S. L. Wong (phonetic symbols)
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Wong Shik Ling Wong Shik-Ling (also known as S. L. Wong) (1908–1959) was a prominent scholar in Cantonese research. He is famous for his authoritative book, ''A Chinese Syllabary Pronounced According to the Dialect of Canton'' (), which is influential in Cant ...
(also known as S. L. Wong) published a scheme of phonetic symbols for
Cantonese Cantonese ( zh, t=廣東話, s=广东话, first=t, cy=Gwóngdūng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton) and its surrounding are ...
based on the
International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic transcription, phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standa ...
(IPA) in the book ''
A Chinese Syllabary Pronounced According to the Dialect of Canton ''A Chinese Syllabary Pronounced According to the Dialect of Canton'' () is a book written by Wong Shik-Ling () within a few years before being published in Hong Kong, 1941. It is one of the most influential books on the research of Cantonese pro ...
''. The scheme has been widely used in
Chinese dictionaries Chinese dictionaries date back over two millennia to the Han dynasty, which is a significantly longer lexicographical history than any other language. There are hundreds of dictionaries for the Chinese language, and this article discusses some of ...
published in
Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...
. The scheme, known as S. L. Wong system (), is a broad phonemic transcription system based on IPA and its analysis of Cantonese phonemes is grounded in the theories of Y. R. Chao. Other than the phonemic transcription system, Wong also derived a romanisation scheme published in the same book. See
S. L. Wong (romanisation) Wong Shik-Ling (also known as S. L. Wong) published a romanisation scheme accompanying a set of phonetic symbols for Cantonese based on International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) in the book ''A Chinese Syllabary Pronounced according to the Dialec ...
.


History

Before devising the system, Wong studied many phonetic transcription and romanisation systems, including Eitel's and other earlier schemes, for Cantonese. He found that many of them were not accurate enough for use. He researched Cantonese and published his results in the book in 1938.


Use

The system, with minor variations, has been adopted by some other Hong Kong Chinese dictionaries including 中文字典, Chinese Dictionary by 喬硯農 (Kiu Yin Nung), 中華新字典, Chung Hwa New Dictionary and 商務新字典, Commercial Press New Dictionary.
Hong Kong Education and Manpower Bureau The Education Bureau (EDB) is responsible for formulating and implementing education policies in Hong Kong. The bureau is headed by the Secretary for Education (Hong Kong), Secretary for Education and oversees agencies including University ...
formulates
Cantonese Pinyin Cantonese Pinyin (, also known as ) is a romanization system for Cantonese developed by the Rev. Yu Ping Chiu (余秉昭) in 1971, and subsequently modified by the Education Department (merged into the Education and Manpower Bureau since 2003) ...
romanisations based on the system. In Chinese phonological studies, other systems more phonetic in character are collectively referred to as ''the narrow transcription'' (i.e.,
phonetic transcription Phonetic transcription (also known as phonetic script or phonetic notation) is the visual representation of speech sounds (or ''phones'') by means of symbols. The most common type of phonetic transcription uses a phonetic alphabet, such as the ...
) even though they are not necessarily exact phonetic transcription systems. The various ''narrow'' transcriptions by different scholars are not identical due to the scholars' differing analyses of the Cantonese phonemes (for example, the phoneme might be analyzed as ). For convenience purposes, in the rest of this article, when the ''broad'' system is mentioned, it refers to S. L. Wong's system; when ''narrow'' is mentioned, it refers to a representative narrow system but does not imply that all narrow systems are as described.


Phonology

Cantonese, like other
varieties of Chinese Chinese, also known as Sinitic, is a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family consisting of hundreds of local varieties, many of which are not mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the more mountainous southeast of main ...
, is monosyllabic. Each syllable is divided into an initial (consonant), final (vowel and following consonant) and tone.


Finals

Chinese phonology traditionally stresses finals because they are related to rhymes in the composition of poems, proses and articles. There are 53 finals in Cantonese. Except and , long and short vowels in Cantonese have
complementary distribution In linguistics, complementary distribution, as distinct from contrastive distribution and free variation, is the relationship between two different elements of the same kind in which one element is found in one set of environments and the other ele ...
s and therefore do not function contrastively. Thus, and can be considered the same phoneme ; the same can be said of and (representing the same phoneme ), and and (also written ) (representing the same phoneme ). The long vowel symbol "" can also be omitted since these
allophonic In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor ''phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in ''s ...
long and short vowels have different points of articulation in modern Cantonese.


Vowels

The 10 basic
vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...
phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west o ...
s are: , , , , , , , , and as shown in the following table:
*For the long
Close-mid front unrounded vowel The close-mid front unrounded vowel, or high-mid front unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is . For the close-mid front unrounde ...
, is used instead of in IPA. *For the long
Close-mid back rounded vowel The close-mid back rounded vowel, or high-mid back rounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is . Close-mid back protruded vowel The close ...
, is used instead of in IPA. * must be followed by vowels , or finals , , , , , . *The use of a more phonetic (i.e., narrow) transcription for vowels, for example distinguishing between and . When adopting a phonetic transcription for vowels, the symbol is often replaced by the symbol .


