[This was my first attempt, whereas I was unfair to Taiwanese bending it to fit Hanyu Pinyin too much... newer versions are on http://jidanni.org ---2000-06-11 Dan Jacobson] =================================================================== Taiwanese & Hakka Romanization Unified with HanYu PinYin (While Minimizing English Conflict) "Dan Jacobson System Version 1b 1996-6-24" ("Taiwanese" above and below refer to HoLo="{Min3Nan2Yu3=Southern Min=Southern Fujian Dialect of Chinese=Amoy Dialect} as spoken in Taiwan" (Almost the same as the version spoken in Singapore, etc.). Hakka="Ke4Jia1 dialect")(Sorry if I'm not 100% politically correct.) This article was originally meant for consumption in Taiwan, but should be of interest elsewhere where these languages are spoken. Looking at the worldwide number of HanYu PinYin (the romanization system used for Chinese in China) and English users, it would be best if Taiwanese and Hakka romanization were compatible with HanYu PinYin (HYPY), then secondly minimizing conflict with English spelling customs. Many students who both know HYPY and speak Southern Min (Min3Nan2Yu3)[Taiwanese] or Hakka, e.g., in Malaysia, might now only have to spend a few minutes learning this extension to HYPY, then they would immediately have a way of writing all the words of their spoken language! (even the ones they didn't have Chinese characters for.) In school Taiwan students all learn English. Throughout the world wherever you find Chinese characters, you also find HanYu PinYin (except in Taiwan where they use BoPoMoFo). No matter if BoPoMoFo is used for eternity in teaching Mandarin in Taiwan, it would be nice if HanYu PinYin were used, say on street signs for foreigners to look at. Also a HanYu PinYin-like system should be used for Taiwanese and Hakka romanization, as I have designed below. Romanization systems cannot be created in a vacuum. Taiwanese scholars must pay more attention to HanYu PinYin and English customs when designing their systems, as these two will be the main systems affecting Taiwan for the years to come. Indeed, the inventors of the non-HYPY compatible "TLPA" system, in their 1992 report, hoped their system would be accepted by the United Nations, overseas Chinese, non-Chinese students, and even the residents of Fujian, etc., as the way to spell Southern Min and Hakka. This ignores the fact that HYPY is already the defacto standard in all these instances, e.g., when students come into contact with Chinese characters and Mandarin, which they most certainly would in the classroom before getting any formal training in Southern Min and Hakka. Thus it would be best to use a system compatible with the one the student uses daily (e.g., to look up words in the dictionary or for computer input): HYPY. Below I first match as much as I can with HanYu PinYin, with leftover fine points adjusted to minimize conflict with English. Regarding HanYu PinYin's X,Q, etc. being odd for English users, I say that just like many English speakers know fancy French words' special pronunciations, they will also get used to HanYu PinYin spellings, judging from the sheer numbers of HanYu PinYin users in the world, and that American TV newscasters already have no difficulty in reading "Deng XiaoPing", etc. correctly. ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** I define my romanization system here by listing how it differs from the well known Church Romanization system for Taiwanese, Change Taiwanese Church Romanization as follows: ****Initials: p, t, k -> b, d, g ph, th, kh -> p, t, k b, g -> bb, gg remove HYPY conflict and awful mindbending English conflict. (One might say that bb and gg are nice because one's finger can simply hit the same key twice. However, my goal isn't ease of typing, but more ease of reading.) For proof that we've picked good choices, one might ask a Taiwanese to read the letters on automobile license plates and see how they match our choices... ch, chh, s, j -> j/z, q/c, x/s, jj/zz remove HYPY conflict, remove need for Hakka "ii": sin -> xin; siin -> sin. The split system is no new challenge for BoPoMoFo users, as BoPoMoFo is already split. (Xiamen Univ.'s 1982 system doesn't go far enough.) jj/zz is made by analogy with bb,gg. Why, yes, it does seem a bit burdensome. One might think that at least in Fujian one could merely use "l" for jj and zz, as these sounds have already merged there... however it is probably best to maintain the distinctions (as they affect such a large portion of the Southern Min community) and promote one standard spelling. Users would then pronounce it as they see fit, e.g., English "whole/hole", the speaker can pronounce them differently if they chose to. f, v: