Brian Beck:
> I am referring to the generally accepted standard Cantonese
>pronunciation based on the dialect of Gwangzhou. Many Cantonese
>dialects differ considerably from this standard. Standard Cantonese,
>as I said, has 9 basic tones:
Alright. But, I don't think the Cantonese are using nine tones here in
Winnipeg :) I've been using only around six or so and I still appear to be
understood. Nine tones just seems like overkill, is all. I also recall the
so-called "standard Canadian" pronunciation which makes me feel, well,
un-Canadian. Standard Canadians, whom I've been unable to find to this day,
pronounce "layed" as /lejd/ while I pronounce it /Le:d/ or maybe /LeId/ on a
good day (L = dark l). It would take a very special circumstance (like
castration) to make me pronounce it /lejd/. Who are these "standard" people
pronouncing these "standard" dialects? I think they're just the drinking
buddies of the linguists who propose these standards really :)
>In regard to luk/lok, the vowel is a high rounded back vowel, similar
>to standard English `look', not as rounded as that in German `Buch'.
>If you use the spelling `o' for this vowel, how do you distinguish
>between the words `luk', six, `lok', descend, `duk', read and `dok',
>measure? The second vowel in these pairs is lower and less rounded
>than the first. Both the Yale and the Barnett-Chao systems of
>Romanisation use `u' and `o' to distinguish these vowels. Sorry for
>getting off-topic.
Hmm, well I guess I don't distinguish them, but any confusion from that can
be unraveled by context anyway. Then again, I'm not a native Cantonese
speaker. Then again some more, I'm sure even native speakers confuse those
vowels, like is done in English between /sail/ and /sell/. Then again a
third time, there's a strange mix of everything in my town and the Cantonese
speakers here come mostly from Hong Kong and from Vietnam where perhaps
there is some deviation from your standard?
- gLeN
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