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55-436: Some enthusiasts employ Yale romanisation to explore writing Cantonese as an alphabetic language . Modern Cantonese has up to seven phonemic tones. Cantonese Yale represents these tones using a combination of diacritics and the letter h . Traditional Chinese linguistics treats the tones in syllables ending with a stop consonant as separate " entering tones ". Cantonese Yale follows modern linguistic conventions in treating these

110-570: A glottal stop . Separating the checked tone allows -p , -t , and -k to be treated as allophones of -m , -n , and -ng , respectively, since they are in complementary distribution . Stops appear only in the checked tone, and nasals appear only in the other tones. Because of the origin of tone in Chinese, the number of tones found in such syllables is smaller than the number of tones in other syllables. Chinese phonetics have traditionally counted them separately. Final voiceless stops and therefore

165-576: A character historically had a checked tone in Middle Chinese based on its current reading in Modern Standard Mandarin. However, there are many characters, such as 切 , 塔 , 六 , 刻 and 骨 which do not satisfy any of these conditions at all. or ㄖ (r) Most varieties of Wu Chinese preserve the entering tone. However, no contemporary Wu varieties preserve the /p/ , /t/ or /k/ distinction, but instead merges them all into

220-448: A cluster of two consonants: /ŋθ/ (although it may be pronounced /ŋkθ/ instead, as ⟨ng⟩ followed by a voiceless consonant in the same syllable often does); lights with a silent digraph ⟨gh⟩ followed by a cluster ⟨t⟩ , ⟨s⟩ : /ts/ ; and compound words such as sightscreen /ˈsaɪtskriːn/ or catchphrase /ˈkætʃfreɪz/ . Not all consonant clusters are distributed equally among

275-412: A falling-rising contour, making it unequivocally a phonemic tone in modern linguistics. The pitch of the entering tones are divided into two registers, depending on the initials: Many terms with grammatical functions also undergo sporadic evolution and gain a checked tone. This process can be considered a form of lenition , and is sometimes considered a form of glottalization . Romanization used

330-459: A glottal stop /ʔ/ . For example, in Shanghainese , the three lexemes 濕／湿 ; 'wet', 失 ; 'lose', 塞 ; 'block', historically ending in /p/ , /t/ and /k/ , all end in a glottal stop, and are pronounced seq /səʔ⁵⁵/ . In some modern Wu varieties such as Wenzhounese , even the glottal stop has disappeared, and the entering tone is preserved as separate tone, with

385-414: A post-coda sibilant, "s". Clusters of -ps, -ts, -ks, were then formed at the end of syllables. These clusters eventually collapsed into "-ts" or "-s", before disappearing altogether, leaving elements of diphthongisation in more modern varieties. Old Vietnamese also had a rich inventory of initial clusters, but these were slowly merged with plain initials during Middle Vietnamese, and some have developed into

440-602: A row per syllable. Finnish has initial consonant clusters natively only on South-Western dialects and on foreign loans, and only clusters of three inside the word are allowed. Most spoken languages and dialects, however, are more permissive. In Burmese , consonant clusters of only up to three consonants (the initial and two medials—two written forms of /-j-/ , /-w-/ ) at the initial onset are allowed in writing and only two (the initial and one medial) are pronounced; these clusters are restricted to certain letters. Some Burmese dialects allow for clusters of up to four consonants (with

495-422: A split in sandhi behavior between two separate upper/dark entering 陰入 tones. This is believed to be a reflex of an earlier stage in its development, where final /k/ was distinguished from final /ʔ/. In the related Fuqing dialect , a proportion of entering tone lexemes have lost their glottal stop and have merged into the phonetically equivalent tones: This merger can also affect sandhi environments, but there

550-551: A stop did not fit the three intonations and was categorised as the "entering tone" ( 入聲 ), thus forming the four-tone system. The use of this system flourished in the Sui and Tang dynasties (7th–10th centuries), during which the Qieyun ( Chinese : 切韻 ) rime dictionary was written. Note that modern linguistic descriptions of Middle Chinese often refer to the level, rising and departing tones as tones 1, 2 and 3, respectively. By

