Re: CJKV ideographic, was Re: Perception that Unicode is 16-bit

From: akerbeltz.alba (akerbeltz.alba@virgin.net)
Date: Wed Feb 28 2001 - 05:16:08 EST


Tomasek idatzi zuen:

> More importantly, Han \u6f22 (Cant. Hon) really isn't an ethnonym used
> by the Cantonese and other southern Chinese; rather, Tang \u5510 (Cant.
> Tong) is used instead, e.g., tangcan \u5510\u9910 'Chinese cuisine' (Cant.
> tongchaan), tanghua \u5510\u8a71 'Chinese (spoken) language' (Cant.
> tongwa), tangren \u5510\u4eba 'Chinese person' (Cant. tongyan), tangrenjie
> \u5510\u4eba\u8857 'Chinatown' (Cant. tongyangaai), tangshan \u5510\u5c71
> 'China (lit. "Tang mountain")' (Cant. tongsaan), etc. Some of these terms
> are kind of old-fashioned or rustic, though.

True, but it would be a bit unfair, since other groups use the same
ethnonym. If we're looking for a high register term for Cantonese
ideographs, how about 'YuhtJih' [7cb5\u5b57 ] (Mand. Yuèzi)?

> I think I heard of a tangzi \u5510\u5b57 (Cant. tongji) term once; this
> would be most ideal to make use of, if one wanted to invent new English
> terminology. But that still leaves the problem of distinguishing the
> "dialect" characters of other southern Chinese languages from the
> mainstream characters, and the Cantonese "dialectal" characters.
>
> Basically just linguistic transcription, like the recently-created Hong
> Kong-indigenous Jyutping \u7cb5\u62fc (Mand. Yuepin) system. Unlike some
> other Chinese languages, romanization (usu. introduced by missionaries)
> didn't catch on, and the dominant (and conservative) trend is to write in
> Han characters, even if that means having to create new ones, hijacking
> existing ones, or resurrecting old ones.

Just for the sake of our sanity ; ) with the number of homophones we have,
writing entirely in romanization is ... an interesting pasttime. Believe me,
I've tried ... and the Yale English Cantonese dictionary still drives me
nuts for not having characters ...
So apart from dictionaries you find romanization (a myriad of varieties) for
the transcription of names and shops, place names ... and that's about it I
would think. I believe 'status' comes into this a lot - educated people
"know how to write" ...
Michael



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