5 ms·

>I actually think it is quite fast. Grasping an entire languages phonology is a huge accomplishment and condensing it to its bare minimum is also impressive. A

>I actually think it is quite fast. Grasping an entire languages phonology is a huge accomplishment and condensing it to its bare minimum is also impressive. Absolutely. But I don't see how this statement could apply to pinyin. The work done on German's last spelling reform was impressive in this regard, but faulty pinyin was not.

hgfdhjtyd 10y ago
> but faulty pinyin was not. Is this a real opinion or just a political stand against PRC? How is pinyin faulty, specifically with respect to Mandarin Chinese? What Romanization system is better and how so?
- jason_slack 10y ago
  OP elaborates more about this below.
wodenokoto 10y ago
Care to expand on the faults of pinyin, and how they are more erroneous than say the German spelling reform? My experience with pinyin is that it is very robust, and I don't remember ever encountering pinyin that was ambiguous about how it is read (unlike written English or romanized Japanese). I have also never heard of standard Chinese syllables that are lacking a clear mapping onto pinyin. To me that is very impressive.
- emodendroket 10y ago
  Well of course it's not ambiguous like English because they had no historical baggage. But properly romanized Japanese is also never ambiguous.
  - wodenokoto 10y ago
    "ene" can be えね and えんえ. > But properly romanized Japanese is also never ambiguous. What is "properly romanised Japanese" anyway? There are several modern systems in use [1] often mixed together (Even the government can't stick to the government mandated Kunrei-shiki). Some system represent ず and づ the same, some represent ティ and チー the same, some represent じ and ぢ the same. ō represents both O+O and O+U [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Japanese#Modern_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Japanese#Moder...
    - rangibaby 10y ago
      えんえ should be en'e according to the govenment system. ティ is used exclusively in loan words anyway as far as I'm aware. Wouldn't you just write it in its original language?
      - emodendroket 10y ago
        Also the other ones he mentioned are pronounced the exact same way.
        rangibaby 10y ago
        (you probably know this but) zu du and zi di do make a difference in terms of which kanji are used. The government has been reforming kanji readings over time though E.g. 藤ふぢ → ふじ or 図ヅ (look at the character in the box!)→ ず
    - emodendroket 10y ago
      Leaving out the apostrophe for えんえ is not standard in any of the three systems. Mixing and matching the systems is also not what I meant by "proper."
  - singhblom 10y ago
    I thought 花 and 鼻 were ambiguous in most romanizations - at least I would write it as "hana" in all romanizations I can think of, yet the pitch accent differs. No?
    - grzm 10y ago
      I would think the parent is referring to unambiguous in terms of pronunciation. You're right in that you wouldn't know which character was originally used in isolation—or whether kanji was used at all. As far as I know, there's little (any?) pitch accent that distinguishes between words in Japanese. What pitch accent are you referring to?
      - emodendroket 10y ago
        Every word in Japanese has a standard pitch accent and some otherwise homophonous ones differ in pitch accent. However, from one dialect to another the pitch accents on the same word can be totally different so I don't think they're usually a big hindrance to communication. Pitch accent differs from English stress accent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_pitch_accent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_pitch_accent
        grzm 10y ago
        To be clear, you're saying that pitch can change due to regional accent, as opposed to distinguish between homophones, which is which is what 'singhblom was implying, correct? I thought 花 and 鼻 were ambiguous … yet the pitch accent differs. No?
        emodendroket 10y ago
        It does both things. Pitch accent is the only thing distinguishing some homophones (hana, hasi, ame, kumo) but it's also got variation in dialects including a handful where the Tokyo and Osaka versions have the same distinction between two words except with the opposite meaning (sorry, I don't have examples off the top of my head). Fortunately there aren't that many sentences where it's equally plausible you meant both spider and cloud.
- em_te 10y ago
  Compare "xi an" with "xian". One is 2 words and one is 1 word. But for some reason Chinese people don't like to put spaces in between words so "xi an shi" is often written as "xi'anshi" which is different from "xianshi".
  - FabHK 10y ago
    But that's what you have the apostrophe for in Pinyin. Works fine.
  - dilemma 10y ago
    But pinyin isn't Chinese so your point just doesn't exist.
  - lacampbell 10y ago
    Mandarin speakers are seem to be fairly sloppy with their own phonetic alphabets - you're supposed to have spaces in bopomofo and apostrophes in pinyin to handle cases like these, but they often don't bother. It becomes clearer with tones I guess, "Xi1 An1" vs "Xian1". But again, proper pinyin with tones seems to be a foreigner thing... I don't recall seeing tone marks or numbers on street signs.

