Tangent Constructed Chinese

[Hwong_DsiKiem]

lap is already voiced, so that alone is sufficient. I'm referring to voiced plosives, fricatives and affricates. There's also the ng initial lost in words like 疑, which are found in my TCC.

And there are checked tones are 急 (gap1) 賊 (caak2) 甲 (gaap3) (faak4) 鷸(wat6). Much more common that caak2 at least... I'll have to get back to that... You cannot say checked tones 2 and 4 are not checked tones because Cantonese is more of a spoken language than a written one, and it is the colloquial pronunciations that people use, not the literary ones, except when reading a piece of text/poem out.

 

I noticed that Guangyun apparently classifies two level tones...

[Hofmann]

廣韻 has two volumes of level tones because there are more of them.

[Takeshi]

What? Are checked tones 2 and 4 allophones of the normal 2 and 4 tones? Never heard of any word with a checked tone 2 or 4, and I'm not familiar with caak2 or faak4 (heck, faak4 sounds like a systematic gap to me).

[Hofmann]

Well they certainly aren't a part of my vocabulary (as a Cantonese speaker, FYI). However, I acknowledge that some (most?) Cantonese speakers say things that have 入聲 in (linguistic) tones besides the 3 common ones. I just forgot about them.

[Hwong_DsiKiem]

Here's another thing I did with TCC:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DK6jWxBJoLg

[Hofmann]

So, let's do a little experiment. Say:

在

宜

氏

市

鳥

下

[Hwong_DsiKiem]

I've decided on a second version of my TCC, since Zsolt actually wanted me to reconstruct Middle Chinese.

Are you asking me to translate them into TCC? I'll do then.

在: dzai~; 宜: ngi; 氏: zi~; 市: zi/; 鳥: nio/; 下: ghia~ (voiced velar fricative initial)

 

[Hofmann]

It looks like you lean heavily toward Cantonese and Mandarin.

[Hwong_DsiKiem]

I actually try to lean toward Middle Chinese, but with f and v, but a "modernized" version, using the available pronunciations I can find from Wiktionary and ZDic, taking all of them into account. As said, my TCC is meant to imitate Middle Chinese, but a modern version, like gnit for 日, and used when referring to Chinese terms like "yim and yong" and the other purposes I mentioned.

Cantonese has shown to have the exact tone types as Middle Chinese, and other things are more or less mentioned in the rules for the construction, although some have changed by now.

Got some more works done.

Not sure about Baxter's glottal stop initial because for modern Chinese languages, quite a number of linguistics consider any character without a consonant initial to start with a glottal stop. But well it's not something usually distinguished in modern Chinese so I didn't include it.

 

For the last picture, I forgot to list /xɔ/ for 合 in old Mandarin. (Not really "Old Mandarin" but an older version of Mandarin), although after a friend told me the Japanese pronunciations, it may well be <hap> in TCC too...

 

[Hofmann]

Why not just start from Middle Chinese and say, for example, "/ɣ/ merges with /x/," "/pj/, /pʰj/, /bjw/, ... merge to /f/," "/mj/, /mjw/, ... merge to /v/"?

 

...if you're going to merge stuff. But then you split stuff too...

 

...such as 莫 and 魔 starting with different initials when they're both /m/ in Middle Chinese, 今 and 金 sounding different when they're homophones in Middle Chinese, 愛 and 埃 having different nuclei when they should sound the same except for tone, 並 (and 在 and 宜 and 氏 and 是) being 去聲 while 市 is 上聲 when they're all 上聲 in Middle Chinese,

 

So as I've said before, if you want a "simplified" version of Middle Chinese, and want to prioritize it, then you should start from it, instead of doing analysis that has already been done by other linguists (who have taken a long time). This would clear up all these inconsistencies.

 

BTW, Cantonese and Mandarin are the only languages I know of that start 鳥 with /n/, which is why it seems you prioritize them.

[Hwong_DsiKiem]

Well, one is that the Middle Chinese one can find are really just guesses, and there are many different reconstructions I've been able to find. 今 and 金 did not sound the same from the evidence I have been able to gather. Although since you raised this, I would want to ask you. If 莫 really had the same initial as 魔, which is /m/, why would it become baku in Japanese, along with a number of other Chinese characters that started with m- in both Mandarin and Canto? While Southern Min has voiced initials, they don't always correspond to the voiced initials of General Chinese, so yong tones aren't necessarily voiced in Min Nan. Why would that be the case?

And 並 shouldn't be a rising tone from what I've been able to gather.

 

Anyway this TCC is still being researched, and I'm not expecting it to be recognized by anyone, because it's unrealistic to expect people to accept something that I have come up with when everyone would simply go with Mandarin. Perhaps one would consider it something that will make me feel better when used (by me)? I don't really know how to put it...

Numerous Wikipedians have come up with new "improved" pinyin, but they just get told that there's an existing pinyin everyone will learn if they're interested in Chinese anyway, and that such an obscure new Romanization isn't useful, and will only cause confusion.

But then, Wong Shik Ling was just one person... He came up with something no one did before...

