, modifier letters and five-degree contour tone marks to
the 1979 set with ISO/IEC 10646 standards.
Part III. Principles
1. The proposed new IPA set for the Chinese languages is an extension of IPA Extensions,
Spacing Modifier Letters & Combining Diacritical Marks in ISO/IEC 10646;
2. The proposed new set shall be capable of expressing and exchanging all data in the IPA
documents or documents with IPA content, and meeting the needs of the Chinese linguists,
educationists, publishers, and software developers;
3. The ordering of the proposed new set ought to be in accordance with that of the basic IPA
set;
4. The proposed new set ought to be technically operable in information processing.
Part IV. Technical Demonstration
1. The ordering of the proposed new set ought to be in accordance with that of the basic IPA
set;
2. The proposed new set ought to observe the principles of code writing and compositionalfeatures as issued by the International Phonetic Association, and capable of meeting theacademic and industrial standards as much as possible;
43. Each one of the symbols and marks in the proposed new IPA set ought to be of one-one
correspondence with one code, so that all the information with IPA marks as well as the
Chinese characters represented could share the same plane of ISO／IEC 10646 to actualize
the standardized information processing of the data with IPA all over the world.
Part V. Prospects
As a result of the active advocacy to establish a set of phonetic symbols and marks for the
Chinese languages compatible with the internationally used IPA standards to help solve therelated difficulties in linguistic research, language teaching, language engineering, and language
information processing, the proposed new set has been repeatedly discussed by experts from all
those fields. Should this proposed set be accepted as a part of the plane of ISO/IEC 10646, it will
surely facilitate the globalization progress of information processing with IPA.
Part VI. Examples of the proposed new IPA symbols and marks
1. Combining mark No. A900, first used in some Western missionaries’ works on Minnanhua, a
sub-dialect of the Min group of the Chinese dialects, is a dot above right of the symbol [O], as in[O·], representing “greater openness” in vowels (lower vowel). This mark was used in at least
four early pinyin schemes, among more than five all together, to phonetically represent
Minnanhua, and was also used later in most of the works on Minnanhua published in Taiwan.
The following is some examples of its use as modifier letters and independent mark, respectively:
The following example can be seen in Luo Changpei, the well-known modern linguist, 1999:42.

A dot above right of the symbol [O], as in [O·], representing “greater openness” in vowels (lower
vowel) in four pinyin schemes on the Xiamen dialect.
5This mark can also be seen on Dialect (Fangyan), the well-known academic magazine, 1979,
2:160.

2. As first found four tones in the South-north Dynasty (420-589 A.D.) and recorded in theancient Chinese phonological literature such as Qieyun published in 601 A.D., scholars termed
the tones of Chinese as in its ancient form as ping, shang, qu, and ru which were represented
using a half-circle at either of the four corners above or below a Chinese character. The numberof tones of many Chinese dialects doubled to eight, respectively four for Yang tones and four for
Yin tones, due to the influence of the dichotomy of voiced vs. unvoiced of the initials in theancient times, and the former ones of which were represented using a low line combined with thehalf-circle. This method of marking the tones is the well-known Faquanfa, or the half-circle
marking method. This method is convenient in language survey and research because it can not
only represent tone categories of the contemporary Chinese dialects, but also reflect their ancientorigins. The well-known modern linguists, first Swedish linguist B. Karlgren, and later Y-R
Chao, Luo Changpei, Li Fanggui, and others all inherited this set of tone marks. Up to now thistone-marking method can still be found in the large number of works on Chinese languages andtheir phonologies.

6

The following example can be found on Karlgren (1940: 541):

A half-circle can be at either of the four corners above or below an IPA symbol.
A half-circle can be at either of the four corners above or below a Chinese character or otherphonetic mark.
The following example can be found in Y-R Chao’ (1948:17 General introduction.):7

These modifier letters can also be seen on Dialect (Fangyan), 1979, 2:157.

