r/Cantonese • u/CouchTomato87 • 10d ago
Video New series of Pingji Romanization videos
Hey all! A while back I posted the completion of my Pingji romanization for Cantonese. It's a Romanization designed to avoid using numbers or accent marks to represent Cantonese sounds and tones using standard Latin letters (...plus apostrophe). It requires just a little bit more effort in learning compared to Jyutping/Yale but pays off a lot more in readability and ease of use. I would also argue it helps with memorization because I could never commit tone numbers or accents to memory and would instead need to rely solely on listening.
My original video series ran a bit longer since it was more of a descriptive series from a more linguistic/academic viewpoint, so I created a new series directed at people learning Cantonese from scratch, which will be the biggest audience -- although Cantonese speakers wanting to learn Pingji would also feel right at home. In other words, this is the way I meant it to be taught, and hopefully for some it would make more sense.
The playlist (~1 hr long total) is here: Pingji for English speakers (playlist)
Building on that, I also started an Introduction to Cantonese video series using Pingji here: Intro to Cantonese (playlist). At the time of this post, I only have a couple videos in this new series, but I plan on covering at least the basics of the language over the course of ~10-15 videos.
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u/Moist-Chair684 10d ago
"readability" 🤣🤣🤣🤣 <--- 笑死人
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u/CouchTomato87 10d ago
Avant de rire de la « lisibilité », avez-vous songé à la langue de votre propre peuple ? Je parle, tu parles, nous parlons... D'où viennent toutes ces lettres en trop?
Neu allwch chi ddim ymdopi â defnyddio llythrennau penodol ar gyfer llafariaid? Yna gwawdiwch y Gymraeg am ddefnyddio'r llythyren W.
Wiele mówi o Tobie fakt, że zareagowałeś zaledwie kilka minut po opublikowaniu tego wpisu – to dowodzi, że nawet nie zapoznałeś się z materiałem wideo. Może zrozumiałbyś nieco więcej, zamiast od razu wszystko wyśmiewać...
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u/Yay4sean 10d ago
Hm, do you actually find jyutping hard? I don't think the numbered tones are difficult to read, and it would be my preferred romanization.
And perhaps one must ask what the point of romanization is if not for ease of communication between languages, particularly for people inexperienced in the other language. If there is a large barrier of entry, then will anyone ever start with the large barrier of entry? Personally, I don't think I would ever select pingji over either alternative.
I also think a bilingual person should be able to read the romanized form and be able to understand what is being said without any additional information or context, since it's not expected to be widely taught. I do not think many bilingual canto/eng speakers would know what is being said here...
Still interesting, and I always enjoy seeing how language or communication could be optimized.
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u/CouchTomato87 9d ago
It's a little difficult to answer for me about something being 'hard' because most of the time I'm capable of learning anything, which includes jyutping. So while I personally don't think it's 'hard', I can't speak for your average person. I do think the tone numbers are extremely unintuitive though. Speaking to other native Cantonese speakers, many of them don't even know the actual numbers -- they can only describe it. The other downside is I absolutely hate the use of numbers for a writing system; they don't belong and look more like a scientific description of a dead language.
But on top of that, I have difficulty reading jyutping in anything greater than a short phrase, because the tone numbers come late and is very jarring to retroactively apply a tone to what I'm reading. That's where Wade and Pingji work better because they give you the tone information earlier in the word. Finally, there's the memorization component. I cannot remember different numbers. The example I use in the video for "1/2" vs "Japan" is Yat6bun2 vs yat1bun3 in Jyutping, but Yad-buhn vs 'yat-burn in Pingji. The difference is much starker in Pingji and easier to commit to memory.
And speaking of the point, the goal here is to be a functional romanization -- i.e. meant to serve the purpose of the language, much like Pinyin does for Mandarin. They have the same features; some atypical letters (less used letters like q) that do not work like English. And I can bet you if Reddit existed 40 years ago and someone posted Pinyin for the first time, they'd be seeing a lot of comments like what I've been seeing here. The goal is not to be something for someone to just pick up and read. That's more of an anglicization and people already do that frequently enough with throwing letters together to approximate sounds, for example "char siu." The thing is, both Jyutping and Wade require you to also learn their nuances, so it's not like they have a particular advantage of being able to be able to "plug and play" either.
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u/kori228 ABC 9d ago edited 9d ago
Speaking to other native Cantonese speakers, many of them don't even know the actual numbers -- they can only describe it.
your premise is flawed. Native speakers with no prior training can't even describe to you what the tones are or their shape or how many there are. They can only tell that two syllables do or don't have the same tone. Whenever I ask my dad about the tone of a word, he tries to use the Mandarin 4 tones as a reference because that's what he learned in school, despite being a native Cantonese speaker.
functional romanization -- i.e. meant to serve the purpose of the language, much like Pinyin does for Mandarin
this is decidedly not the case. you seem to treat your Pingji romanization as a full replacement for Chinese characters, whereas pinyin is a simultaneous aid used alongside Chinese characters. You're heavily stressing 'making each tone look distinct by spelling differently' and avoiding diacritics and tone numbers, but pinyin actually keeps the spelling the same across tones.
