Re: Is modern Vietnamese adaptable to represent tonal languages?

John Cowan wrote:

> What's really challenging is to come up with a tonal spelling for
> Cantonese. After a lot of work, I finally came up with a satisfying
> tonal spelling for Mandarin that doesn't deviate too far from HYPY.
> Westerners who knew Chinese characterized it as "readable but ugly" --
> people always call spelling reforms "ugly", AFAIK. (Yes, I know about
> Gwoyeu Romatzyh, and a more unsystematic and messy torturing of the
> conventions of Latin script I can scarcely imagine.)

You mean tone letters as in romanized Hmong and other SEA languages? I
think Smalley or someone in one of his edited volumes says the speakers
like tone letters, because they can be typed easily and they don't look
alien.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...