Tangent Constructed Chinese

[Hofmann]

Sometimes I look to see if someone writes something interesting.

[Hwong_DsiKiem]

TCC revision:

 說 shiuet, Japanese setsu

 Mandarin corr: shiuet, i lost after retroflex Cs, final -t lost: shuə > shuo, compare with 國 kwêk > kwê > kwo (=guo)

 Canto corr: shiuet > /ɕyət/ > /syt/

 

Also 幽 is /i(ə)u/ in CTCC

[Hwong_DsiKiem]

Decided to make a page so because someone told me he liked blogs... At least if I were to tell people I have this project I wouldn't have to direct people to a forum now...

http://tcchinese.tumblr.com/

[Hwong_DsiKiem]

Clarifications added to the post:

 

The TCC “o” is a tense /o/

 

It is my intention to reflect Sino pronunciations in orthography, so you don’t need to learn how special combinations of letters represent a different sound or how <o> would correspond to a non-/o/ or /ɔ/ vowel in order to see the resemblance between the TCC and the Sino pronunciations.

 

It was also my intention to use a 6-vowel system with the standard a e i o u ə. So I intentionally did not use more than that. “O” is mostly an “A” in Sino pronunciations and thus <o> isn’t often seen in TCC, appearing mostly only before velars.

 

Mistakes fixed:

*Final consonants are mostly the same as Cantonese finals.

 

*Note that Mandarin medials do not

[Hwong_DsiKiem]

A thing I was asked to work on.

http://img.acianetmedia.com/HZI

[Hwong_DsiKiem]

Correction: meu instead of mau for the last file.

I'll probably just post on the blog for future updates cause I don't want to post it 4 times.

 

http://tcchinese.tumblr.com/post/81164976715

[Hwong_DsiKiem]

Posted a little thing I guess I could use help on.

http://tcchinese.tumblr.com/post/81759904787/unrelated-thinking-of-writing-the-vh-series-as

[Hwong_DsiKiem]

My previous post has made me wonder. Since TCC <o> currently only appears in –ong (and perhaps –ok), both of which have been merged as –ung and –uk in Mandarin and Cantonese, perhaps the o in Japanese were also a separate series? I am considering this revision. The TCC -u is re-written with o, leaving u for Canto –ou, -au, etc. Please see the table for clarification. Besides Japanese and the unlikeliness of Hokkien influence, 五 is o instead of u in Sino-Korean. This revision would allow me to use –iu for Cantonese –au + Man –(i)ou + Jp -yu(u), a thing which I’ve been trying to keep in favour of –iou. This also makes it possible to show y- in yim and yâng tones, although this loses the characteristic of the yi-i merger I`ve been looking for. Although, if this revision is decided, it could correspond to Canto and Man more well despite probably looking like a worse Chinese, and makes the iu/yu distinction unnecessary. The y- initial of MC will still be written as w in certain places though, as shown in the table (運), after the Cantonese and Sino-Jp values. While the current vh would probably be better written as mh-, writing it as mg- would probably be cool ,but I guess it’s less unprepared-reader friendly, and it could end up being pronounced as a g/j.

http://tcchinese.tumblr.com/post/81867103792/my-previous-post-has-made-me-wonder-since-tcc-o

 

EDIT:

The update would need to be reconsidered as the o in nio (女) is probably a schwa instead, from Sino-Korean.

[Hwong_DsiKiem]

 

I tried mapping my TCC finals to the classical rimes shown on the Wikipedia article of General Chinese. This is the result.

Correction: "êu" should be written as <ou> instead, although that`s pronounced as /əu/. I's in brackets are omitted in TCC but may be present in brackets in CTCC.

[Hwong_DsiKiem]

Correction: <au> should be <eu>. I'll update my blog now

-wên might be -un instead.

[Hwong_DsiKiem]

http://tcchinese.tumblr.com/post/82565303761/division-1-the-vowel-itself-2-medial-i-exists

[Hwong_DsiKiem]

Current TCC

The retroflex stops and nasals of Middle Chinese merge with the alveolars in TCC.

[Hwong_DsiKiem]

Made a mistake. Should be bieng instead of phieng. Also zhiâng

 

More and clearer correspondences.

Note that -eu is a valid Cantonese colloquial reading for some words for TCC -ieu

[Hwong_DsiKiem]

On General Chinese (this was posted on a forum),

http://tcchinese.tumblr.com/post/82895734398/the-general-chinese-gc-has-been-briefly

[Hwong_DsiKiem]

Did a general comparison of Chinese and Sino-Vietnamese tones. Perhaps this will help us guess the exact tone contours at the time?

The level tone of Chinese can sometimes correspond to the huyền (˨˩̤, ˧) tone too.

http://tcchinese.tumblr.com/post/83194533398/did-a-general-comparison-of-chinese-and

[Takeshi]

@roddy: Eh, I looked at a bit around the beginning, but it all go too confusing for me after a while.