hgfdhjtyd 10y ago

> but faulty pinyin was not. Is this a real opinion or just a political stand against PRC? How is pinyin faulty, specifically with respect to Mandarin Chinese? What Romanization system is better and how so?

jason_slack 10y ago
OP elaborates more about this below.

wodenokoto 10y ago

Care to expand on the faults of pinyin, and how they are more erroneous than say the German spelling reform? My experience with pinyin is that it is very robust, and I don't remember ever encountering pinyin that was ambiguous about how it is read (unlike written English or romanized Japanese). I have also never heard of standard Chinese syllables that are lacking a clear mapping onto pinyin. To me that is very impressive.

emodendroket 10y ago
Well of course it's not ambiguous like English because they had no historical baggage. But properly romanized Japanese is also never ambiguous.
- wodenokoto 10y ago
  "ene" can be えね and えんえ. > But properly romanized Japanese is also never ambiguous. What is "properly romanised Japanese" anyway? There are several modern systems in use [1] often mixed together (Even the government can't stick to the government mandated Kunrei-shiki). Some system represent ず and づ the same, some represent ティ and チー the same, some represent じ and ぢ the same. ō represents both O+O and O+U [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Japanese#Modern_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Japanese#Moder...
  - rangibaby 10y ago
    えんえ should be en'e according to the govenment system. ティ is used exclusively in loan words anyway as far as I'm aware. Wouldn't you just write it in its original language?
    - emodendroket 10y ago
      Also the other ones he mentioned are pronounced the exact same way.
      - rangibaby 10y ago
        (you probably know this but) zu du and zi di do make a difference in terms of which kanji are used. The government has been reforming kanji readings over time though E.g. 藤ふぢ → ふじ or 図ヅ (look at the character in the box!)→ ず
  - emodendroket 10y ago
    Leaving out the apostrophe for えんえ is not standard in any of the three systems. Mixing and matching the systems is also not what I meant by "proper."
- singhblom 10y ago
  I thought 花 and 鼻 were ambiguous in most romanizations - at least I would write it as "hana" in all romanizations I can think of, yet the pitch accent differs. No?
  - grzm 10y ago
    I would think the parent is referring to unambiguous in terms of pronunciation. You're right in that you wouldn't know which character was originally used in isolation—or whether kanji was used at all. As far as I know, there's little (any?) pitch accent that distinguishes between words in Japanese. What pitch accent are you referring to?
    - emodendroket 10y ago
      Every word in Japanese has a standard pitch accent and some otherwise homophonous ones differ in pitch accent. However, from one dialect to another the pitch accents on the same word can be totally different so I don't think they're usually a big hindrance to communication. Pitch accent differs from English stress accent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_pitch_accent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_pitch_accent
      - grzm 10y ago
        To be clear, you're saying that pitch can change due to regional accent, as opposed to distinguish between homophones, which is which is what 'singhblom was implying, correct? I thought 花 and 鼻 were ambiguous … yet the pitch accent differs. No?
        emodendroket 10y ago
        It does both things. Pitch accent is the only thing distinguishing some homophones (hana, hasi, ame, kumo) but it's also got variation in dialects including a handful where the Tokyo and Osaka versions have the same distinction between two words except with the opposite meaning (sorry, I don't have examples off the top of my head). Fortunately there aren't that many sentences where it's equally plausible you meant both spider and cloud.
em_te 10y ago
Compare "xi an" with "xian". One is 2 words and one is 1 word. But for some reason Chinese people don't like to put spaces in between words so "xi an shi" is often written as "xi'anshi" which is different from "xianshi".
- FabHK 10y ago
  But that's what you have the apostrophe for in Pinyin. Works fine.
- dilemma 10y ago
  But pinyin isn't Chinese so your point just doesn't exist.
- lacampbell 10y ago
  Mandarin speakers are seem to be fairly sloppy with their own phonetic alphabets - you're supposed to have spaces in bopomofo and apostrophes in pinyin to handle cases like these, but they often don't bother. It becomes clearer with tones I guess, "Xi1 An1" vs "Xian1". But again, proper pinyin with tones seems to be a foreigner thing... I don't recall seeing tone marks or numbers on street signs.