(Not used to justify how my work should have recognition)

[Hofmann]

Yes, these Middle Chinese reconstructions are "just guesses" but they're pretty good guesses, and they're based on a lot more research than you've done.
 

今 and 金 did not sound the same from the evidence I have been able to gather.

The evidence that you were able to gather was insufficient. If you concluded that they were different based on the two differing Sino-Japanese pronunciations, you have concluded too hastily. The differing pronunciations arise from different eras of borrowing Chinese vocabulary in Japan, basically classified into Go-, Kan-, and Tou-on (Note: their names are confusing.). The reading of 金 and 今 as /kon/, imitating the pronunciation of the Northern and Southern Dynasties, is Go-on, while /kin/ from the Tang Dynasty is Kan-on.
 

If 莫 really had the same initial as 魔, which is /m/, why would it become baku in Japanese, along with a number of other Chinese characters that started with m- in both Mandarin and Canto?

In Kan-on, the /m/ initial becomes /b/.
 

While Southern Min has voiced initials, they don't always correspond to the voiced initials of General Chinese, so yong tones aren't necessarily voiced in Min Nan. Why would that be the case?

I don't know, but you shouldn't be using Min, as it is not a descendant of Middle Chinese.
 

And 並 shouldn't be a rising tone from what I've been able to gather.

[Hwong_DsiKiem]

It's not just sino-Japanese, actually. I also referenced old Cantonese and Korean.

 

For the "just guesses" part, I was more referring to how there are contradicting info about the pronunciations though.

 

But I would really like to thank you, for you have given me more sources to base my work on, even though currently my TCC is more of a fictional Chinese than the bigger aim I hope to achieve.

Although one of my aims is to actually achieve what the Japanese sino readings is trying to imitate...

 

Funny... On the article on Min Nan/Hokkien (I forgot which), it stated that some believe it is not a descendant of Middle Chinese while others do.

 

So in Kan-on, all /m/ initials become /b/ regardless of the Middle Chinese pronunciation? Is there any reason for it? Would it be some classification of sorts?

 

There is one thing I haven't been able to get about the General Chinese reading for the character 子. It listed z and zii. I currently go for "zii" as it is closer to my TCC (dsi/), although would "z" imply that it's toneless AND having an empty rime? Or perhaps it was just a mistake?

How about the General Chinese reading of 並? So it's implying it's pronounced bhieng with a rising tone?

 

 

3472 z 子

3618 zii 子

[Hofmann]

So in Kan-on, all /m/ initials become /b/ regardless of the Middle Chinese pronunciation? Is there any reason for it? Would it be some classification of sorts?

Maybe I was unclear. The Middle Chinese 明 initial, reconstructed as /m/, corresponds with /b/ in Kan-on, e.g. 晚, 美, 武. As for the reason, the short answer is sound shift. I don't know the details.

 

Or perhaps it was just a mistake?

It's a mistake. According to 廣韻 and the tables in the General Chinese article, it should be "zii."

[Hwong_DsiKiem]

The ones you listed all happen to be yong tones in Cantonese. Not sure if that is relevant or not...

掹would be a m- initial that is of yim tone. So in Kan-on, nothing has an m- initial?

 

At the current state, perhaps my TCC just accomplishes the goal of an exotic Chinese language instead of any representative of sorts...

 

It's a mistake

I see.

[Hofmann]

Relevant, as /m/ is a voiced consonant.

You should see that anything in Cantonese that has a voiced initial and a 陰 tone is weird.

So in Kan-on, nothing has an m- initial?

Nothing or almost nothing.

[Hwong_DsiKiem]

The site gives err for both 二 and 貳. Is it even correct? What would be the way to transcribe that in IPA? Since an <r> was supposed to stand for /ȷ̃/ as an initial. Maybe the symbol for the retroflex approximant? (I chose the schwa for the <e> as I found that it is more appropriate than the /ɛ/)

[Hofmann]

I don't know. According to the tables, 二 should be riy. Get a 廣韻 and look for yourself. IPA is /ji去/ but I really don't like how the 日 initial is rendered in GC. I'd rather have /nj/ or /ɲ/, but really IPA is unnecessary for GC, as you should pronounce it however you pronounce it.

[Hwong_DsiKiem]

廣韻isn't a good way of deducing good Chinese, unless you aren't talking about the Guangyun I know. riy wouldn't be possible either, since that would require a diphthong /ii/.

I just need an IPA for presentation, which is given in the article anyway.

 

I've beeen trying to go for indicating tones by spelling, using -h for rising and -s for departing tones, after Old Chinese. Or maybe it could even be treated as having the word pronounced that way without tones. Although that would deviate it from Middle and modern Chinese, but make it become a fictional Chinese language.

[OneEye]

It already is a fictional Chinese language. It certainly isn't Middle Chinese, and it isn't any variant of modern Chinese, but some sort of composite of all of them.

 

OP, on what grounds are you tossing out the 廣韻? My knowledge of historical phonology is fairly limited, but I know enough to know that you need a very convincing argument not to include the 廣韻 in a discussion about Middle Chinese.