tone marks

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rathpy

tone marks

Post by rathpy »

Why don't a lot of people use tone numbers when typing Chinese in Pinyin?

Regards,
rathpy
Dylan Sung

Re: tone marks

Post by Dylan Sung »

Perhaps some folks don't feel confident about deciding which tone mark is which tone.

Dyl.
rathpy

Re: tone marks

Post by rathpy »

> Perhaps some folks don't feel confident about deciding which tone mark
> is which tone.

Like which tone number to use instead of a diacritic? Yeah, maybe.

I was just wondering, since some people say that without characters it is too hard to tell what is meant in writing, (and "that's why pinyin will never replace characters, etc."). Nevertheless, people seem to attempt to communicate in pinyin without tones - which provides even less information that what can be heard from a speaker (and, without having the interactive advantage of face-to-face conversation).

Regards,
rathpy
Dylan Sung

Re: tone marks

Post by Dylan Sung »

A little while ago, I came across the following story by Yuen Ren Chao called The Stone Rooms Poet.

shi2 shi4 shi1 shi4 shi1 shi4 ,
shi4 shi1 ,
shi4 shi2 shi2 shi1 .
shi4 shi2 shi2 shi4 shi4 shi4 shi1 .
shi2 shi2 ,
shi4 shi2 shi1 shi4 shi4 .
shi4 shi2 ,
shi4 shi1 shi4 shi4 shi4 .
shi4 shi4 shi4 shi2 shi1 ,
shi4 shi3 shi4 ,
shi3 shi4 shi2 shi1 shi4 shi4 .
shi4 shi2 shi4 shi2 shi1 shi1 ,
shi4 shi2 shi4 .
shi2 shi4 shi1 ,
shi4 shi3 shi4 shi4 shi2 shi4 .
shi2 shi4 shi4 ,
shi4 shi3 shi4 shi2 shi2 shi1 shi1 .
shi2 shi2 ,
shi3 shi4 shi4 shi2 shi1 shi1 ,
shi2 shi2 shi2 shi1 shi1 .
shi4 shi4 shi4 shi4 .

It is in a kind of Classical Chinese. If we remove all the tone marks, you'll just get a lot of shi's. How many of these syllables can you render back into the Chinese characters? In fact, it is a lot easier to understand if you can read the characters themselves, even though it may be in Classical Chinese.

If you want the characters, I'll write a webpage for it and give you a link in by the end of next week - a bit busy at the moment.

Dyl.
A-hiong
Posts: 28
Joined: Thu Feb 03, 2005 3:53 pm
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Re: tone marks

Post by A-hiong »

Um...I'm confused...yeah....please write the story in character form.
kk

Re: tone marks

Post by kk »

Yinwei Shengdiao Fuhao bu fangbian yong, erqie rongyi chuxian luan4ma3. Buguo women keyi yong shumuzi biaodiaofa, piru Shu4mu4zi4 biao1diao4fa3.
Zai dabufen de qingkuang women keyi shenglue tone mark, you xuyao de shihou cai yong. Jiaoxue Putonghua de shihou jiu xuyao yong tone mark.
Dylan Sung

Re: tone marks

Post by Dylan Sung »

As promised, I have uploaded the above story into my website.

http://www.sungwh.freeserve.co.uk/hanzi ... mspoet.htm

This extreme example shows how Chinese characters can fulfill a role still in the future of Chinese speaking people. A romanisation does not impart the information very well in this case, whereas the individual characters do allow the readers to understand the plot, so to speak.

Dyl.
maana
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Aug 23, 2009 9:03 am

Re: tone marks

Post by maana »

people seem to attempt to communicate in pinyin without tones - which provides even less information that what can be heard from a speaker (and, without having the interactive advantage of face-to-face conversation).
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