 

I do think the concept and idea is interesting, but it seems to me like in the end it's just another less accurate reconstruction attempt that doesn't actually try to reconstruct. Yes, I know it apparently does better than General Chinese in some ways, but to me it really seems like he is recreating the General Chinese wheel. Unfortunately General Chinese isn't really popular tho.

 

I've always wanted to pursue a similar project though, in the sense that I wanted a pan-variety way of representing Chinese for use within English without having to rely on a modern prestigious variety. I would want one that fits within English phonotactics too, that would be cool. I stopped caring though because it's not practical and nobody is really going to care about it though.

 

Probably the best thing to do in my opinion is to support General Chinese, or Chinese Postal Map Romanization, or something else that sort of gets what we want but is actually known by the outside world.

[Hwong_DsiKiem]

Update: http://tcchinese.tumblr.com/

 

It's more to harmonize with Sino-Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese, and simultaneously representing those sounds as well as Mandarin and Cantonese, and ideally other Chinese languages as well. I never meant for it to be "popular", although I hope it could be used in like, works of fiction when a "Chinese" is needed.

It isn't like General Chinese in that it isn't meant to be a "diaphone" of modern Chinese languages in that sense.

No body cares and it's not practical, right. No one cares about anything. They just want a Middle Chinese reconstruction and since this isn't, they don't. I do this out of interest, plus I always wanted to hear some fancy Chinese and compare imitations with imitators. And they lacked one. Also, what I said about talking about concepts like khi to Westerners, and having an idea for a "General character pronunciation".

I do find quite a number of things I dislike about General Chinese, so I won't really promote it. I though, probably will not make a dictionary or character list, since that is out of my interest and too troublesome. I do find enjoyment in predicting Sino-Japanese, Sino-Korean and Sino-Vietnamese with just the Cantonese and Mandarin pronunciations given, which is kind of how the TCC could work.

The postal map Romanization still lacks the entering tones I want though.

"Not practical and no one cares" is also the argument thrown at people who try to come up with their own Mandarin Romanizations, but could people not try to have fun or make things clearer? Surely before Pinyin was created, a new Romanization would be rather impractical. But it remains as ambiguous and not straight forward and requires learning all the exceptions.

I stress again though, it is not meant to be a form of Chinese spoken in everyday life. Perhaps more used with people who are into these sino linguistic stuff.

 

I still, hope that people could be interested and appreciate it.

 

And then no one cares because it's not some sort of serious reconstruction work, merely a child's plaything, as it has become. Well, I am just 18.

 

The opening post was made long before and a lot of things have changed since then. It shouldn't really be depended on anymore really.

 

EDIT: Yeah sorry perhaps I don't mean it really like that but it is too off-putting.

I have though, lost a lot of motivation for it already because everyone has been treating it like it is crap. And since no one cares this has been reduced to just a hobby

 

A thing though. Wikipedia says: "In Mandarin, an additional coda is found, -er [ɻ], from GC 〈ri〉." but from the table, 二 is written as "err". I'm asking a friend to see if there's a way to open the file though, cause I can't.

[Hwong_DsiKiem]

Well I think I figured out now.

"Of the people I presented my TCC to, they just said things like "you should use GC instead because it's impractical" or "we should just work based on/improve GC". And I've been asked, what my goal is for my TCC, after knowing the GC existed? I realized I wouldn't be happy even if I modified the GC to suit the Sino-Jp, Kr and Vietnamese pronunciations. I still looks far from being "Chinese" (stuff like drea after modifications) and not really exotic and fancy like I wanted. I guess it should remain as an exotic and fancy Chinese to be used in stories and games, making people who are familiar with one Chinese variety/Jp/Viet/Kr wonder... Also, the table of GC appears to be written by a Mandarin speaker. I doubt "err", "zhag" (for 上), "djang" (for 常) etc are what Chao had in mind, and I'm backed up by Wikipedia. One of Enigmatism's goals might be to work on a GC that's more like what Chao intended first. I'm convinced Chao's would be closer to my TCC readings: gni~, zhiâng/ and zhiâng."

 

Also, here's a Chinese transcription I made, based off of GC, along with description:

http://tcchinese.tumblr.com/post/83625064149/this-is-a-chinese-transcription-system-i-made

[Hwong_DsiKiem]

So I specifically made that MC transcription to cater to you people who want MC transcriptions but still no one cares. I'd go back to my TCC if that is the case.

[OneEye]

I don't think "we people who want MC transcriptions" are going to use the work of an 18 year-old hobbyist, when we could turn to any number of transcriptions and reconstructions done by authoritative scholars. I don't mean any offense there, just that if this is your hobby, you should do it for yourself and any other people who may be interested in it. But if you want to do work on Middle Chinese that will hold its own against the massive body of work that has already been done, you'll have to go to grad school and then start publishing on it.