Pinyin written on parallel lines (music score)

[Tinov]

Hi,

Has anyone seen pinyin written on parallel lines in the same way that music is? You can see what I mean on the attached JPG - the words in upper case are mean to be stressed.

Any comments welcome, would it be a good idea for teaching/learning?

Tinov.

[imron]

Honestly, I think it looks complicated and messy. Also for two letter pinyin sounds (ni, wo, ta, etc etc ) it's difficult to really get idea of the third tone. On the image, it looks just like a falling tone that starts low. Actually, now that I look at it again, the same is true for 3 letter third tones too (e.g. hao).

[LaoZhang]

Worth trying on someone who knows how to read music. That said, if they know how to read music, then they probably have a good enough ear to hear the tone already.

Let us know how it works

[muyongshi]

Never seen it and never want to see it (again )

It is very messy and the idea of tones, honestly, should not be connected to a musical type of theory but rather as a way of saying a word.

Yes it can be represented in this way and through other various forms of music using such things as pitch, key and scale (imagine you could teach people based on the "key" the speak in). That was supposed to be sarcastic, please do not take me serious. It's a bad idea!

[Tinov]

Thanks for the comments folks.

Imron, this system of writing Pinyin was proposed by William Lin. He thinks that the 3 tone is usually spoken just falling - not falling then rising. so third tone appears a bit funny in his writing.

Tinov

[roddy]

Maybe as a temporary measure for illustration purposes. But there's no more information in it than there is in normally-written pinyin, so I'm not sure there's a great deal of value in it.

[imron]

I think if you really wanted to associate the tones with music, you'd be better off just putting a line to indicate the tone. Then once someone then had the general idea, you could just switch to normal pinyin. Also I think for anyone beyond a complete beginner, it's not really practical to have this sort of notation in textbooks or learning materials.

[gougou]

But there's no more information in it than there is in normally-written pinyin

Don't quite agree with that. Look at the second-to-last line, for example, where the two 4th tones in 再见 are notated differently, or at the third line where neutral tai, jie and ma all are shown at different pitches.

I think I would have liked to see something like that when I just started learning (to show how rigid - or not - these tones are to be understood), but then they're probably easier to understand now that I already have a feel for the language. Not sure whether I'd have understand them as well when I just started with Chinese.

BTW, found this topic through the newsletter, so yay for the newsletter.

[roddy]

Hurray, a reader!

That's a good point about the way it can display differences in what are nominally the same tone, I hadn't considered that.