July 2009
Coming from a workshop
Submitted by Christoph on 29 July, 2009 - 00:09I'm on the train back from a workshop on Japanese and computing. For me it was something new meeting these people. I got a very warm welcome and had some nice conversations.
Language Log on Uyghur
Submitted by Christoph on 25 July, 2009 - 11:16It's been some days but Language Log has a nice short article on Uyghur nouns together with their Mandarin forms: A Little Primer of Xinjiang Proper Nouns.
Bo, po and duo, tuo
Submitted by Christoph on 24 July, 2009 - 09:09Pinyin doesn't always specify finals in a straightforward way. For example it is difficult to see that wei and dui have the same final -uei, the former substituting u for semi-vowel w, the latter omitting the e. In Views on initials and finals of Mandarin in Pinyin I've tried to show those peculiarities by grouping forms under their actual final, not just their spelling. What I didn't do was merging columns -o (bo, po, mo, fo) and -uo (duo, tuo, ...).
Followup on "Python doctest and Unicode"
Submitted by Christoph on 21 July, 2009 - 12:05I complained about Python doctest and Unicode some time ago. This was an itch I finally wanted to scratch, so I followed the popular saying: "Luke, read the source".
Turns out the error in question is fixed pretty easily. Python needs to properly encode the output, so a conversion to the output stream's encoding did the trick. Now a new issue came up.
A survey on German learners of Chinese
Submitted by Christoph on 17 July, 2009 - 16:18We did a short survey on German beginners of Mandarin where we asked 30 people what problems they face, what they use for learning, and what they think is missing. Most of the 30 people are students and none of them have a family background in China. On average they already studied 7 months of Chinese while learning 1.8 days a week.
Another shot from 'A Grammar of Spoken Chinese'
Submitted by Christoph on 14 July, 2009 - 23:38
Source:
Yuen Ren Chao: A Grammar of Spoken Chinese. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1968, ISBN 0-520-00219-9.
Optional neutral tone in Gwoyeu Romatzyh (5)
Submitted by Christoph on 14 July, 2009 - 16:20
Source:
Yuen Ren Chao: A Grammar of Spoken Chinese. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1968, ISBN 0-520-00219-9.
Optional neutral tone in Gwoyeu Romatzyh (4)
Submitted by Christoph on 14 July, 2009 - 16:19
Source:
Yuen Ren Chao: A Grammar of Spoken Chinese. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1968, ISBN 0-520-00219-9.
Stepchildren of Pinyin
Submitted by Christoph on 13 July, 2009 - 13:25Pinyin or fully Hanyu Pinyin is the standard Romanisation for Mandarin. It is widely used and only in few cases older Romanisations like Wade-Giles or Bopomofo prevail. So as Pinyin is ubiquitous you think you've seen it all? Do you know characters ê, ẑ, ĉ, ŝ and ŋ?
Gwoyeu Romatzyh and abbreviated spellings
Submitted by Christoph on 12 July, 2009 - 17:50Gwoyeu Romatzyh is a fairly complex Romanisation. Instead of using diacritic marks or appended digits, the creators decided to give each syllable-tone combintation a distinctive shape. So syllable guo (e.g. 国, 果) becomes guo, gwo, guoo, guoh for tones one to for.
This is actually the most prominent feature GR is known for. By the way, I believe it is mostly abbreviated as it's difficult to remember the correct spelling Gwoyeu Romatzyh, which itself comes from Guóyǔ Luómǎzì, "National Language Romanization", and would be strictly rendered as Gwoyeu Luomaatzyh in its own system.