Falling diphthong finals

All vowel phonemes except form 9 finals themselves. Some vowel phonemes can followed by vowel phonemes , or to form 8 falling diphthong finals:


Nasal phoneme finals

Some vowel phonemes can followed by nasal stops , or to form 17 nasal phoneme finals:


Plosive phoneme finals

Some vowel phonemes can followed by unaspirated plosive consonants , or to form 20 stop phoneme finals:


Syllabic nasal finals

Syllabic and are also two finals in Cantonese: and .


Summary

Here are the 53 finals in a table: # Character example with initial. No character with exact pronunciation. # Character example with initial . In the absence of an initial, pronounced with becomes , becomes , becomes , becomes , and so forth. # Character example with initial . In the absence of an initial, pronounced with becomes , becomes , becomes , becomes }. # Character example with initial . In the absence of an initial, pronounced with becomes , becomes , becomes .


Initials

Initials are made up of consonants. Most characters are preceding finals with initials while some characters are pronounced without initials. There are 19 initials in total. Unlike English, Cantonese has no voiced-voiceless contrast. Instead, aspirated-unaspirated contrast plays an important role in distinguishing meanings. Since there are no voiced plosive and affricative consonants in Cantonese, the scheme makes use of these unused voiced symbols for unaspirated. In modern Cantonese, all non-nasal initial consonants are voiceless. However, there are many contrasting aspirated and unaspirated pairs of such initial consonants. The S. L. Wong system uses in the broad transcription to represent the phoneme written (also written , "devoiced b") in narrow transcriptions, and uses in the broad system to represent the phoneme written in the narrow system. The difference between and , or and , etc. is similarly a difference in aspiration and not in voicing. One particular aspect of the S. L. Wong system is the differentiation of the fricative and affricative initials into ( ) and ( ) respectively to reflect the difference in
Putonghua Standard Chinese ()—in linguistics Standard Northern Mandarin or Standard Beijing Mandarin, in common speech simply Mandarin, better qualified as Standard Mandarin, Modern Standard Mandarin or Standard Mandarin Chinese—is a modern standar ...
between (/x/ /q/ /j/) and (/s/ /c/ /z/), even though it was acknowledged that ( ) are "duplicates" of ( ) and are pronounced exactly the same in modern Cantonese.


Single articulation


Coarticulation


Affricates


Summary

# In Cantonese, in scheme is the
allophone In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor ''phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in ''s ...
of , and in IPA; is the allophone of , and ; is the allophone of , and . Wong noted the s2 z2 2are allophones to , , in Cantonese and made distinctions for comparative purpose only. They are not used for transcription. # For aspiration, in the scheme is for in IPA and for ; for and for ; for and for ; for and for ; for , and and for , and . # For labialisation, is for and for .


Tones

There are basically six tones in Cantonese. Tones play an important role in distinguishing meanings. Tones also form melodies in poem and prose composition. In classical Chinese, four basic tones are the level (平 ˌp‘iŋ), the rising (上 ˏsœŋ), the going (去 ˉhœy) and the entering (入 ˍjɐp). The entering tone is a special case for when a syllable ends with or those syllables have a shorter quality than others. The tones are further divided into upper and lower level, i.e. the rising and going tones. The entering tone is divided into upper entering, middle entering and lower entering. The upper entering is the same tone as upper level, middle entering the same as upper going, and lower entering the same as lower going. There are two ways to mark tones in the scheme, appending a number to the end of the syllable or using diacritical marks. Each tone's corresponding contour based on
Yuen Ren Chao Yuen Ren Chao (; 3 November 1892 – 25 February 1982), also known as Zhao Yuanren, was a Chinese-American linguist, educator, scholar, poet, and composer, who contributed to the modern study of Chinese phonology and grammar. Chao was born an ...
scheme in later studies is given in the second line of its table entry. While the system uses 1 to 9 as tone numbers, some adaptations use a 1 to 6 system, i.e. replacing redundant 7, 8, 9 with 1, 3, 6 respectively. Some dictionaries use slightly different tone symbols. For example, in '' ' dzi '' (), a superscript + is used to represent the tone contour 55, and the symbol √ replaces the original tone symbol / "to improve legibility".


Examples

Here the syllable ''fan'' illustrates the basic tones, and ''sik'' the checked (entering) tones.


See also

*
S. L. Wong (romanisation) Wong Shik-Ling (also known as S. L. Wong) published a romanisation scheme accompanying a set of phonetic symbols for Cantonese based on International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) in the book ''A Chinese Syllabary Pronounced according to the Dialec ...


References

#


External links


The Chinese University of Hong Kong Research Centre for Humanities Computing: ''Chinese Character Database: With Word-formations Phonologically Disambiguated According to the Cantonese Dialect''粵語拼盤
Learning the phonetic system of Cantonese
Cukda Cantonese IME
{{DEFAULTSORT:S. L. Wong (Phonetic Symbols) Cantonese language Cantonese romanisation