Tonal Spelling script (TOP Romanization)

[ironlady]

For those who might like to use tonal spelling to help their tone recall, I have a free script on the Web that will accept Pinyin with Tone Numbers and transform it to Tonally Orthographic Pinyin, a system of Romanization used for teaching Chinese that features three different markings for tones (colors, diacritical marks and capitals and small letters).

You can input paragraphs or flashcard input lists and output the same thing in TOP, then upload to your favorite flashcard program (I use orangeorapple.com myself).

The link is here: http://www.chinesepronto.com/triple/flash.php

[roddy]

I'm highly dubious about the use of any scheme which can't be reproduced with a pencil, to be honest.

[ironlady]

That's why God invented those four-color pens, with help from Bic.

[Matty]

Why does it change the case (capitals) of the characters?

ni3 hao2 nǐ háO

ni3 hao1 nǐ HĀO

ni3 hao4 nǐ Hào

===================================================

I'm highly dubious about the use of any scheme which can't be reproduced with a pencil, to be honest.

What can't be reproduced by pencil? His script isn't perfect but I'm slightly confused. Most of what a computer does can't be done with a pencil, numbers to lines and curves, that we can do.

===================================================

Anyway, here's something I spent about an hour writing a week ago for something else but works reasonably well. You can have a look if you're interested.

http://www.hskguide.com/Pinyin/Converter

Just remember it was written for my personal use so I didn't write it to work 100% or to be perfect. I'll probably update it sometime and give it a more permanent address.

[ironlady]

Hi,

TOP marks the tones of syllables using three methods (ways? things?)

The first marking is the standard diacritical marks used in Hanyu Pinyin. This helps students to go back and forth between TOP and standard HanyuPinyin with greater ease (there really isn't any learning curve involved) and it's also a means of marking tone, which is the point.

The second marking for tone is the colors. That's fairly obvious: blue (high like the sky), green (growing upward like a plant), black (low like dirt) and red (angry sound as in English).

The third marking is done using capitals and small letters. As you can see from the sample, a first tone is marked using ALL CAPITAL LETTERS; a seconD tonE iS markeD usinG aA finaL capitaL letteR; a third tone is marked using all lowercase; And Aa Fourth Tone Is Marked Using An Initial Capital. (Neutral tone gets all lower-case with an asterisk added.)

Everyone typically has one type of marking that he prefers, but people do prefer different methods of marking. Providing all three helps to reach all the students in a class (I developed this primarily for classroom teaching) and even for individuals, it does provide some advantages, such as the fact that you really have to start over totally if you start writing a syllable in the wrong tone. No way to just scratch out the diacritical mark and put another on over the top of it, as you can in standard Hanyu Pinyin (be honest: we've all done that, and later on ended up with notes where we really didn't know what the correct tone was supposed to be...)

People tend to have a very strong reaction to TOP one way or the other. Those who like it like it very much; those who don't like it generally say "it's ugly" or "tonal spelling doesn't work" (which, BTW, hasn't been demonstrated on this sort of system, only on systems using additional "silent" letters that make the relationship between syllables that are the same but have different tones rather un-obvious) or "Pinyin is good enough." If Pinyin is good enough for you, that's great. I'm just putting this system (which I've been working on and with since 1995) out there for anyone who does happen to be interested.

[Gharial]

Ironlady: Why not use an initial capital, medial smallcase, and a final capital when third tone syllables are three or more letters long? (For example, HaO when it's used in relative isolation, at the beginning of an affirmative "agreeing" reply for example). Think "bathtub".

Granted this still leaves the syllabes with only one or two letters to contend with though!

[ironlady]

Because, if you go into the phonetics lab (misspent youth :unsure: ), you'll find that the third tone is, far more often than not, actually NOT a dipping tone, but rather just a low tone. This makes it easier to write, easier to recognize, and more true to the phonetic form -- and also avoids the 1-2 letter syllables problem, as you point out. If you try to pronounce a low tone "slowly", it usually ends up dipping a bit anyway. (When I teach, I do not teach tones first, nor do I ever teach them separately. I just use tonal spelling plus directional gestures, and the students pick them up just fine. I do model correct tones when there's an error, of course. But I don't "teach" the first of two third tones changing to second tone either; it simply happens naturally when students begin speaking fluently enough to get up some speed, which is how it started anyway.)

For 1 letter syllables, in TOP the letters are simply doubled, so you get Ee for e4. That's the only spelling "change" from standard Hanyu Pinyin.

[Gharial]

you'll find that the third tone is, far more often than not, actually NOT a dipping tone, but rather just a low tone

Heh, that’s true! (You’ve reminded me of what I read a while ago on page 516 ~ of the following pdf: http://orient.avcr.cz/miranda2/export/sitesavcr/data.avcr.cz/humansci/orient/kontakty/pracovnici/publikace/Triskova/sounds.pdf (a review article of Yen-Hwei Lin's The Sounds of Chinese)). Thanks for the extra details on the TOP system and your general pedagogy, cos I for one find it all pretty interesting, and it could be potentially quite valuable!