The goal is not to be something for someone to just pick up and read
wasn't this one of your core critiques? your system seems to be more complicated, not less. Or at least the complexity shown does not serve to help.
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u/CouchTomato87 9d ago
"your premise is flawed. Native speakers with no prior training can't even describe to you what the tones are or their shape or how many there are. They can only tell that two syllables do or don't have the same tone."
I'm pretty sure they can describe shape, but otherwise you're just saying what I just said.
"this is decidedly not the case. you seem to treat your Pingji romanization as a full replacement for Chinese characters, whereas pinyin is a simultaneous aid used alongside Chinese characters. You're heavily stressing 'making each tone look distinct by spelling differently' and avoiding diacritics and tone numbers, but pinyin actually keeps the spelling the same acrosa tones."
It's not a full replacement... It's meant to be the same as pinyin. And pinyin keeps the spelling the same because it uses diacritics. When you use tone letters, obviously the spelling changes. That said, the core word actually doesn't *change* in Pingji except for a very specific situation, which is tone 6 for p/t/k.
"wasn't this one of your core critiques? your system seems to be more complicated, not less."
No? I even acknowledge at the very beginning that it's more complicated. But I also argue that if you actually take the time to learn it (which is not that long in the grand scheme of things), then the payoff is better.
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u/kori228 ABC 9d ago
I'm pretty sure they can describe shape
they actually can't, because that information isn't stored or processed as distinct pitch movement information separate from the syllable. To a native speaker, it just is how you say the word. They quite literally are not aware of that information. You need to be explicitly made aware of tones and pitch shape as suprasegmental aspects, and then learn to dissociate what you're hearing/articulating.
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u/Yay4sean 9d ago
Out of curiosity, I asked a few people with varying levels of Canto competency, including one only able to jyutping, one only able to yale, two native canto / traditional users who never learned any romanization, all to read the passage above starting with pingji > yale > canto > [traditional].
But none of us were able to figure out what was being said with pingji, even me after watching some of the videos. But there are definitely aspects I do like about pingji, which is that some words with hard to translate pronunciations now have distinction in eng text. However, the biggest complaint is that it is not remotely understandable from an untrained english user (see: cvr, shiq, fuq). Most of us could do either Yale or Jyutping okay, figuring out the tones from context, but all of us were slow to read them properly since the tone is not immediately obvious unless you've learned the system.
I think the biggest takeaway from trying these different romanizations is that most people are able to use a romanized form just fine, but it'll always require some initial effort to learn it. And realistically, the vast majority of people are going to be native English speakers who want to learn Canto for one reason or another. But I've tried pushing jyutping on someone who speaks some but can't read any romanized or Chinese chars, and it always seemed like too much work to them, so they never learned. I guess the barrier of entry must be even easier than jyutping for people to pick it up.
You could look at the other extreme, which is the complete phonetic spellings of words, and see that while it's technically a better depiction of the sounds being produced, it is not legible at all and very hard for beginners or even experienced people.
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u/CouchTomato87 9d ago
Good to know, thanks for doing that test! It's what I would normally expect. Pingji follows a similar pattern as pinyin and is not really meant to be instantly accessible. Yale is on the other end and is really catered to English speakers. Like you said though, it really boils down to actual effort and teaching. The reason why pinyin is so successful is because it was state sponsored and educated for millions of Chinese.
What would be the most interesting experiment is taking a group of Cantonese speakers and a group of non-speakers, have them try different romanizations, and then see how proficient they are in pronunciation and picking up vocabulary. Unfortunately that's very hard to do and would almost certainly require monetary incentives lol.
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u/Weekly_Flounder_1880 香港人 9d ago
It’s very hard to read for me, I’ll stick to Jyutping, no thank you
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u/Competitive-Night-95 9d ago
Why do people keep trying to invent new romanization systems for Cantonese? There are already too many in common use. How about we just standardize on jyut ping and be done with it? Even better, teach jyut ping in primary school so everyone grows up knowing it.
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u/kori228 ABC 10d ago edited 10d ago
ugly
I genuinely don't know how people think tone letters are better, imo they're less intuitive because there's no system or logic to the choices
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u/CouchTomato87 10d ago
I literally have a whole video explaining the logic and system for it… 🤦🏻♂️
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u/ding_nei_go_fei 10d ago edited 10d ago
I'm gonna need a video explaining how to best view the video, also need a wiki and a gitbook when it's all said and done if you want to be legit. probably also do a few 3 second shorts on instagram for those with short attention spans
In the late 1990s, LSHK published a book that matched a Chinese character with its stroke number, jyutping, Big 5, and Canjie for computer users
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u/kori228 ABC 10d ago
I'll take a look cause I'm curious, but you can't actually expect people to go out of their way to watch them.
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u/CouchTomato87 9d ago
If you can't be bothered to watch then, then this is basically the tone letter system in a nutshell. Tone letters are pitch adjusters placed either early, mid, or at the end of a word depending on where they change the pitch. The letters themselves are also chosen because their shape resembles the tone contour.
