The Phantom Tone
My confusion set in before lesson one. My textbook of choice, Teach Yourself Complete Cantonese, begins with a pronunciation guide. There I learned that “there is no ‘official’ romanization of Cantonese, and many different systems are in existence.” Which would this text choose?
The Teach-Yourselfers went with the Yale system, developed at Yale University in the late 1950s by Gerard P. Kok to teach Cantonese to native English speakers. The tone markings are similar to the pinyin system for Mandarin, while an “h” is added to the end of a syllable to indicate a lower register. The Yale system notes seven tones:
(mā) high level
(mà) high falling
(má) mid rising
(ma) mid level
(màh) low falling
(máh) low rising
(mah) low level
I can do this, I thought. The only differences between the Cantonese and Mandarin tones are that Cantonese possesses a middle register and lacks a low “dipping” tone. On to the first exercise!
My Complete Cantonese CD (remember CDs?) instructed me to write down nine two-syllable words in Yale romanization. Easy? No, not so easy:
Okay, I guess I need to practice. But one word got in the set under my skin: the fourth, bòngsóu. Specifically, one syllable of that one word bothered me: bòng. Because, you see, it didn’t sound like a high falling tone at all, but a high level tone (bōng). Here’s my own recording of what bòngsóu sounds like on the CD:
And here’s what I expected bòngsóu to sound like:
As I went on to the first lesson, this phantom high falling tone was nowhere to be found. It was written in the book, but I just couldn’t hear it. Every syllable written as high falling sounded to me like high level.
I did the sensible thing: I turned to Wikipedia. I found a chart comparing the various romanization systems, and there it was: high level and high falling lumped together in Jyutping, the romanization system created by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong:
Simon Ager, wizard of Omniglot, explains: “The high level and high falling tones are not usually distinguished and have merged together in Hong Kong Cantonese.” The Yale system preserves the memory of the high falling tone, but the recording for Complete Cantonese does not.
That’s just one orthographic relic, compared to all the silent vowels and kn- words in English. But the Great Vowel Shift of the English language transpired centuries ago. The Yale system and its high falling tone mark debuted in 1958. Perhaps Cantonese is going through a phonological revolution all its own, right now.
Progress Note: It turns out that the hardest part of teaching myself Cantonese is making the time for it. Since January, I’ve only advanced through three lessons in my text, and not because each lesson is so difficult or packed with information. My new goal is to do a new chapter every week. To accomplish this, I’ll study first thing in the morning. If I don’t make time at the very start of my day for Cantonese, I’ll just keep pushing it back. I’ll be back in a few weeks to update you on my progress. Thank you, dear reader, for keeping me honest!
So 2012: All the cool kids are on Medium. Now my blog is, too! I’ll continue posting on Tumblr, too.
