Cantonese Romanization

I can't comment about Cantonese. But as for my language, Hoklo/Minnan, I can see very clearly that Chinese characters are just no good.

(1) Hoklo is a stereotonic language, as opposed to monotonic languages like Cantonese or Mandarin. Chinese characters obviously were designed for monotonic languages, and has no concept of tonal phrase, running tone vs standing tone, nor final neutralized-tone suffix phrases.

(2) Each Chinese character has a plethora of pronunciations in Hoklo/Minnan. Some as many as 5 or 6. In best of cases, you'll need to write out the pronunciation, just like Japanese Kanji.

(3) Because many colloquial words have no standard Chinese character presentation, some simple words has to be written with quite complex characters. For instance, human/people is 儂 (laang), as opposed to the standard Chinese 人 (riin). This situation is similar to the case Vietnamese Chu Nom, where simple every-day words are written with extremely complex characters. This is reflection of Chinese colonialism: the simple characters have already been taken by standard Chinese, leaving the colonized natives no choice but to choose complicated characters, often with two components: one component to represent the semantic meaning, the other component to represent the phonetic pronunciation to please the Chinese masters.

(4) Hoklo/Minnan has many contraction words. For instance, "hour i" becomes "hou", "gar i" becomes "ga", "jit le" becomes "je", "hit le" becomes "he", etc. Chinese characters are pretty bad in handling contractions. You have to invent a whole series of characters to handle contractions.

(5) Hoklo/Minnan tones are correlated to the words' grammatical functions. Even if you don't know the language, you can still tell the grammatical function of many words just from their tone values: action verbs are correlated with YinQu category, auxiliary/emotional/prepositions are correlated with the YangShang category, nouns are correlated with the standing tones. Using Chinese characters obscure all these correlations.

In short, Chinese characters were designed for one particular language in mind: the historical Standard Chinese. Using it for other languages is what is known as 削足適履: cut your feet to fit your shoes.

Sorry, I still don't know why 人 must be written as 儂, in fact, 人 is correct original character while 儂 is nothing but a borrowed homophone in Minnanese system. No matter how it should be pronounced (lâng/riin/jîn), the written form is always supposed to use original characters that can express their meanings accurately. For example, in Cantonese (佢俾本書我), if you know what 渠 & 畀 exactly means in classical Chinese, you won't use the borrowed homophone 佢 & 俾 any more ( 渠畀本書我). So, as a native Chinese, I'm strongly against "homophone substitutions" that almost have nothing to do with their origin (classical Chinese) or context. I really hope you can understand what I said.

Maybe they should just use a phonetic writing system rather than your stupid characters.

>>>Maybe they should just use a phonetic writing system rather than your stupid characters.<<<

Of course, characters are stupid for English or other languages, but it's more effective and accurate for Chinese writing system due to the fact that "single characters" are the SOUL of Chinese languages, instead of "fixed polysyllabic vocabularies".

石室诗士施氏，嗜狮，誓食十狮。施氏时时适市视狮。十时，适十狮适市。是时，适施氏适市。氏视是十狮，恃矢势，使是十狮逝世。氏拾是十狮尸，适石室。石室湿，氏使侍拭石室。石室拭，氏始试食是十狮尸。食时，始识是十狮尸，实十石狮尸。试释是事。

shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi .........(Can this be written in Romanization or not)?

<<shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi .........(Can this be written in Romanization or not)? >>


What about:

shí, shì, shï, shî, shı, shĭ, shĩ, shī, shȉ, shɨ, shᵻ, shᶖ, shȋ

<< 1:Then why should Turks adopt a western alphabet system since their arabic system is kinda elder?
2:In your saying, then Chinese should adopt ancient Egyptian writing characters.
3:Learn "Reformed Amerikanish" which is more phonetic than English! >>

1. They shouldn't. I never said they should.
2. No, I'm saying that Chinese should keep using Hanzi / Chinese characters.
3. lol that sounds real!

季姬寂 集鸡 鸡即棘鸡 棘鸡饥叽 季姬及箕稷济鸡 鸡既济 跻姬笈 季姬忌 急咭鸡 鸡急 继圾几 季姬急 即籍箕击鸡 箕疾击几伎 伎即齏 鸡叽集几基 季姬急极屐击鸡 鸡既殛 季姬激 即记
JI JI JI JI JI JI JI JI JI JI JI JI JI ..................


伊姨殪，遗亿镒。伊诣邑，意医姨疫，一医医伊姨。翌，亿镒遗，疑医，以议医。医以伊疑，缢，以移伊疑。伊倚椅以忆，忆以亿镒遗，以议伊医，亦缢。噫！亦异矣！

YI YI YI YI YI YI YI YI YI YI ...................


Can this be written in Romanization or not??? HAHAHAHAHA.......

bla x8

how do you draw it in your infantile script?

<<,季姬寂 集鸡 鸡即棘鸡 棘鸡饥叽 季姬及箕稷济鸡 鸡既济 跻姬笈 季姬忌 急咭鸡 鸡急 继圾几 季姬急 即籍箕击鸡 箕疾击几伎 伎即齏 鸡叽集几基 季姬急极屐击鸡 鸡既殛 季姬激 即记
JI JI JI JI JI JI JI JI JI JI JI JI JI ..................