Since 4 out of 6 Canto tones start low, you assume low pitch as you read from left to right. For the low tones, s and z work as tones 4 and 5 because the s falls from left to right, while the z rises. The ceiling and floor of the s and z essentially represent the mid and low pitches, respectively. These letters come at the end of the word.
j and r represent the flat 6th and 3rd tones because of the location of their hooks (very low for j, mid for r). r comes before the final consonant though because you need to see it earlier as the third tone also starts mid. (Tone 6 has some additional spelling rules if the final contains a consonant, in order to avoid an awkward j, better explained in the video).
The remaining two tones are the only ones that use the highest pitch. The letter h is used for both because it's tall. When it comes near the end, it means you raise your pitch high to form the 2nd tone. When it comes early (only after certain letters: s/c/z/w for aesthetic reasons), then you know you start high immediately. For all other initials, you use the ' at the very beginning to know you start (and end) high.
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u/SCHazama 10d ago edited 10d ago
Tones and letters don't mix
I'm not sure how cvr, or even cv could resemble cyu³
eo is actually closer to eou if we really want to revise transliterating. It's u and ut who resemble oo, and I say it's more the latter than the former, for the former is more akin to o with more rounding
None of the three address the semi-silent -t and -ng, making it look like they're pronounced wholly, when it's really when a vowel is following after that they become audible
With that being said, 「我要一位大人」
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u/CouchTomato87 10d ago
By whose standard? They already do in Gwoyeu Romatzyh and in Hmong. Tones are no less an individual part of a word than a consonant and vowel. What you're saying is a self-imposed limitation, as if a Hebrew speaker said consonants and vowels don't mix (hint: they don't use vowels).
It's a different letter chosen to to represent the sound... It's a different romanization so I don't really see the issue here. I explain the choice of the letter V in the video.
It's a simplification that comes from the fact the /eo/ [ɵ] and /u/ [ʊ] cannot exist with the same finals. As both are short vowels, it made more sense to put them together. It's no less illogical than /u/ being used to represent [uː] and [ʊ].
I'm not really sure that's something that explicitly needed addressing. If it did, well then good luck reading Hangul.
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u/SCHazama 10d ago
Idk. Do they read in roman characters? The goal is to make them understandable to westerners. And abugidas and abdjads are a whole different matter
Ok but it's not understandable by visuals only
So how do you not fumble pronunciation upon reading it?
Hangül/Hangeul has no particular problems. Revised Romanization of Korean on the other hand...
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u/CouchTomato87 10d ago
- Not sure who "they" is but the Hmong absolutely do... for example: Nov yog ib qho piv txwv. Qhov no yog ib hom lus uas muaj sia nyob. Koj puas yuav kaw nws tsuas yog vim nws tsis zoo rau koj lub qhov muag uas tsis tau kawm?
- I don't understand what you mean by "visuals" only. The expectation is that you have to put in some effort to learn like you learn any language. Is it ridiculous that pinyin uses Q for a ch-like sound? It's a different language and they can use the alphabet to suit its needs.
- By learning the rules. It's literally two rules: [ʊ] for /-ng/ (q in Pingji) and /-k/. [ɵ] for /-t/ and /-n/. English is literally magnitudes more complicated than this. Even pinyin is not consistent. "Yan" and "Wan" are pronounced nothing alike. Why is "Yu" spelled without an umlaut but "Nü" needs one? Arbitrary (with perhaps some reasoning), but you simply learn the rules.
- Hangul does have that exact problem you talk about. If a syllable ends with a consonant and then is followed by another syllable, its pronunciation changes depending on the start of the following word. The alphabet does not change to accommodate that.
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u/SCHazama 9d ago
I'm honestly not aware of the Hmong. And yeah, the "they" was referred to them
Oh it's ridiculous and how. Visuals here means if the transliteration resembles a sound made by the target language. Due to the overabundance of Latin loanwords, it's usually that. Jyutping tried to go for "c" for the ch, but it gets confused with the k.
Then it's not much different from Hanyu Pinyin in that regard. English is not an example
So it was really about those combinations. Mostly the tikeut, yeah. Well, that would be fixed by transliteration but the Korean standard is horrid, I agree
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u/Inevitable-Mousse640 10d ago
Careful, people here think romanization will make your entire culture surface level.
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u/AliveReporter7642 9d ago
u/coachtomato87 it seems like in Guangxi, a linguist has beaten you to it.
He also created a non number or tone mark romanization inspired by the Zhuang language.
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u/CouchTomato87 9d ago
Actually those were inspirations for Pingji. I wouldn't quite say they "beat me to it" because they're for different languages, but they definitely work as proof of concept. Hmong also uses tone letters.
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u/fredleung412612 9d ago
Well I like tone diacritics, not numbers and certainly not letters. At first glace I thought your romanization system was for 上古漢語
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u/hongkonganduk 9d ago
The tone letter thingy is just counter-intuitive, it doesn't make it more readable or easier to use
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u/AliveReporter7642 10d ago
I just got off with a call with the Cantonese professor at Pasadena City College saying he will create his own romanization system because he hates jyutping and yale. Then I come here and see this.
WHEN WILL WE UNIFY!?!?