A half-circle is at four corners above or below a Chinese character.
3. It had been difficult to describe the tone values of the dialects and minority languages in China
before the five-degree contour tone marking method was proposed by Y-R Chao. Tone values of
the Chinese languages used to be described with explanatory words or be compared to intonation
in English or French languages in the early survey reports and teaching textbooks by the Westernmissionary scholars. Obviously, it was difficult to describe precisely the tone values in their great
number and complexity as in the Chinese languages using those methods. The well-known
Linguists like Y-R Chao, Liu Fu, and Luo Changpei once tried to record the tone values of theChinese languages in terms of stave as musicians recording the scores, which could be more
precise yet very troublesome to operate. It was only after the creation of the five-degree contour
tone marking method by Y-R Chao was the issue of describing the tone values of the Chinese
languages fully resolved.
The creation of the set of five-degree contour tone marks is based on the five-degree method ofmarking the tone pitches of the Chinese languages, which divides the tone pitches into the fivedegrees of extra low, low, middle, high, and extra high, and divides the tone categories into fivepatterns of level, falling, rising, fall-rising and rise-falling. The set of five-degree contour tonemarks has been widely used since its creation, because its precise grasp of the two key factors oftone pitch and tone pattern has enabled this method to describe perfectly the tone values of not
only the Chinese languages, but also any other tonal language.
The set of five-degree contour tone marks is generally used as a set of diacritics, and only
sometimes independently. The set of marks is widely used in all kinds of Chinese languages aswell as other languages of East Asia. The following is an example of its use as diacritic andindependent mark, respectively:

8For Example 1 of describing Chinese dialects with five-degree contour tone marks, see Dialect(Fangyan) 1979, 2:157:

For Example 2 of describing Chinese dialects with five-degree contour tone marks, see the wellknown linguist Dong Tonghe ( 2001:47):

Examples of tone value marks.

9The following is Example 3 of describing minority languages in China with five-degree contour
tone marks:

The following is Example 4 of describing minority languages in China with five-degree contour
tone marks:

Neutral tone is an important phonetic phenomenon of the tonal languages. The general neutral
tone’s feature of the Chinese Languages is lighter and shorter than the original syllable tone pitch.
The neutral tone pitch can be largely changed on the different phonetic conditions, e.g. theneutral tones’ pitches of the following three words, such as 奶奶(grandmother)[nai213 nai21330], 妹妹(young sister)[mei51 mei51-10] and 哥哥(brother) [ke55 ke55-40] in Beijing Mandarin.
The Chinese linguists have two descriptions for neutral tones: one is a middle-dot before thesyllable, and the one is five-level dotted forms. The difference between the five-level dotted
forms for neutral tones and the five-degree contour tone marks is that they are some high or dots
rather than short lines. The following is an example of its use as modifier letter dotted tone bar,
respectively:
For Example 5 of describing Chinese dialects with 10 five-level dotted forms for neutral tones,
half is modifier letter dotted tone bar and the other half is modifier letter left-stem tone bar, see
Dialect (Fangyan) 1979, 2:157:

10

For Example 6 of describing Chinese dialects with five-level dotted forms for neutral tones, canbe found in Y-R Chao’ (1948:67):

For Example 7 of describing Chinese dialects with five-level dotted forms for neutral tones, see
Dong Tonghe (2001:25):

11

For Example 8 of describing Chinese dialects with five-level dotted forms for neutral tones, see
Y-R Chao’ (Trans.Ting Pangtsing) (2002:225):

A different dotted bar.
A dot is before (left) the syllable.