605-407: Is Wugniu . This phenomenon can also be seen in many pronouns, such as Shanghainese a q -la ( 阿拉 , "we") and Yuyaonese ⁸ge q -la q ₈ ( 搿辣 , "they"). In general, Cantonese preserves the Middle Chinese finals intact, including the differentiation between -p, -t and -k final consonants. Standard Cantonese does not use any glottal stops as final consonants. There are a few isolated cases where

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660-543: Is logographic , rather than phonetic. From a phonetic perspective, the prototypical entering tone is simply a syllable ending with a voiceless stop that has no audible release : [p̚], [t̚], [k̚] , and/or a glottal stop [ʔ̚] depending on the language variety. Middle Chinese has only the first three. It is customarily called a tone regardless of whether a tonal distinction is possible in such syllables. In languages such as Early Middle Chinese and most varieties of Wu , such syllables do not have contrastive tones (i.e.

715-417: Is a root meaning 'to shine, to be bright' and is also present in ⟨glee⟩ , ⟨gleam⟩ , and ⟨glade⟩ . Consonant clusters can also originate from assimilation of a consonant with a vowel. In many Slavic languages, the combination mji, mje, mja etc. regularly gave mlji, mlje, mlja etc. Compare Russian zemlyá , which had this change, with Polish ziemia , which lacks

770-952: Is almost as strict, but allows a sequence of a nasal consonant plus another consonant, as in Honshū [hoꜜɰ̃ɕɯː] (the name of the largest island of Japan). (Palatalized consonants, such as [kʲ] in Tōkyō [toːkʲoː] , are single consonants.) It also permits a syllable to end in a consonant as long as the next syllable begins with the same consonant. Standard Arabic forbids initial consonant clusters and more than two consecutive consonants in other positions, as do most other Semitic languages , although Modern Israeli Hebrew permits initial two-consonant clusters (e.g. pkak "cap"; dlaat "pumpkin"), and Moroccan Arabic , under Berber influence, allows strings of several consonants. Like most Mon–Khmer languages , Khmer permits only initial consonant clusters with up to three consonants in

825-505: Is analysed as CCCCCCCCVC. Many Slavic languages may manifest almost as formidable numbers of consecutive consonants, such as in the Czech tongue twister Strč prst skrz krk ( pronounced [str̩tʃ pr̩st skr̩s kr̩k] ), meaning 'stick a finger through the neck', the Slovak words štvrť /ʃtvr̩c/ ("quarter"), and žblnknutie /ʒbl̩ŋknucɪɛ̯/ ("clunk"; "flop"), and

880-528: Is possible by examining the historical kana used in spelling a word, which has also aided scholars in reconstructing historical Chinese pronunciation. Korean keeps the -k and -p endings while the -t ending is represented as -l ( tapped -r- , [ ɾ ] , if intervocalic) as Sino-Korean derives from a northern variety of Late Middle Chinese where final -t had weakened to [ r ] . Vietnamese preserves all endings /p/ , /t/ and /k/ (spelt -c ). Additionally, after

935-407: Is pronounced without the /k/ . Final clusters of four consonants, as in angsts in other dialects ( /ˈæŋsts/ ), twelfths /ˈtwɛlfθs/ , sixths /ˈsɪksθs/ , bursts /ˈbɜːrsts/ (in rhotic accents ) and glimpsed /ˈɡlɪmpst/ , are more common. Within compound words, clusters of five consonants or more are possible (if cross-syllabic clusters are accepted), as in handspring /ˈhændsprɪŋ/ and in

990-601: Is the option to use the sandhi pattern of the former checked tone while still eliminating the final glottal stop. Additionally in Fuqingnese, sandhi environments where the light entering 陽入 tone is non-final cause the glottal stop to weaken and in some tones lost, and where the tone changes to a low sandhi tone /˨˩/ , the glottal stop is completely lost. The dark entering 陰入 tone on the other hand retains its glottal stop in sandhi environments. Many Chinese words were borrowed into Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese during

