Transliteration of Chinese |
---|
Mandarin |
Wu |
Yue |
Min |
Gan |
Hakka |
Xiang |
Polylectal |
See also |
Sidney Lau romanisation is a system of romanisation for Cantonese that was developed in the 1970s by Sidney Lau for teaching Cantonese to Hong Kong Government expatriates. It is based on the Hong Kong Government's Standard Romanisation which was the result of the work of James D. Ball and Ernst J. Eitel about a century earlier.
Lau's romanisation indicates tonality with superscript numbers, so no diacritics are required. [1] His system was a plain attempt at simplification which proved popular with western learners of Cantonese as a second language and was initially the system of romanisation adopted by the University of Hong Kong. [2] However, the university now employs the Jyutping system for its Cantonese courses. [3]
b /p/ 巴 | p /pʰ/ 怕 | m /m/ 媽 | f /f/ 花 | |
d /t/ 打 | t /tʰ/ 他 | n /n/ 那 | l /l/ 啦 | |
g /k/ 家 | k /kʰ/ 卡 | ng /ŋ/ 牙 | h /h/ 蝦 | |
gw /kʷ/ 瓜 | kw /kʷʰ/ 誇 | w /w/ 蛙 | ||
j /ts/ 渣 | ch /tsʰ/ 叉 | s /s/ 沙 | y /j/ 也 |
In his system, Lau treats /ɵ/ and /o/ as allophones of one phoneme represented with "u", while they are often respectively regarded as allophones of /œ:/ and /u:/ in other systems. [4]
Coda | ||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
∅ | /i/ | /u/ | /m/ | /n/ | /ŋ/ | /p̚/ | /t̚/ | /k̚/ | ||
Vowel | /aː/ | a /aː/ 沙 | aai /aːi̯/ 徙 | aau /aːu̯/ 梢 | aam /aːm/ 三 | aan /aːn/ 山 | aang /aːŋ/ 坑 | aap /aːp̚/ 圾 | aat /aːt̚/ 剎 | aak /aːk̚/ 客 |
/ɐ/ | ai /ɐi̯/ 西 | au /ɐu̯/ 收 | am /ɐm/ 心 | an /ɐn/ 新 | ang /ɐŋ/ 笙 | ap /ɐp̚/ 濕 | at /ɐt̚/ 失 | ak /ɐk̚/ 塞 | ||
/ɛː/ /e/ | e /ɛː/ 些 | ei /ei̯/ 四 | eng /ɛːŋ/ 鄭 | ek /ɛːk̚/ 石 | ||||||
/iː/ | i /iː/ 詩 | iu /iːu̯/ 消 | im /iːm/ 閃 | in /iːn/ 先 | ing /eŋ/ 星 | ip /iːp̚/ 攝 | it /iːt̚/ 洩 | ik /ek̚/ 識 | ||
/ɔː/ | oh /ɔː/ 疏 | oi /ɔːy̯/ 開 | o /ou̯/ 蘇 | on /ɔːn/ 看 | ong /ɔːŋ/ 康 | ot /ɔːt̚/ 喝 | ok /ɔːk̚/ 索 | |||
/uː/ | oo /uː/ 夫 | ooi /uːy̯/ 灰 | oon /uːn/ 寬 | oot /uːt̚/ 闊 | ||||||
/ɵ/ /ʊ/ | ui /ɵy̯/ 需 | un /ɵn/ 詢 | ung /ʊŋ/ 鬆 | ut /ɵt̚/ 摔 | uk /ʊk̚/ 叔 | |||||
/œː/ | euh /œː/ 靴 | eung /œːŋ/ 商 | euk /œːk̚/ 削 | |||||||
/yː/ | ue /yː/ 書 | uen /yːn/ 孫 | uet /yːt̚/ 雪 | |||||||
∅ | m /m̩/ 唔 | ng /ŋ̩/ 五 |
Tone symbol | Tone description | Example | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
Romanization | Word | Meaning | ||
1° or N° | high flat | si1° | 詩 | poem |
ga1 je2° | 家姐 | elder sister | ||
1 | high falling | tim1 | 添 | final particle expressing the idea of addition or regret. |
2 or N* | mid rising | si2 | 史 | history |
dik1 si6* | 的士 | taxi | ||
3 | mid flat | si3 | 試 | try |
4 | low falling | si4 | 時 | time |
5 | low rising | si5 | 市 | city |
6 | low flat | si6 | 是 | is |
1° indicates the high flat tone. If ° appears after any other tones, it signifies a changed tone and that the word is to be pronounced as 1°, but 1° is not the original/normal tone of the word. Similar to °, if * appears after any tones apart from tone 2, it indicates that the word is to be pronounced as tone 2, but tone 2 is not the original/normal tone of the word. [5]
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standard written representation for the sounds of speech. The IPA is used by lexicographers, foreign language students and teachers, linguists, speech–language pathologists, singers, actors, constructed language creators, and translators.
Wade–Giles is a romanization system for Mandarin Chinese. It developed from the system produced by Thomas Francis Wade during the mid-19th century, and was given completed form with Herbert Giles's A Chinese–English Dictionary (1892).
The Linguistic Society of Hong Kong Cantonese Romanization Scheme, also known as Jyutping, is a romanisation system for Cantonese developed in 1993 by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong (LSHK).
The Royal Thai General System of Transcription (RTGS) is the official system for rendering Thai words in the Latin alphabet. It was published by the Royal Institute of Thailand in early 1917, when Thailand was called Siam.
Cantonese is the traditional prestige variety of Yue Chinese, a Sinitic language belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family. It originated in the city of Guangzhou and its surrounding Pearl River Delta.
