Talk:Jyutping

6-tone or 9-tone?

This article has only listed 6 Cantonese tones in the list.  However, in reality, the "1" here should be separated into 1 and 7, "3" to 3 and 8, "6" to 6 and 9, according to the IPA system for standard cantonese.  Deryck C. 06:31:30, 2005-09-03 (UTC)

Is the so-called IPA system from a dictionary? :-) — Instantnood 10:59, September 3, 2005 (UTC)

Of course.  Deryck C. 11:12:06, 2005-09-03 (UTC)

For details of Jyutping see the LSHK website [1] (section 5).  Many dictionary called their slight-revised standard IPA.  I've heard that in real IPA tones are marked by contour, like 55 for the high level tone, 13 for the low rising tone.  :-) — Instantnood 11:29, September 3, 2005 (UTC)

But I'm still confused about the 6 v. 9 stuff.  Deryck C. 09:15:51, 2005-09-04 (UTC)

The most accurate way is to say: "9 tones in 6 distinct tone contours", since tone contours is only a part of tone, ant the coda -p, -t, -k in Cantonese will affect the short falling cadence (頓挫性) in the tone.  There's more detailed info about this concpet in the zh version.  The LSHK website just give the simplest examples, but not detail definations.  Syaoranli 06:34, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

The tone table is very confusing as it doesn't show the actual tones as defined for the Jyutping system as shown on the LSHK website.  Remember this is not an article about Cantonese romanization in general but about Jyutping.  The table should be changed to show the 6 tones of Jyutping.  Then you can still say that the 6 tones are a simplifcation and show the table with 9 tones.

I've changed the paragraph a bit to cater for this difference.  --Deryck C. 05:43, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

In a Cantonese romanization tone table, why are the Chinese tone names in Mandarin Pinyin? Micro01 (talk) 17:06, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

The '9-tone' was made before taking oral Cantonese pronunciations were taken into account. Syllables with coda can be altered in oral pronunciations, making the '9-tone' system unable to record the changes. Some of such changes were discovered in Hong Kong Cantonese (for examples see Diminutive Sound Changes in the Yue Dialects: Typology and Historical Origins, page 305). --128.100.220.37 (talk) 22:39, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Don't look at me… I have trouble remembering my ATM PIN. – AndyFielding (talk) 19:40, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

Distinction between jyu- and yu-

I have not read the article, but is there a distinction between initial yu- and jyu-? I'm asking because Yale seems not to distinguish between the two, and the article Cantonese (linguistics) gives Jyut6 jyu5 instead of the Jyutping article's jyut yu.  Do 粵 and 語 really begin with different sounds, 粵 /jyːt/ vs. 語 /yː/?  If so, why doesn't Yale write yu- for /yː-/ and yyu- for /jyː-/?  Wikipeditor 06:40, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

The IPA /y/ is represented by 'yu' in Jyutping, while the IPA /j/ is represented by 'j' in Jyutping.  Therefore, 'jyu' is the correct jyutping representation.  --Deryck C. 08:20, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

I think it was an extremely bad choice for the creators of the Jyutping system to have selected "J" to represent the "Y" sound, as it invariably leads people not familiar with this system to pronounce it as a "J." In German or Swedish people know to pronounce "J" as "Y" but it seems inexcusable for the creators of this system to have built such confusion into their system by making such a poor selection.  For this reason I don't favor Jyutping as the standard for Wikipedia.  Badagnani 04:55, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Just because it's not created for Americans, it doesn't mean it's bad.  Chinese Mandarin pinyin has a lot of consonants and vowels (q, r, zh, i in 'shi', u in 'yu', etc.) that might be misleading for English speakers, so why not protest against pinyin? Jyutping is alright.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.24.43.52 (talk) 06:40, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