Hakka additions. zh, ch, sh, r: Hai3Lu4 Hakka additions. [Hakka has two types of "ng-" but I spell them both "ng".] We will probably end up accept rewriting i- as yi, u- as wu as in HYPY... ****Finals: o -> ou (oyster) o. -> o (black) The International Phonetic Alphabet(IPA)'s [ou] is a "diphthong of decreasing intensity", the o is much louder than the u. Taking this as advice, we choose the letters "ou" as a replacement for "o". American and British spellings for the same sounds in labor/labour, color/colour show that o/ou have little difference for an English reader. This is in sharp contrast to "oo" which is always pronounced [u] in English when at the end of a word, and "r" =[r] in American English, which have also been proposed as solutions to the o./o problem. As American English is the standard form of English taught in Taiwan schools, one should not carelessly use "r". ("o." is bad for word processing and not distinctive enough to the eye vs. "o".) (Note that I do not alter "io". It remains the same as in Church Romanization.) e -> ei avoid "e"="schwa" in HYPY, so again we use a diphthong of decreasing intensity. The e is much louder than the i. (Here we are sacrificing the original accuracy of the Church Romanization system in order to be compatible with HYPY.) (Now (with "e" "liberated" (actually enslaved)) we can write the southern Taiwanese pronunciation (Quan2Zhou1Qiang1) of our "ou" above, which, people in Tainan City pronounce as "schwa". So our gou1 (high), and gou1 (brother), (Mandarin Gao1, Ge1) could now be written especially for Tainan as ge1, ge1... However, this is just a free bonus, as I think it best that each word have only one spelling, and not several, one for each "sub-dialect" of Taiwanese. Just as in Church Romanization, or English, each word only has one spelling, and it is up to the speaker to read it in her/his own regional accent.) It is tempting to make a special exception to allow the most common word in Taiwanese, ei5 (Church: e5), the possesive, to be written as "e" instead of "ei", but it is probably best not to take this shortcut. eng -> ing ek -> ik avoid "e"="schwa" in HYPY. oa, oai, oan, oat -> ua, uai, uan, uat remove HYPY conflict; (Free bonus: closer to IPA values. (However, closeness to IPA isn't too important to us.)) au, iau -> ao, iao in HYPY [au] is written "ao". We again bend Taiwanese to fit HYPY. However, [au] is another "diphthong of decreasing intensity". Often it is indeed realized as [ao]. ui -> wi unfortunately in HYPY "ui" is an abbreviation for "uei". So we must bend Taiwanese to fit HYPY. oe -> ue (No conflict with Mandarin "lu:e", "nu:e" (dots go on top), since according to HYPY one is supposed to write two dots over their "u". (Free bonus: closer to IPA values. (However, closeness to IPA isn't too important to us.)) By the way, if we went further and declared the change "oe->uei", this would immediately be written simplified as "ui", according to HYPY rules, bringing us into visual conflict with former "ui" (now "wi"). Add additional Hakka finals: eu, ieu, ioi, iui, iem {in addition to iam}, ion, iun, iung, oi, on, uen, ung, {former ii series:}i, im, in. Note: officially HYPY "dong"[tung] = our Hakka "dung"[tung], not Hakka "dong". Supposedly this will not cause problems due to the wide range of permissible pronunciations of this Mandarin final. Note that we ignore minor differences, e.g., in saying o->ou, we should also announce io->iou. However we choose to still write "io". Nasalized vowels: ASCII: perhaps add ~ (tilde, a standard ASCII character), e.g., "kua~ gi~" ("to see", Mandarin Kan4Jian4). I'm just worried that -N, -NN (as proposed in other systems) will one day end up on somebody's passport: "Hello Mr. Jin" [Ji is better: from Ji~5 (Mandarin Qian2 (money))] (The ~ safely falls away at the passport office, instead of turning into an "n" which you would pass on to your children's surnames etc. once you immigrate.). In an ideal printed book format, perhaps the ~ would go on top of the vowel...