1045-422: The ⟨lj⟩ and ⟨nj⟩ are digraphs representing single consonants: [ʎ] and [ɲ] , respectively. In Dutch , clusters of six or even seven consonants are possible (e.g. angstschreeuw ("a scream of fear"), slechtstschrijvend ("writing the worst") and zachtstschrijdend ("treading the most softly")). Some Salishan languages exhibit long words with no vowels at all, such as

1100-555: The Nuxálk word /xɬpʼχʷɬtʰɬpʰɬːskʷʰt͡sʼ/ : he had had in his possession a bunchberry plant . It is extremely difficult to accurately classify which of these consonants may be acting as the syllable nucleus, and these languages challenge classical notions of exactly what constitutes a syllable . The same problem is encountered in the Northern Berber languages . There has been a trend to reduce and simplify consonant clusters in

1155-633: The Slovene word skrbstvo /skrbstʋo/ ("welfare"). However, the liquid consonants /r/ and /l/ can form syllable nuclei in West and South Slavic languages and behave phonologically as vowels in this case. An example of a true initial cluster is the Polish word wszczniesz ( /fʂt͡ʂɲɛʂ/ ("you will initiate"). In the Serbo-Croatian word opskrbljivanje /ɔpskr̩bʎiʋaɲɛ/ ("victualling")

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1210-675: The "short entering tone"). Such clusters were later reduced to /s/, which, in turn, became /h/ and ultimately "departing tone" in Middle Chinese. The first Chinese philologists began to describe the phonology of Chinese during the Early Middle Chinese period (specifically, during the Northern and Southern Dynasties , between 400 and 600 AD), under the influence of Buddhism and the Sanskrit language that arrived along with it. There were several unsuccessful attempts to classify

1265-1105: The Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area , such as Chinese and Vietnamese . Old Chinese was known to contain additional medials such as /r/ and/or /l/ , which yielded retroflexion in Middle Chinese and today's Mandarin Chinese . The word 江 , read /tɕiɑŋ˥/ in Mandarin and /kɔːŋ˥⁻˥˧/ in Cantonese , is reconstructed as *klong or *krung in Old Chinese by Sinologists like Zhengzhang Shangfang , William H. Baxter , and Laurent Sagart . Additionally, initial clusters such as "tk" and "sn" were analysed in recent reconstructions of Old Chinese, and some were developed as palatalised sibilants . Similarly, in Thai , words with initial consonant clusters are commonly reduced in colloquial speech to pronounce only

1320-417: The Middle Chinese period so they preserve the entering tone to varying degrees. Because Japanese does not allow a syllable to end with a consonant except ん n , the endings -k , -p , -t were rendered as separate syllables -ku or -ki , -pu , and -ti (Modern -chi ) or -tu (Modern -tsu ) respectively. Later phonological changes further altered some of the endings: Recovering the original ending

1375-471: The SSP such as Proto-Indo-European /st/ and /spl/ (which many of its descendants have, including English). Certain consonants are more or less likely to appear in consonant clusters, especially in certain positions. The Tsou language of Taiwan has initial clusters such as /tf/ , which doesn't violate the SSP, but nonetheless is unusual in having the labio-dental /f/ in the second position. The cluster /mx/

1430-456: The Yorkshire place-name of Hampsthwaite /hæmpsθweɪt/ . It is important to distinguish clusters and digraphs . Clusters are made of two or more consonant sounds , while a digraph is a group of two consonant letters standing for a single sound. For example, in the word ship , the two letters of the digraph ⟨sh⟩ together represent the single consonant [ʃ] . Conversely,

1485-776: The addition of the /-l-/ medial, which can combine with the above-mentioned medials). At the other end of the scale, the Kartvelian languages of Georgia are drastically more permissive of consonant clustering. Clusters in Georgian of four, five or six consonants are not unusual—for instance, /brtʼqʼɛli/ ( flat ), /mt͡sʼvrtnɛli/ ( trainer ) and /prt͡skvna/ ( peeling )—and if grammatical affixes are used, it allows an eight-consonant cluster: /ɡvbrdɣvnis/ ( he's plucking us ), /gvprt͡skvni/ ( you peel us ). Consonants cannot appear as syllable nuclei in Georgian, so this syllable

