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From: deb5@ellis.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Bopomofo, Shmopomofo [was: Re: ASCII Marking of Chinese Tones
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Date: Mon, 22 Apr 1996 02:51:57 GMT
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In article <317a8beb.14204825@news.jagunet.com>,
Tom Kirkpatrick <tbkikrp@jagunet.com> wrote:
>deb5@ellis.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff) wrote:
>
>//snip  snip //
>
>>(Of course, the actual tone values in connecting speech depend on the
>>effects of tone sandhi, the pitch contour of the utterance, and other
>>factors.)  Note how the pinyin diacritics (macron, acute accent, 
>>ha^cek/breve, grave accent) suggest these contours.  These diacritics 
>>are also used in conjunction with the Taiwanese "Mapodoufu" system.  
>>Since there is no way to display them in ASCII, we have to resort to 
>>numbers.
>
>Did you really mean the "Mapodoufu" system or the "Bopomofo" system
>(aka zhuyin fuhao) ?   The only "Mapodoufu" I was familiar with in
>Taiwan was a wonderful Szechuan dish which roughly translates as 
>"Old Lady Ma's Bean Curd"

^_^

I was wondering who was going to be the first to call me on that.  I've
never particularly liked Bopomofo, though a friend of mine who's studied
a lot more Chinese does because it's quite easily written vertically--
a boon when one's annotating old-fashioned texts.  It also relies on a
Chinese analysis of the syllable (initial + rhyme) rather than the foreign
one (phonemic) implicit in most other Chinese transcription systems,
which I imagine makes it more acceptable to traditionalists.  Personally,
I'll take pinyin.

-- 
	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
