Timeline for Do acronyms borrowed from English use neutral tone (aka tone 0 or tone 5) for all syllables?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
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| Jan 18, 2019 at 11:06 | history | edited | MickG | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
minor spelling and grammar tweaks, plus giving the English name of 客家
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| Jan 6, 2012 at 15:22 | comment | added | fefe | @hippietrail: English letters use syllables (and phonemes) that do not exist in Chinese. That is already against Chinese phonology. We say Chinese has four tones (and neutral tone) because syllable with different tones would have different meanings. But for English letter, however they are pronounced, the meaning won't change (though may become hard to understand). In this sense, they do not take tones. | |
| Jan 6, 2012 at 13:32 | comment | added | hippietrail | Writing merely represents speech in all literate languages including Chinese, English and Japanese. The Japanese pronounce CD the way they do because of Japanese phonology and tha kana spelling is a representation of that, not the other way around. As far as I know every syllable in standard spoken Chinese will have one of the four tones or neutral tone regardless of whether or how it's written. | |
| Jan 6, 2012 at 12:27 | comment | added | prusswan | Exactly, because these acronyms should not normally be used in Chinese writing, albeit against popular convention and resulting in a question like this, the only standard way is to read them as one would normally read them in English. Chinese characters (acronyms or not) do not normally appear in English sentences either, without some kind of guide to their actual pronunciation in Chinese. | |
| S Jan 6, 2012 at 12:22 | history | suggested | hippietrail | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
improve formatting
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| Jan 6, 2012 at 12:19 | comment | added | Huang | @hippietrail Note that one hiragana in Japanese doesn't have its tone. What I want to say is that there is no standard tone for these acronyms. | |
| Jan 6, 2012 at 12:14 | comment | added | Huang | @prusswan Standard way? Because there is no tone in English, I don't know if there could be a tone for every letter when a Chinese read them. Of course, the government may establish such a standard way, but I have never heard of it. Frankly speaking, I remember in the last few years, CCTV once disallowed the hosts to use the acronyms, but the complete translation(explanation) in Chinese. E.g, the hosts could not say "NBA", instead, he had to say "美国男子职业篮球联赛". It seems that this ban is not executed strictly at present, because people have been used to these acronyms. | |
| Jan 6, 2012 at 12:06 | comment | added | fefe | @hippietrail: In Japanese, every English letter got its own kana notation, which uses Japanese sound to mimic the English pronunciation. So the letters then get a (half-)standard way to be pronounced in Japanese. | |
| Jan 6, 2012 at 11:56 | comment | added | prusswan | If you view the acronyms as just a group of English letters (and not in the greater context of being part of a Chinese sentence), then there is definitely a standard way to read them. Whether people are capable of doing that (pronounce English letters) is a separate matter. That said, some academics have spoken out against the increased usage of acronyms instead of properly localized terms. | |
| Jan 6, 2012 at 11:01 | comment | added | hippietrail | This is the best answer yet, thank you Huang! Naturally Japanese and Indian speakers pronounce English differently but all Japanese pronounce CD the same in Japanese (シーディー, shiidii). | |
| Jan 6, 2012 at 10:57 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Jan 6, 2012 at 12:22 | |||||
| Jan 6, 2012 at 10:35 | history | answered | Huang | CC BY-SA 3.0 |