The Hong Kong Government uses an unpublished system of Romanisation of Cantonese for public purposes which is based on the 1888 standard described by Roy T Cowles in 1914 as Standard Romanisation. The primary need for Romanisation of Cantonese by the Hong Kong Government is in the assigning of names to new streets and places. It has not formally or publicly disclosed its method for determining the appropriate Romanisation in any given instance.
Guangdong Romanization refers to the four romanization schemes published by the Guangdong Provincial Education Department in 1960 for transliterating Cantonese, Teochew, Hakka and Hainanese. The schemes utilized similar elements with some differences in order to adapt to their respective spoken varieties.
A syllabic consonant or vocalic consonant is a consonant that forms the nucleus of a syllable on its own, like the m, n and l in some pronunciations of the English words rhythm, button and awful, respectively. To represent it, the understroke diacritic in the International Phonetic Alphabet is used, ⟨U+0329◌̩COMBINING VERTICAL LINE BELOW⟩. It may be instead represented by an overstroke, ⟨U+030D◌̍COMBINING VERTICAL LINE ABOVE⟩ if the symbol that it modifies has a descender, such as in.
Sidney Lau Sek-cheung was a Cantonese teacher in the Chinese Language Section of the Government Training Division and Principal of the Government Language School of the Hong Kong Government. He had graduated bachelor of arts from Sun Yat-sen University, Guangdong, People's Republic of China.
The Institute of Language in Education Scheme of Cantonese romanization or the ILE scheme, commonly known simply as the romanization used by the List of Cantonese Pronunciation of Commonly-used Chinese Characters (常用字廣州話讀音表), is a romanization system for Cantonese developed by Ping-Chiu Thomas Yu in 1971, and subsequently modified by the Education Department of Hong Kong and Zhan Bohui (詹伯慧) of the Chinese Dialects Research Centre of the Jinan University, Guangdong, PRC, and honorary professor of the School of Chinese, University of Hong Kong. It is the only romanization system accepted by Education and Manpower Bureau of Hong Kong and Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority.
Wong Shik Ling published a scheme of phonetic symbols for Cantonese based on the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) in the book A Chinese Syllabary Pronounced According to the Dialect of Canton. The scheme has been widely used in Chinese dictionaries published in Hong Kong. The scheme, known as S. L. Wong system (黃錫凌式), is a broad phonemic transcription system based on IPA and its analysis of Cantonese phonemes is grounded in the theories of Y. R. Chao.
Wong Shik-Ling published a romanisation scheme accompanying a set of phonetic symbols for Cantonese based on International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) in the book A Chinese Syllabary Pronounced according to the Dialect of Canton.
Hong Kong Cantonese is a dialect of the Cantonese language (廣東話,粵語), which is in the Sino-Tibetan language family. Cantonese is lingua franca of populations living in the Guangdong Province of mainland China, in the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau, as well as in many overseas Chinese communities. Hong Kong Cantonese shares a recent and direct lineage with the Guangzhou (Canton) dialect of Cantonese (廣州話); decades of separation have led to some deviations between Hong Kong Cantonese and Guangzhou Cantonese in terms of vocabulary and other noticeable speech habits, although Hong Kong officially maintains the Guangzhou dialect and pronunciations as the official language standard. Hongkongers refer to the language as "Cantonese" (廣東話).
The Yale romanization of Cantonese was developed by Yale scholar Gerard P. Kok for his and Parker Po-fei Huang's textbook Speak Cantonese initially circulated in looseleaf form in 1952 but later published in 1958. Unlike the Yale romanization of Mandarin, it is still widely used in books and dictionaries, especially for foreign learners of Cantonese. It shares some similarities with Hanyu Pinyin in that unvoiced, unaspirated consonants are represented by letters traditionally used in English and most other European languages to represent voiced sounds. For example, is represented as b in Yale, whereas its aspirated counterpart, is represented as p. Students attending The Chinese University of Hong Kong's New-Asia Yale-in-China Chinese Language Center are taught using Yale romanization.
The Cantonese Romanisation system known as Barnett–Chao is based on the principles of the Gwoyeu Romatzyh system (GR) developed by Yuen Ren Chao in the 1920s, which he modified in 1947. The B-C system is a modification in 1950 by K M A Barnett from Yuen Ren Chao's romanisation system. It was adopted by the School of Oriental and African Studies, London (SOAS).
Tone letters are letters that represent the tones of a language, most commonly in languages with contour tones.
The phonology of Standard Chinese has historically derived from the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. However, pronunciation varies widely among speakers, who may introduce elements of their local varieties. Television and radio announcers are chosen for their ability to affect a standard accent. Elements of the sound system include not only the segments—e.g. vowels and consonants—of the language, but also the tones applied to each syllable. In addition to its four main tones, Standard Chinese has a neutral tone that appears on weak syllables.
The phonology of Burmese is fairly typical of a Southeast Asian language, involving phonemic tone or register, a contrast between major and minor syllables, and strict limitations on consonant clusters.
Standard Cantonese pronunciation originates from Guangzhou, also known as Canton, the capital of Guangdong Province. Hong Kong Cantonese is closely related to the Guangzhou dialect, with only minor differences. Yue dialects spoken in other parts of Guangdong and Guangxi provinces, such as Taishanese, exhibit more significant divergences.
The Cantonese Transliteration Scheme, sometimes called Rao's romanization, is the romanisation for Cantonese published at part of the Guangdong Romanization by the Guangdong Education department in 1960, and further revised by Rao Bingcai in 1980. It is referred to as the Canton Romanization on the LSHK character database.