伊姨殪，遗亿镒。伊诣邑，意医姨疫，一医医伊姨。翌，亿镒遗，疑医，以议医。医以伊疑，缢，以移伊疑。伊倚椅以忆，忆以亿镒遗，以议伊医，亦缢。噫！亦异矣！

YI YI YI YI YI YI YI YI YI YI ...................


Can this be written in Romanization or not??? HAHAHAHAHA....... >>


What about:
jí, jì, jï, jî, jı, jĭ, jĩ, jī, jȉ, jɨ, jᵻ, jᶖ, jȋ
yí, yì, yï, yî, yı, yĭ, yĩ,yī, yȉ, yɨ, yᵻ, yᶖ, yȋ

>>In short, Chinese characters were designed for one particular language in mind: the historical Standard Chinese. Using it for other languages is what is known as 削足適履: cut your feet to fit your shoes.<<

I don't see that. I don't understand why recently so many people came up with ideas of simplifying and even abolishing Hanzi, with loads of seemingly scientific reasons against it.

Not even like kids in the mainland, my first native script was truly Chinese characters and I never learned any romanization of any kind. I don't see the utter necessity of romanization and even using it to replace characters. I'm also writing or typing characters instead of Latin letters, and I'm doing perfectly fine.

My message above just means that the particular scheme sucks. In fact, I think Jyutping is the best scheme, created by linguists in Hong Kong. It doesn't have to follow Hanyu Pinyin as closely as the one created by Guangzhou, and looks more accurate than the HK government scheme.

< J.C. Fri Jul 31, 2009 7:00 am GMT
Very interesting blog and one can "feel" the Cantonese even with the alphabet.
That shows that indeed that Chinese can be written using the alphabet and that would open doors so that many more people can enjoy learning Chinese and its many varieties.
Even though I know thousands of Chinese characters I can't understand when people write in Cantonese because they use a different characters and probably might have a different grammar.
Can anyone help me on this?
Cheers!! >


style a.
Zan hai m-zi dim-joeng gong bei nei-dei ting,
seon m-seon jau nei-dei.

Sik m-sik mat giu gai-tung-ngap-gong?
Tai m-ming zau syun-sou la.


style b.
Zan hai mzi dimjoeng gong bei neidei ting,
seon mseon jau neidei.

Sik msik mat giu gai-tung-ngap-gong?
Tai m-ming zau syunsou la.


Cantonese-English pocket dictionary:
zan real
hai is, yes
mzi don't know
dimjoeng how
gong say
bei give to
neidei you
ting hear, listen
seon wish
mseon not wish
jau according to your minds
sik know, understand
msik don't know, don't understand
mat what
giu call
gai-tung-ngap-gong no a way to communication
tai see
m-ming don't understand
zau then
syunsou abondon
la la

what's amazing is that I, with NO knowledge of Chinese at all, can just copy-paste those Chinese characters into an online translator, and understand quite a lot of it.

Have lived for 20 years among Cantonese speakers, Mandarin replacing Cantonese, official policy of Mandarin-speakers' migration to Guangdong, blah blah blah...
===
1. Why should they adopt a Western alphabet system, when their language is much older than ours, and much more beautiful?
====
1. Chinese is not older than European languages (however you want to measure the age of a language). Even Chinese characters are not particularly old: they're only a few centuries older than the Greek alphabet, and thousands of years younger than Egyptian and Sumerian writing. If you think it is more beautiful than 'our' languages, I hope you have what little intellect it takes to also understand how subjective your preference is.
===
2. Maybe all European languages should adopt Chinese characters.
===
2. Why not Ancient Egyptian characters instead? See, the West (including the Middle East) was presented with a choice, about 3000 years ago, between pictographic and alphabetic writing. The decision was unambiguous: Egyptian and Sumerian hieroglyphs out, alphabet in. China did not have that choice.

So when modern Chinese nationalists talk about the superiority of pictographic over alphabetic writing, at least for their own language, I think I can reasonably suspect a case of wounded patriotism.

Can this be written in Romanization or not??? HAHAHAHAHA....... >>


What about:
jí, jì, jï, jî, jı, jĭ, jĩ, jī, jȉ, jɨ, jᵻ, jᶖ, jȋ
yí, yì, yï, yî, yı, yĭ, yĩ,yī, yȉ, yɨ, yᵻ, yᶖ, yȋ
=========
If it's not coherent as written, then it means it's not coherent when spoken. Are you saying the Chinese language is unsuitable for oral communication?

> Guest Sat Aug 01, 2009 12:52 pm GMT
The only reason for Chinese government to insist on preserving the exclusive use of characters is political. The characters are the glue of China. The moment they stop using them, the empire will decompose in chaos.
===

In the India, there are 15 kinds of Official Languages and have hundred languages or dialects which all adopted with very different alphabet scripts. Why India's empire will not decompose in chaos? Unless you say that the peoples of India is clever than the Chinese peoples.

The Belgium, Spain, Switzerland, Russian, Canada, Singapore, and the Philippines, etc., in these countries there all have some very different languages or dialects and all adopted with alphabet scripts. Why these countries will not decompose in chaos?

To insist on preserving the exclusive use of Chinese characters may be a policy about the propoganda of Han (Mandarin) nationalism.