1540-436: The change, both from Proto-Balto-Slavic *źemē. See Proto-Slavic language and History of Proto-Slavic for more information about this change. All languages differ in syllable structure and cluster template. A loanword from Adyghe in the extinct Ubykh language , psta ('to well up'), violates Ubykh's limit of two initial consonants. The English words sphere /ˈsfɪər/ and sphinx /ˈsfɪŋks/ , Greek loanwords, break

1595-438: The character 葛 splitting on semantic grounds (tone 3 when it is used as a component of a name, mostly tone 2 otherwise). Similarly, the three characters 胳阁各 (MC /kak/ ) are now pronounced gē gé gè . The four characters 鸽蛤颌合 (MC /kop/ ) are now pronounced gē gé gé gě . In those cases, the two sets of characters are significant in that each member of the same set has the same phonetic component , suggesting that

1650-474: The checked "tones" have disappeared from most Mandarin dialects , spoken in northern and southwestern China, but have been preserved in southeastern Chinese branches like Yue , Min , and Hakka . Tones are an indispensable part of Chinese literature, as characters in poetry and prose were chosen according to tones and rhymes for their euphony . This use of language helps reconstructing Old Chinese and Middle Chinese pronunciations since Chinese writing system

1705-595: The dark-entering tone into two, with a higher tone for short vowels and a lower tone for long vowels. As a result, Cantonese now has three entering tones: Some variants of Yue Chinese , notably including that of Bobai County ( Chinese : 博白 ; pinyin : Bóbái ) in Guangxi and Yangjiang ( simplified Chinese : 阳江 ; traditional Chinese : 陽江 ; pinyin : Yángjiāng ; Cantonese Yale : Yèuhnggōng ) in Guangdong , have four entering tones:

Yale romanization of Cantonese - Misplaced Pages Continue

1760-410: The dictionary by Kwan Choi Wah among the works in the list at bottom below.) Entering tone A checked tone , commonly known by the Chinese calque entering tone , is one of the four syllable types in the phonology of Middle Chinese . Although usually translated as "tone", a checked tone is not a tone in the phonetic sense but rather a type of syllable that ends in a stop consonant or

1815-452: The education field it is variously called a consonant cluster or a consonant blend . Some linguists argue that the term can be properly applied only to those consonant clusters that occur within one syllable . Others claim that the concept is more useful when it includes consonant sequences across syllable boundaries. According to the former definition, the longest consonant clusters in the word extra would be /ks/ and /tr/ , whereas

1870-645: The entering tone, and syllables that had the tone have been distributed into the four modern tonal categories, depending on their initial consonants. The Beijing dialect that forms the basis of Standard Mandarin redistributed syllables beginning with originally unvoiced consonants across the four tones in a completely random pattern. For example, the three characters 积脊迹 , all pronounced /tsjek/ in Middle Chinese (William Baxter's reconstruction), are now pronounced jī jǐ jì , with tones 1, 3 and 4 respectively. The two characters 割／葛 , both pronounced /kat/ , are now pronounced gē and gé/gě respectively, with

1925-524: The final consonant has changed as a result of final dissimilation , but they remain in the checked tone. Like most other Chinese variants, Cantonese has changed initial voiced stops, affricates and fricatives of Middle Chinese to their voiceless counterparts. To compensate for losing that difference, Cantonese has split each Middle Chinese tones into two, one for Middle Chinese voiced initial consonants ( light ) and one for Middle Chinese voiceless initial consonants ( dark ). In addition, Cantonese has split

1980-530: The final stop is voiced. The voiceless stops that typify the entering tone date back to the Proto-Sino-Tibetan , the parent language of Chinese as well as the Tibeto-Burman languages . In addition, Old Chinese is commonly thought to have syllables ending in clusters /ps/ , /ts/ , and /ks/ (sometimes called the "long entering tone" while syllables ending in /p/ , /t/ and /k/ are

2035-472: The initial consonant, such as the pronunciation of the word ครับ reducing from /kʰrap̚˦˥/ to /kʰap̚˦˥/ . Another element of consonant clusters in Old Chinese was analysed in coda and post-coda position. Some "departing tone" syllables have cognates in the "entering tone" syllables, which feature a -p, -t, -k in Middle Chinese and Southern Chinese varieties. The departing tone was analysed to feature