12Part VII. Reference
1. 方言编辑部，1979，音标及其他记音符号。《方言》第 2 期 157 页、160 页。
Editors 1979. Yinbiao ji qita jiyinfuhao (List of IPA phonetic symbols and other phonetic
marks). Dialect (Fangyan) 2:157 and 160.
2. 董同龢，1965，《汉语音韵学》台湾：学生书局。第 47 页。2001 重版，北京：中华书局。
Dong, Tonghe. 1965. Zhongguo Yinyunxue (Chinese Phonology). Taiwan: Student Press.
P.47; also see reprint. 2001. Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju. P47.
3. 高本汉（Karlgren, Bernhard），1915，Etudes sur la Phonologie Chinoise. 瑞典乌普萨拉
大学博士论文。中译本：赵元任、罗常培、李方桂译，《中国音韵学研究》1940，北京：商务印书馆。541 页。
Karlgren, Bernhard. 1915. Etudes sur la Phonologie Chinoise. Ph.D, Uppsala University,
Sweden. Trans. Y-R Chao, Luo Changpei, Li Fang-Kuei. Zhongguo Yinyunxue Yanjiu. 1940.
Beijing: Commercial Press. P.541.
4. 罗常培，1956，《厦门音系》，上海：科学出版社重印（原刊于《中央研究院历史语
言研究所集刊》1930 分册）。又见：《罗常培文集》1999，济南：山东教育出版社。
Luo, Changpei. 1956. Xiamen Yinxi (The Phonology of Xiamen Dialect)(Reprint), Shanghai:
Science Press. First published in 1930, Zhongyang Yanjiuyuan Lishi Yuyan Yanjiusuo Jikan(Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica); also see: 1999. Luo
Changpei Wenji (Collection of Luo Changpei). Ji’nan: Shandong Educational Press.
5. 赵元任等，1948，《湖北方言调查报告》北京：商务印书馆。
Chao, Y-R, etc. al. 1948. General introduction. Hubei Fangyan Diaocha Baogao (A Survey
Report on the Dialects in North Hubei Province). Beijing: Commercial Press. P.17 and P.67.
6. 赵元任，1968，《中国话的文法》，加利福尼亚大学出版社。中译本：丁邦新译，《赵元任全集 · 中国话的文法》2002，北京：商务印书馆。
Chao, Y-R. 1968. A Grammar of Spoken Chinese. University of California Press. Trans.
Ting Pangtsing. The collection of Chao Y-R.. 2002. Beijing: Commercial Press. P225.

13

Table 1 – Row A9: IPA Combining Diacritical Marks & Tone-letter System

0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
A
B
C
D
E
F

A90

A91

ꤰ

꨽

000

016

꥔

꨼

001

017

꥕

꨻

002

018

꥖

꥟

003

019

꥗

ꥠ

004

020

꥘

ꥡ

005

021

꥙

ꥢ

006

022

꥚

ꥣ

007

023

꥛
008

꨺
009

꨹
010

꨸
011

꨷
012

ꨶ
013

꨿
014

꨾
015

14

Table 2 – Row A9: IPA Combining Diacritical Marks & Tone-letter System
HEX
NAME
A900 combining dot above right
A901 modifier letter Chinese tone Yin Ping
A902 modifier letter Chinese tone Yang Ping
A903 modifier letter Chinese tone Yin Shang
A904 modifier letter Chinese tone Yang Shang
A905 modifier letter Chinese tone Yin Qu
A906 modifier letter Chinese tone Yang Qu
A907 modifier letter Chinese tone Yin Ru
A908 modifier letter Chinese tone Yang Ru
A909 modifier letter extra-high dotted tone bar
A90A modifier letter high dotted tone bar
A90B modifier letter mid dotted tone bar
A90C modifier letter low dotted tone bar
A90D modifier letter extra-low dotted tone bar
A90E modifier letter extra-high dotted left-stem tone bar
A90F modifier letter high dotted left-stem tone bar
A910 modifier letter mid dotted left-stem tone bar
A911 modifier letter low dotted left-stem tone bar
A912 modifier letter extra-low dotted left-stem tone bar
A913 modifier letter extra-high left-stem tone bar
A914 modifier letter high left-stem tone bar
A915 modifier letter mid left-stem tone bar
A916 modifier letter low left-stem tone bar
A917 modifier letter extra-low left-stem tone bar

15