[not decided yet.] (Side comment on -nn: -NN takes up the same two spaces but is easier to see (though harder to type.) However -NN, -nn both still have the abovementioned problem of -N.) ****Tones: (often no need to write tones, but when needed:) In ASCII (goal is easy to read, not easy to type): Mandarin: gun1, gun2, gun3, gun4 gun-, gun/, gun^, gun\ "-", "/", "\" are then used for their equivilent sounds in Taiwanese and Hakka. (note that we shouldn't use "Taiwan Guo2Yu3"'s "^" below, as we are going by the official 3rd tone definition of HYPY in looking for our matches, not the local Taiwan version of the Mandarin 3rd tone.) Taiwanese: gun1, gun2, gun3, gut4, gun5, gun7, gut8 gun-, gun\, gun_, gut_, gun/, gun=, gut- (pitch= 55, 51, 11, 32, 24, 33, 5) Hakka (Si4Xian4): gun1, gun2, gun3, gut4, gun5, gut8 gun/, gun\, gun-, gut_, gun_, gut- (pitch= 24, 31, 55, 2, 11, 5) Hakka (Hai3Lu4): gun1, gun2, gun3, gut4, gun5, gun7, gut8 gun\, gun/, gun_, gut-, gun-, gun=, gut_ (pitch= 53, 24, 11, 5, 55, 33, 2) The above tones are for computer ASCII. In an ideal printed book format we already know that "-", "/", "\" would go on top of the words because we are following HYPY's standard. Equivalents of "_","=" for ideal printed format still remain to be decided. Regarding "tonal spellings" (e.g., gun1, gun2, gun3 = guen, gwen, goen, etc.) I consider these very unnatural and do not accept them. Dr. Yuen Ren Chao's GwoYeu RoMaTzyh is an example of the failure of acceptance of them by the public. There are also the "gun1, gun2, gun3 = gunl, gunf, guny..." type of systems. For the same one letter of space, they could append a number instead of a letter and thus not be so terribly mindbending. Also at the passport office the number would safely fall away, instead of branding one and one's future generations with "Mr. Maf" (ma2, Mandarin Ma3 (horse)) upon immigration to the west, when one can just be Mr. Ma instead. Tone changes: probably imitate HYPY and only write the original tone. (However some ways to indicate changed tones, say when compiling language teaching materials, might be (for ASCII:) [using gao2->1 as an example]: gao\-, gao2-, gao\1, but not gao21 (causes confusion with pitch value notation.) Joining two words together: when needed probably use HYPY's {'} (instead of {-}). Summary of Syllables: [-T=Taiwanese only, -H=Hakka only, -HL=Hai3Lu4 Hakka only] Initials: b p bb-T m f-H v-H d t n l z c zz-T s zh-HL ch-HL sh-HL r-HL j q jj-T (ng-H) x g k gg-T ng h 0 (the zero initial) Finals: [*=a major change to older systems, Z=(z-,c-,s-)] Zi-H i ei* ie ue* a ia ua o io ou-T u iu ai uai oi-H ioi-H wi* iui-H eu-H ieu-H ao iao m Zim-H im em-H iem-H am iam n-H Zin-H in en-H uen-H an ian uan on-H ion-H un iun-H ng ing-T ang iang uang-H ong iong ung-H iung-H Nasalized vowels: add ~: kua~_ (or) kua~3 (to see, Mandarin Kan4) Entering tone (Ru4Sheng1): change -m, -n, -ng above to -p, -t, -k and add -h, to infer. Tones: already mentioned in the above article. Additional Mandarin syllables not on this diagram: see a standard HYPY reference book. My changes belong to two groups, ones that have little effect on the preciseness of the romanization of Taiwanese and Hakka, and ones that degrade it a little to make it dovetail into HYPY. Some of the above changes can be used even if one doesn't want to be compatible with HYPY. However one hopefully won't make a system that on the surface looks like HYPY, but has some serious surprises deeper down, e.g., I have also seen systems that fix only one or two of p-,t-,k-... it is best to fix all or don't fix any. I am writing for only one "standard Taiwanese dialect" (and two Hakka dialects), and not for various regional accents. I'm pretty much thinking of a mainly Chinese character writing format, and when there's no good character for a sound, then using my above system, hence I say "only write tones if necessary", etc. Note that the first tone is indicated in our system as opposed to Church Romanization. When we don't indicate a tone it means either a light tone (Qing1Sheng1), or mainly, that we're too lazy to write the tone, which would be the usual situation, as mostly readers would recognize the meaning of a romanized word without us having to go through the trouble of marking its tone---mainly we would be using Chinese characters; the few common romanized words would be easy to guess the meanings of. Language teaching materials, on the other hand, would of course have tones marked. I have written a shorter Chinese version of the above English essay, but I type Chinese so slow that I don't dare to type it into the computer. (This article is copyright "copyleft GNU", i.e., enjoy. So I wrote this wopping file that you're reading on how to romanize Taiwanese. I don't suppose, of course, that it could ever top your wonderful and glorious system (what, you haven't invented your own yet?) But at least it will give you something to think about. Plus, I just had to get it off my chest, especially in the face of the folks that would like to carry on the bent spelling traditions like those that gave us the current Taiwan city names of taiPei, taiCHung, taiTung, and Kaohsuing (messed up Mandarin in capital letters.) -- Dan Jacobson (formerly of Chicago: Northwestern Univ. & Bell Labs; Born 1960) Chinese name: Ji1Dan1Ni2 (accumulate-red-nun); Taiwanese: Jik4Dan1Ni5; Hakka: Jit4Dan1Ni5