Hanamese (夏南話) Conlect

[ParkeNYU]

[UNDER RECONSTRUCTION]

[roddy]

I've not given up. How about this?

[ParkeNYU]

For now, this project is merely a sound system (like 老國音, which didn't specify a topolect, but rather a set of sounds with which to pronounce characters). I'm still deciding between Modern Vernacular Chinese (白話文 as opposed to 文言文) and Modern Literary Chinese (淺文言 as opposed to 深文言). Perhaps both?

[Hofmann]

FYI the proximal demonstrative pronoun now written 這 was probably a rewriting of 者. It was never pronounced 疑變切.

[ParkeNYU]

I thought that 這 was a commonly mistaken way to write 遮 (zhê), but Wiktionary isn't exactly authoritative.

[ParkeNYU]

The 洪武正韻牋 and 分韻撮要 both agree that the 白話文 meaning of 這 is a perfect rime with 蔗 (之夜切), so I have changed this secondary reading to 'zhè'.

[LinZhenPu]

I don't understand how to use the information you've provided to pronounce characters according to your system.

[ParkeNYU]

There are two methods:

 

1) Once you've learned how to pronounce the 苑音字母 spellings using the provided System Overview, you can use the Common Character List that I've provided to learn the readings of each character one by one.

 

...or...

 

2) You can look up the Late Middle Chinese values of a given character in the 韻鏡 (or otherwise easily convert them from the corresponding Early Middle Chinese 切韻, 廣韻, or 集韻 values), and then use the provided System Overview to convert these values into 苑音字母 readings, which you can then pronounce by looking at the IPA equivalents on the same document.

 

The 苑音字母 is mostly based on Hanyu Pinyin and Jyutping, so it's very intuitive (and more consistent). Each character-reading is directly descended from Middle Chinese (no exceptions). This allows the readings to be quite predictable, even if you only know some limited combination of Mandarin, Cantonese, and/or Hakka. I've found that my friends who understand both Mandarin and Cantonese can understand what I say 9 times out of 10 without any prior preparation.

[LinZhenPu]

Well now you've got me thinking about the practical benefits your artificial dialect potentially provides.

 

So it's a handy code language to speak with friends who understand both Mandarin and Cantonese because it's only intelligible to those who understand both languages? People who only speak Cantonese or only speak Mandarin won't understand enough to get the gist of what you're saying?

 

Hey, I guess it also could be a way to practice Mandarin and Cantonese simultaneously, theoretically halving the time you need to invest to maintain what you've learnt in both languages if you're at the same level in both. Could have a niche benefit with some foreign business people?

[ParkeNYU]

People who can only speak Cantonese might still understand a fair amount of it, but I haven't done any official surveys yet. I suppose that it could serve as a code, but more importantly, it could act as a neutral Chinese language for period pieces set in Ancient China, a neutral means of reciting ancient poetry and song lyrics, or even just as a way to render names and terms in Chinese culture more neutrally (e.g. 風水 as Fuŋshuí and 長衫 as a chōŋsham). I had devised an older, more topolectically inclusive sound system as well, but Wényîm is more readily intelligible to speakers of most modern Chinese languages (Min and Wu being the big exceptions).

[LinZhenPu]

Maybe you could design a dialect that's 50% intelligible for Mandarin speakers and 50% intelligible for Cantonese speakers and so understandable only by people who have learned both or the dialect itself.

[ParkeNYU]

That's more or less what this is, but with Hakka and Middle Chinese thrown into the mix. I did attempt to design a dialect that was situated perfectly between Mandarin and Cantonese, but the problem was that there are many cases in which one must choose one interpretation over the other, and without Middle Chinese acting as a neutral arbiter, there is no fair choice that one could make.

[LinZhenPu]

Interestingly, the line you wrote in Roman alphabeticals looks remarkably like Vietnamese. Not that I know much about Vietnamese.

[ParkeNYU]

It's probably because I implemented the circumflex, which is rarely used in Hanyu Pinyin (only in the ê of 誒). The other diacritics are also used in Hanyu Pinyin as tone marks.

[Hofmann]

Vietnamese has a syllable structure like Middle Chinese, i.e. some simple initial (maybe an affricate), a nucleus that might also have /w/ and/or /j/ next to it, and final nasal consonants /m/, /n/, /ŋ/ and the 入聲-like unreleased  /p̚/, /t̚/, /k̚/.

 

This constructed variety (or whatever) is based on Middle Chinese, and the way ParkeNYU spells it (with spaces between every syllable) resembles Vietnamese orthography.

[ParkeNYU]

That is indeed true, and in my opinion, Pe̍h-ōe-jī (for Taiwanese Hokkien) looks even more Vietnamese in that regard. I don't really have strict rules concerning spacing and capitalisation (yet), since the system is mostly intended to annotate or digitally input Chinese characters. Since, as I mentioned above, I would also like to use it to neutrally name Chinese terms, these spacing and capitalisation issues must be ultimately addressed either way.

[LinZhenPu]

My Chinese name, 林振蒲，sounds good in Mandarin but a bit strange in Cantonese (something like mu sen po, like     木森破 in mandarin! lol). What would it sound like in your Wenyim dialect?

[ParkeNYU]

林振蒲 Līm Zhìn Pū (/lim˧ ʧin˥˧ pʰuː˧/)

[LinZhenPu]

So much more similar to the Mandarin pronunciation.

[Hofmann]

Maybe someone read it wrong. It's /lɐm˨˩ tsɐn˧ pʰou˨˩/ in Standard Cantonese, although I'd say /tɕɐn˧/.