Re: FW: Comments on draft-deng-chinese-names-03.txt

[Zhen Cao <[e-mail]>]

> 4.2.  One Syllable for One Chinese Character in Section 2.3
>
>  How about adding a description, something like "There are tens of
> thousands of Chinese characters.  Each Chinese character has its own
> meanings and is pronounced with one syllable." in Section 2.3?
>

Unfortunately, one character may be pronounced in different ways, but when
it is translated into English letters, the pronunciation has been
determined.


>
> The reason is that I guess readers are expected to have this knowledge
> (especially, the relationship between a Chinese character, a Chinese word
> and a syllable; e.g. each Chinese character represents a word, and each
> Chinese character is pronounced by one syllable with a tone), but
> non-Chinese people might not know of this.
>
> == > I will check Cao Zhen, come back to you later, thanks for your
> waiting.
>

I do not feel compelling to make the above change.  Because this document
does not intent to be theoretic textbook, it only intents to offer a
straightforward way of using and pronouncing Chines names.  For this goal,
this knowledge is not necessary.



> 4.4.  "Inflection" in Section 2.3
>
>
> So, how about explaining the Chinese tones by something like "Spoken
> Chinese also has tones (shifts in pitch) within a syllable.
>
> The four main tones of Chinese are first tone (high-level), second tone
> (rising), third tone (down then up), and fourth tone (falling)." ?
>

We do not need to rely on Wikipedia, which is sometimes not accurate as we
know.  We used "inflection" to mean the shifts in pitch.   I will find some
authentic references for this, not wiki.

If the first tone is denoted as 'high-level', I am concerned about if the
reader can get what it means, compared to 'no inflection' we used.  If we
do not reply on the textbook, which one do you prefer?  I personally favor
'no inflection'.

Thanks for your comments,

-CZ