2090-608: The language. Other factors that affect clusters when loaned to other languages include speech rate, articulatory factors, and speech perceptivity. Bayley has added that social factors such as age, gender, and geographical locations of speakers can determine clusters when they are loaned crosslinguistically. In English , the longest possible initial cluster is three consonants, as in split /ˈsplɪt/ , strudel /ˈstruːdəl/ , strengths /ˈstrɛŋkθs/ , and "squirrel" /ˈskwɪrəl/ , all beginning with /s/ or /ʃ/ , containing /p/ , /t/ , or /k/ , and ending with /l/ , /r/ , or /w/ ;

2145-536: The languages of the world. Consonant clusters have a tendency to fall under patterns such as the sonority sequencing principle (SSP); the closer a consonant in a cluster is to the syllable's vowel, the more sonorous the consonant is. Among the most common types of clusters are initial stop- liquid sequences, such as in Thai (e.g. /pʰl/ , /tr/ , and /kl/ ). Other common ones include initial stop-approximant (e.g. Thai /kw/ ) and initial fricative-liquid (e.g. English /sl/ ) sequences. More rare are sequences which defy

2200-463: The latter allows /kstr/ , which is phonetically [kst̠ɹ̠̊˔ʷ] in some accents. Each language has an associated set of phonotactic constraints . Languages' phonotactics differ as to what consonant clusters they permit. Many languages are more restrictive than English in terms of consonant clusters, and some forbid consonant clusters entirely. For example, Hawaiian , like most Malayo-Polynesian languages, forbid consonant clusters entirely. Japanese

2255-514: The letter ⟨x⟩ can produce the consonant clusters /ks/ (annex), /gz/ (exist), /kʃ/ (sexual), or /gʒ/ (some pronunciations of "luxury"). It is worth noting that ⟨x⟩ often produces sounds in two different syllables (following the general principle of saturating the subsequent syllable before assigning sounds to the preceding syllable). Also note a combination digraph and cluster as seen in length with two digraphs ⟨ng⟩ , ⟨th⟩ representing

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2310-407: The longest possible final cluster is five consonants, as in angsts ( /ˈæŋksts/ ), though this is rare (perhaps owing to being derived from a recent German loanword ). However, the /k/ in angsts may also be considered epenthetic ; for many speakers , nasal-sibilant sequences in the coda require insertion of a voiceless stop homorganic to the nasal. For speakers without this feature, the word

2365-492: The lower light tone is also differentiated according to vowel length, short vowels for upper light and long vowels for lower light. Thus in such varieties: Hakka preserves all Middle Chinese entering tones and is split into two registers. Meixian Hakka dialect often taken as the paradigm gives the following: Middle Chinese entering tone syllables ending in [k] whose vowel clusters have become front high vowels like [i] and [ɛ] shifts to syllables with [t] finals in some of

2420-508: The modern Hakka, as seen in the following table. Southern Min ( Minnan , including Taiwanese ) has two entering tones: A word may switch from one tone to the other by tone sandhi . Words with entering tones end with a glottal stop ([-ʔ]), [-p], [-t] or [-k] (all unaspirated). There are many words that have different finals in their literary and colloquial forms. Eastern Min , as exemplified by Fuzhounese , also has two entering tones: Within its complex tone sandhi laws, Fuzhounese has

2475-487: The palatal nasal. Some consonant clusters originate from the loss of a vowel in between two consonants, usually (but not always) due to vowel reduction caused by lack of stress. This is also the origin of most consonant clusters in English, some of which go back to Proto-Indo-European times. For example, ⟨glow⟩ comes from Proto-Germanic *glo-, which in turn comes from Proto-Indo-European *gʰel-ó, where *gʰel-

2530-428: The phonetic component of a character has little to do with the tone class that the character is assigned to. In other situations, however, the opposite appears to be the case. For example, the group 幅福蝠辐／腹复 of six homophones, all /pjuwk/ in Middle Chinese and divided into a group of four with one phonetic and a group of two with a different phonetic, splits so that the first group of four is all pronounced fú and

