My Early 20th Century Mandarin & Cantonese Romanisations

[ParkeNYU]

I'm not sure whether this is the right place to post this, but here it goes:

 

 

While Hanyu Pinyin is the uncontested Romanisation of this century's Modern Standard Mandarin, I thought it would be fun to create one as though it were the first half of the 20th century. I took inspiration from Yale, Latinxua Sin Wenz, Wade-Giles, Mandarin Phonetic Symbols II, Tongyong Pinyin, and even some features of historical postal spelling to fabricate a systematically sound and anglo/europhone-friendly Romanisation for the Pekingese Mandarin of the time. One distinct feature is the preservation of the round-sharp distinction (as still used in Peking Opera):

 

(狗 gǒu) 九 giǒu 酒 dsiǒu

(墾 cěn) 遣 ciěn 淺 tsiěn

(恨 xèn) 憲 xièn 線 sièn

 

The Cantonese system similarly preserves some older features, including the flat-curled distinction (e.g. 象 versus 丈) and the 金甘 distinction.

[889]

It's hard to gauge this from the table alone. Do you have a few paragraphs of text?

[ParkeNYU]

@889

 

XÌNG-FÚ DE JIA-TÍNG

Wŏ de jia shì yíge san-dài túng-táng de jia-tíng, yì-jia wŭ-kŏu, sheng-huó hĕn mĕi-măn.

Píng-cháng, yéye ciù yùn-dùng, bàba, mama ciù shàng-ban, wŏ hé gege ciù shàng-xiué.

Sing-cí-tien, wŏmen bú shàng-ban, yĕ bú shàng-xiué, tsiuén-jia yì-cĭ ciù pá-shan.

Wŏ de jia-tíng jhen xìng-fú.

[889]

Thank you, but isn't that (to me at least) double-duty use of x confusing: xìng-fú v. wǒ xé gē-ge. Were they really the same sounds in Peking 80 years ago?

[ParkeNYU]

@889 I have since amended that.

[ParkeNYU]

Here's an entire textbook worth of readings using both systems:

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/1bip266ziko8vh3/CFE_YL_GL.pdf?dl=0

[889]

Are there are any short tapes on Youtube or elsewhere illustrating the pronunciation differences between early 20th century Mandarin and today's Beijing speech?

 

I admit I don't have a great ear for such things, but listening to Pu Yi -- and if he's not the examplar of early 20th century Mandarin I don't know who is -- I hear very clear speech I commonly hear today in Beijing (except 的 sounded di isn't all that widespread today).

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49NY-KZBdis

[ParkeNYU]

@889

I have a video showing all changes in Cantonese from Middle Cantonese until the present, but I'll have to search for a Mandarin one.