Thread: Chinese Romanization

Ok so I stumbled across this romanization scheme - Gwoyeu Romatzyh...

Here's what I thought...While it seems like a very good idea, the spelling rules just seemed like they would take too long sit down and try and figure out / learn...however the idea of incorporating the tone into the spelling did seem like a very good idea and in about 5 minutes I came up with, what I think, is a much easier system.

It seems everyone knows Pinyin...right? okay, why not make use of that fact and just slightly alter it instead? that was my idea. So here's what I came up with...it's completely regular and is easily convertable from/to pinyin...


1st tone
*identical to pinyin (the only exception is the "

Sounds good, but people names and places will look so strange...
Beeijing, Shaynghaai....

It just looks strange cos that's not how it's always been done Beijing used to be Peking. What I do know is that Chinese romanization should always use some sort of tone marking, b/c that would make it a lot easier to learn at least in China. They have lots of signs that are printed in characters with pinyin underneath, but no tone marks. So if I wanna know how to pronounce it correctly, I have to look it up. If they used an orthography that incorporated the tone, it would make it easier for everyone, or at least for me

Maybe they should just add consonants to the ends of the syllables like old chinese had, except in the new version the consonant would be based on tone. (And they'd pronounce these new consonants too making standard chinese sound closer to cantonese)

Something like:
1st tone - mak
2nd tone - map
3rd tone - mas
4th tone - mat
5th tone - ma

of course things would be more interesting in syllables that already end in consonants like: lan, bang, mang...

it would work with the "n"s lank, lanp, lans, lant, lan...but i don't know about "ng"s maybe add it to the end with an "a" like this: bangak bangap bangas bangat bang

I mean, most chinese learn standard mandarin as a second language anyway...I say why not make it more different of course writing shi in the 4th tone would always make every english speaking person laugh...but... it'd still be fun...