2585-644: The rule that two fricatives may not appear adjacently word-initially. Some English words, including thrash, three, throat, and throw, start with the voiceless dental fricative /θ/, the liquid /r/, or the /r/ cluster (/θ/+/r/). This cluster example in Proto-Germanic has a counterpart in which /θ/ was followed by /l/. In early North and West Germanic, the /l/ cluster disappeared. This suggests that clusters are affected as words are loaned to other languages. The examples show that every language has syllable preference based on syllable structure and segment harmony of

2640-514: The same as the high-flat, mid-flat and low-flat tones, respectively. Sample transcription of one of the 300 Tang Poems by Meng Haoran : Note concerning the jì in the last line of the poem that it is pronounced as high flat here because immediately followed by a tone that begins high and yet that this Romanization's conventions mark it nonetheless as high falling, and the user then needs to remember this rule of tone-sandhi. (Interested readers can confirm this convention by looking at for instance

2695-463: The second group of two is pronounced fù . Situations like this may result from the fact that only one of the characters in each group normally occurs in speech with an identifiable tone, and as a result, a " literary pronunciation " of the other characters was constructed based on the phonetic element of that character. The chart below summarizes the distribution in the different dialects. There are several conditions that can be used to determine if

2750-409: The syllable tone should be sắc or nặng depends on the original Middle Chinese syllable's initial consonant voicing . Consonant cluster In linguistics , a consonant cluster , consonant sequence or consonant compound , is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel . In English, for example, the groups /spl/ and /ts/ are consonant clusters in the word splits . In

2805-562: The time of the Mongol invasion (the Yuan dynasty , 1279–1368), the former final stops had been reduced to a glottal stop /ʔ/ in Old Mandarin . The Zhongyuan Yinyun ( 中原音韻 ), a rime book of 1324, already shows signs of glottal stop disappearing and the modern Mandarin tone system emerging in its place. The precise time at which the loss occurred is unknown though it was likely gone by

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2860-576: The time of the Qing Dynasty , in the 17th century. ( Nanjing dialect ) ( Ningbo dialect ) 怒髮衝冠，憑欄處，瀟瀟雨 歇 } [xĭɐt] ； 抬望眼，仰天長嘯，壯懷激 烈 [lĭɛt] 。 三十功名塵與土，八千里路雲和 月 [ŋĭwɐt] ； 莫等閒，白了少年頭，空悲 切 [ʦʰiet] 。 靖康恥，猶未 雪 [sĭuɛt] ； 臣子恨，何時 滅 [mĭɛt] 。 駕長車，踏破賀蘭山 缺 [kʰĭuɛt] ； 壯志飢餐胡虜肉，笑談渴飲匈奴 血 [xiwet] 。 待從頭，收拾舊山河，朝天 闕 [kʰĭwɐt] ！ The entering tone is extant in Jianghuai Mandarin and Minjiang Sichuanese . Other dialects have lost

2915-487: The tone or pitch of the syllable is entirely predictable) and are therefore phonologically toneless. In languages such as Cantonese or Hakka , a small number of tonal distinctions exist (typically 2), which historically developed as a substitute for the lost Middle Chinese initial voicing. Some Chinese varieties have innovated new final consonants from such historical syllables. A few dialects of Gan have [l] (from historical [t̚] ). In some dialects of Cantonese and Gan,

2970-483: The tones of Chinese before the establishment of the traditional four-tone description between 483 and 493. It is based on the Vedic theory of three intonations ( 聲明論 ). The middle intonation, udātta , maps to the "level tone" ( 平聲 ); the upwards intonation, svarita , to the "rising tone" ( 上聲 ); the downward intonation, anudātta , to the "departing tone" ( 去聲 ). The distinctive sound of syllables ending with

3025-399: The vowels ê or i , the ending - c changes to -ch , giving rise to -ich and -êch , and ach (pronounced /ajk/ ) also occurs for some words ending with -k . Only the sắc and nặng tones are allowed on checked tones. In Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary, those tones were split from the Middle Chinese "entering" tone in a similar fashion to Cantonese. Whether

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