nishishei said:
We believe that Shanghainese can be entirely written in Romanization without encountering much homograph problems, as it has 28 consonant initials and is rather polysyllabic (relative to Mandarin or Cantonese). If we capitalize nouns and introduce the German concept of words (i.e., lexical items), then homography would be further reduced.
Yes, that sounds like a good idea
nishishei said:
Romanization would also serve to restore the development of Shanghainese, preventing it from dying away. 74 common verbs unique to Shanghainese just two decades ago are no longer in the vocabularies of Shanghainese college entrants today because there is absolutely zero Shanghainese education. Shanghainese is discouraged from being popularized, and is banned today from entering even local television commercials. Only traditional programs are broadcasted in Shanghainese (something akin to Japanese Noh plays), leading to a very alienating cultural gap between the speakers and the programs. The current policy is to make Shanghainese appear so out of touch, so backward that there is no reason anymore to speak it, even if it may be ones mother tongue.
Yes, I already read on your webpage about it... so you must teach only Mandarin at schools and are not allowed to teach Shanghainese? That really sucks badly...
Anyway, I also took a look at the Romanization page (
here) and found some parts of it highly illogical and inconsequent
(even though it already makes much more sense than Pinyin)
As I see, you have "z" to represent a voiced "s", but then you have "shj" to represent a voiced "sh"... worse yet, you have "tz" as a voiceless sound even though you said before that "z" would be voiced. Then you have "ts" as aspirated sound, rather than forming it with an "h" added to it
Here's my suggestion on how to do it much better and logical:
Use "sj" for the voiced "s" (rathen than "z"), then you're consistent with "shj" for the voiced "sh".
Another advantage is that you can now use the "z" for the sound which you already described as "German z", so it would be your best bet to actually use a "z" for it!
This would have the positive effect that you could now simply add an "h" to it to form the aspirated version, and thus you were consistent with all the other aspirated consonants.
After that, there's only one inconsistency left: First you go and say that "ch" is the aspirated version of "c", but further down you completely redefine it and say that it now represents a full glottal stop. That's a really nasty thing to do
You really need to use something else to represent the full glottal stop, otherwise you'll only create confusion. You should use a letter for it not already used - e.g. the "x" could come in handy here.
All in all, the improved consonant chart would look like this:
Code:
Voiced Voiceless Voiceless
Aspirated
Plosives:
Bilabial b p ph
Dental d t th
Velar g k kh
Fricatives:
Labiodental v f
Alveolar sj s
Postalveolar shj sh
Glottal h
Affricates:
Alveolar z zh
Postalveolar j c ch
Full glottal stop: x
That's it for the consonants - now for the vowels:
You're using "y" already as a voiced approximant, so you shouldn't use it again here. I suggest using "ﾃｼ" (as in German). For what you have as "eu", you could also better use "ﾃｶ" (also as in German). Further, "uo" and "ou" don't need to be two letters either, you could simply use a macron and describe them as "ﾃｻ" and "ﾃｴ".
Breathy voiced vowels should rather be formed by putting an "h" in front of them, which would be much more logical and intuitive than using the umlaut mark, or putting a "w" or "y" in front.
So, the improved vowel chart would look like this (old writing in parentheses):
Code:
Plain vowels: a e i o u ﾃｶ(eu) ﾃｴ(ou) ﾃｻ(uo) ﾃｼ(yu)
"Voiced" vowels: ha he hi ho hu hﾃｶ hﾃｴ hﾃｻ hﾃｼ
Below are some examples with all the above improvements applied:
Examples of regular plain vowels: sjachi (to dislike), sa (what), Ejin (love), Muchin (mother), Vuchin (father), ﾃ孵i (mute, noun), dﾃｶthaerax (broken, splintered), reininhax (bluish), sjﾃｶbu (completely), Sjedﾃｴ (station), cﾃｼhax (expensive), Ve (food, rice), Mohu (rayon), Sjﾃｻwe (society), Mﾃｻru (street), Ru (road)
Examples of regular "voiced" vowels: haritax (where), Hewo (speech, talk, language), Hﾃｴdﾃｴ (behind), Hﾃｶsi (perspiration), Hothika (summer days), ﾃ (rain), Hira (they, them), ho (I, me)
That's it for now... If you want to talk about this more in depth, you can email me - send me a PM (private message) for the address.
