Book details

  • Genre:foreign language study
  • Sub-genre:Southeast Asian Languages
  • Language:Chinese
  • Pages:64
  • Paperback ISBN:9786269862030

Handbook of Taiwanese Phonetics

A Tonal Language based on do-re-mi

By Chingmuh Lee

Overview

Written in Taiwanese (a version of Traditional Chinese with distinct phonetics) are "The phonetics of Taiwanese" and this companion Handbook. Phonetically, it is a miracle that the entire spoken Taiwanese is based on three level tones, like do-re-mi. As singing is one level tone following another, and tonal language like Chinese has only one level tone, Taiwanese must be the most tonal and musical of all languages. Due to its rich tonicity, the Taiwanese phonetic alphabet requires only 24 simple letters. It rhymes beautifully. Further, Taiwanese uses two sounds, e and a, in liaison with words to make grammar. It is a miracle how a three-tone phonetic system speaks beautifully for an advanced culture.
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Description

Written in Taiwanese (a version of Traditional Chinese with distinct phonetics) are "The phonetics of Taiwanese" and this companion Handbook. Phonetically, it is a miracle that the entire spoken Taiwanese is based on three level tones, like do-re-mi. As singing is one level tone following another, and tonal language like Chinese has only one level tone, Taiwanese must be the most tonal and musical of all languages. Taiwanese has been hard to grasp because the words change tone as the language is spoken. No more, once the tones are aligned according to pitch, the Taiwanese sandhi becomes simply a "circular rotation". Due to its rich tonicity, the Taiwanese phonetic alphabet requires only 24 simple letters. It rhymes beautifully. Further, Taiwanese uses two sounds, e and a, in liaison with words to make grammar. It is a miracle how a three-tone phonetic system speaks beautifully for an advanced culture. Unfortunately, Taiwanese has become endangered under the "National Language" policy that promotes Mandarin Chinese in Taiwan.
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About The Author

Professor Chingmuh Lee was born in 1941 in Taiwan. He was interested in a physics major but was persuaded to study medicine. In medicine, he pursued scientific research and attained a tenured professorship at age 39. Besides medicine, Dr. Lee pursued multiple interests, including hiking, music, horticulture, phonetics, and scientific fantasy. Dr. Lee holds a medical degree from the National Taiwan University. He completed an anesthesiology specialty residency from the University of Pittsburgh, and a research fellowship from the Harvard Medical School. He held faculty positions at Duke University and at UCLA. Since his retirement, Dr. Lee has published "A Gestalt Theory of the Universe and the Minds", and three books on the phonetics of Taiwanese. In a simple scientific study, Dr. Lee discovered that the entire Taiwanese phonetics is based on three pitches, dubbed do-re-mi, and that the ubiquitous "tone change" is simply a circular rotation. He also found that Taiwanese uses the sounds of ê and á in numerous grammatical functions, such as possessive cases, nicknames and past tenses. This work has laid out the phonetics of Taiwanese in its entirety based on physics, music and speech physiology. Dr. Lee is deeply concerned that Taiwanese, the prevalent language of Taiwan until the 1960s, has become endangered under political pressure. He prays that a language with such exquisite phonetic beauty will not perish.
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