It's not just "Americans", most of the english-speaking world pronounces j as j. The Germans and Swedes are the exception, not the rule. Jyutping is just about as dumb as Wade-Giles ... okay, not *that* dumb, but pretty dumb. And now someone just *has* to stick it all over the place in wikipedia, ridiculous. It's enough to make you cry.203.160.80.114 (talk) 16:38, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Writing y as j is how Latin did it (well actually first it used i but then a new letter was created). The eastern romantic languages underwent a shift from /j/ to /ʒ/, and so french brought their spelling to english, thus we read <j> as /dʒ/. It's also the _de facto_ standard for Cantonese LATINization. Just because it's not designed for English speakers doesn't make it bad. JGHFunRun (talk) 20:39, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

The pitch contour of the fourth tone (Joeng4 Ping4 - 陽平)

According to the book Cantonese: A Comprehensive Grammar, published by Routledge, the pitch contour of the fourth one is either 21 or 11, whilst the article wrongly lists 22 / 21 as the alternatives, which, as for the contour 22, would merge the fourth with sixth tone.

As a side note, according to the same source the high rising second tone has both 35/25 contours, and the low rising fifth tone presents both 13/23.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 187.13.182.135 (talk) 16:37, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Link Safety

"Simplified phonetic? (粵語簡拼輸入法)" http://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/free.ys168.com - "This site has a poor reputation." — Preceding unsigned comment added by N6EpBa7Q (talk • contribs) 2011-04-23T07:52:16‎

• Link is dead, removed. Deryck C. 23:19, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Finals

Suggest merging the oe /œː/ row and the eo /ɵ/ row. Would save space, be easier to read, and follow phonemic logic. Howard McCay (talk) 06:56, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Makes sense to me too, merged. Deryck C. 23:19, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

This edit to Jyutping

The Cantonese phonology page is severely screwed up then; the vowel in 鬆 is not /o/ and 開 does not end in /y/... —suzukaze (t・c) 11:16, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

@Suzukaze-c: See these two links: [2] [3].

1. In the first link, the short front and back vowels are mid vowels that overlap in frequency with the long mid vowels (hence /o/ and not /ʊ/). The difference in height is not as drastic. Also, see Bauer and Benedict's book "Modern Cantonese Phonology" page 46-47 here: [4] where the transcription is similarly mid (albeit with diphthongal quality but Bauer has changed his transcriptions as can be seen here: [5]).
2. The second link shows that all diphthongs with a rounded first component has a rounded second component, hence /y/.

The above links can be seen cited on the cantonese phonology page. Do get back to me. Cheers.--Officer781 (talk) 12:26, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

@Officer781: I will be frank and say that those articles you linked to are too technical for me. However, I invite you to browse

1. this list of finals, which includes Jyutping (粵拼) and IPA (國際音標) transcription,
2. this second finals chart, which links to possible syllables featuring that final, as well as audio recordings for the syllables (feel free to compare -oi [ɔːi] and -eoi [ɵy] for yourself...)

—suzukaze (t・c) 04:09, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

@Suzukaze-c: Yes it is a convention that they are transcribed that way. However, in phonology circles that has been changed because formant recordings show that the vowel in "ik" is hardly different from "ei" and the vowel in "uk" is hardly different from "ou". As for the diphthong, yes Lee and Zee noted that, it is still somewhat rounded, although i-like. Nonetheless, if you look at the frequencies it matches the front rounded vowel more (I agree "oi" and "ui" are marginal cases yes. By experience it is closer to i but the sound recording machines prefer y), and hence is transcribed as rounded. I will return this page transcriptions according to the phonology normally used for jyutping although the phonology page which deals with rigorous phones should use the data.--Officer781 (talk) 06:42, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

Asterisk between tone numbers

What does it mean when, for instance in Gai lan (gaai3 laan4*2), 4*2 follows a syllable? Is it pronounced with tone 4, tone 2, or something else? The page does not discuss this. — Eru·tuon 20:52, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

It refers to changed tone (not tone sandhi), where the last syllable is pronounced with tone 2, but was originally some other tone (in this case 蘭 would have been tone 4 in other contexts). This asterisk notation is not a feature of standard Jyutping, but has become a useful method for displaying changed tone. Michael Ly (talk) 12:16, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

