Re: writing Chinese dialects

From: vunzndi@vfemail.net
Date: Fri Jan 26 2007 - 02:35:14 CST

  • Next message: Karl Pentzlin: "Fraktur, ligatures, ZWJ and ZWNJ (was: Re: ZWJ, ZWNJ and VS in Latin and other Greek-derived scripts)"

    Semantic Shift:-
    In Cantonese Է is read "hek fan" and but people usually say "sik
    fan" written ʳ. There is a change of both usage and meaning between
    Cantonese and Madarin here. Pinghua speaks say "hek fan" and so use
    the character Է. Mandarin usage ʳƷ.

    Phonetic Loans:-
    In Cantonese one also sees things like "׼" "No Parking!"
    (Literally " Not permitted to 'pak' vechile" ) where 'pak'
    approximates to the pronunciation of 'park'. Here the pronunciation
    of is borrowed.

    Is the use of ʳ and in Minnan based one any of the above mechanisms
    is it like writing "I could a " (I could eat a horse) where the
    charcter is used is used solely for it's meaning -- what one might
    call an ideographic loan.

    John Knightly

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