Relocate Cantonese phonetic IME section into separate page

This page should have been about a particular Cantonese Romanization scheme, as is the case for the Chinese wiki counterparts. In any case, there are already a separate Cantonese IME page for the Chinese wiki, and the separation would make it easier to document future Cantonese IMEs that support different types of Cantonese Romanization instead of Jyutping. --128.100.220.37 (talk) 22:48, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

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Wrong usage of <sup> and 7, 8, 9 tones

Per https://www.lshk.org/jyutping:

It has come to our attention that the Jyutping tone numbers (1-6) are displayed as superscript or subscript in some materials. We would like to emphasise that the tone numbers should be represented as ASCII numerals. Using superscript or subscript styling or markup (such as or CSS classes) is also going to render the tone less legible, and this practice is not recommended. We have no objection to using bold, italic or text colour to display the letters and the tone number separately.

The source also does not list separate tones for the entering tones, so the article should be updated to reflect the correct standard. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wpi31 (talk • contribs) 08:01, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

Upper- and lowercase

On pages like the ones from Meng Haoran, Mao Zedong or Sammo Hung it seems a hyphen is used very often in the cantonese Jyutping, as it's used in Wade-Giles. But even without hyphenated, it seems if the given name has two syllables, the second is not capitalized. Means not Wong Fei Hung but Wong Fei hung instead. Which makes sense since otherwise people in the west could think Hung is a seperate name. This is not the case with Fei-hung or Fei hung. I changed the name Maang6 Hou6 Jin4 to Maang6 Hou6 jin4. Of course it can be changed again if it should be wrong. Best regards. --Alleingänger (talk) 19:38, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Cloaked in mystery till the '90s?

In 2018, [Jyutping] was updated to include the -a and -oet finals, to reflect syllables recognized as part of Cantonese phonology in 1997.…"

It took that long for these sounds to be recognized? I realize Cantonese is a very complex language, but I assumed that native speakers understood what everything meant. How can parts of an active language this ancient remain obscure to scholars till the 1990s? Could it be a reflection of the exotic mystery that seems present in many Eastern cultures? Okay, I'm probably reading more romance into it than necessary, but still. – AndyFielding (talk) 19:38, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

@Andy - give a child a crayon and he'll write on the walls. 9/10ths of this 'learned' stuff about china is hooey. I'd be wiling to bet that most of the people editing this couldn't buy a bowl of noodles in mongkok. No, the people who live in hong kong are nowhere *near* this exacting or pedantic about their speech. Not even close. 203.160.80.114 (talk) 16:46, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

This article is definitely a bit of an original-research spectacular at the moment. It's on my list of articles to bring up to snuff at some point—I suppose that list includes "every article about the Chinese language or writing system". Remsense诉 16:51, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

This is probably the marginal status of this -oet4 e.g. in 嗝; due to its onomatopoeic nature, it 'violates' the usual phonotactic rules of Cantonese (whereas the final -eot /ɵt̚/ as in 聿 is more regular). Thus it was only accepted as a licit Cantonese syllable in the late 90s. The same applies to the marginal status of the short -a-. Also, one must remember language change occurs in Cantonese, and that what was common before can be lost (see the case of apical /ɨ/ in the 19th century Cantonese of certain districts of Guangzhou), and what was marginal can become mainstream. Michael Ly (talk) 13:08, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

Consonants confusing

The chart says y is /y/, and j is /j/. Are these accurate IPA-wise? Any issues here? --Nidaana (talk) 11:20, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

The chart correctly states that yu is IPA /yː/, as well as that j is IPA /j/. This use of j for /j/ is very distinctive of Jyutping, and follows German and many Eastern European Roman scripts too, but is in contrast to English /d͡ʒ/, Hanyu Pinyin /t͡ɕ/, and Cantonese Yale's use /t͡s/ of j. It does mean that a clear distinction between the IPA consonant /j/ and IPA vowel /y(ː)/ is reflected in the romanisation. -- Michael Ly (talk) 11:28, 25 April 2023 (UTC)