So I created this Tangent Constructed Chinese, which is also used by a friend of mine.
(given in the video is the IPA representation of TCC, not the Romanization)
[www.youtube.c...zzLBkeiI4p0]
The Tangent Constructed Chinese (TCC) is meant to resemble a modern Chinese language (like Cantonese, the Hokkien languages, etc) that closely resembles Middle Chinese. In fact, I even prepared for a “future sound change of palatalization of consonants before /i/”, as with many other Asian languages, including Korean, Mandarin and Japanese.
I started to have this idea for TCC when I was learning about ancient Chinese culture at school, and was trying to tell my Western friends about them. I needed a sort of Romanization, for say, concepts like 氣 and 念.
Looking at online sources, they mostly only list the Mandarin readings, and sometimes also the Cantonese readings, although the Jyutping Romanization has been modified to Yale because of opposition (most likely). But the point is, I needed a Romanization for representing these Chinese concepts, but why not use Mandarin or Cantonese, the two Chinese languages I speak?
There are several reasons. I watched a video that was part of a Japanese-teaching series. In one of the videos, the Japanese teacher said that the Japanese kanji have a “Chinese reading”, which is meant to imitate the Chinese pronunciation. And he started with 一, which is pronounced ichi in modern Japanese “Chinese reading”. He comments, however, that it “does not actually sound like Chinese because in Chinese it is pronounced i (English approximation: ‘ee’)”.
Another thing is, I just do not feel comfortable when I tell my friends that say, 念 is pronounced nian in “Chinese”. Because Chinese is a collection of languages (even though people would say that those languages are actually dialects because of political reasons), and the character, as far as I’m concerned, is pronounced with an –m ending in a majority of Chinese languages. So it seems like I’m claiming the character is pronounced “nian” when like 90% of “Chinese” isn’t pronounced this way. In TCC, the character is written as “niem~” in my Romanization.
So I think Mandarin and Cantonese are both not very good representations of “Chinese” when I need to refer to a concept/name/etc. Mandarin lacks one of the prominent “four tones” of Chinese: the checked tone. And Cantonese, the only other Chinese I can say I know well enough, lacks medials, which are also a prominent feature of Chinese that is found in many Chinese languages.
This TCC is designed to be used when I need to refer to Chinese things that aren’t things like placenames to Western people, for games that I make which need a Chinese pronunciation of things and for stories I or my friend Zsolt writes.
The TCC is not, however, a fully designed language. For each character, in constructing the TCC pronunciation, I need to refer to the characters' pronunciations in Cantonese, Mandarin, Hakka, Hokkien, Teochew, Japanese and Korean, and sometimes even Vietnamese and Ng (Wu Chinese), which, not very surprisingly, takes time. Although just Cantonese, Mandarin and the TCC Pronunciation Construction Rules would mostly do the trick, so it doesn’t always take THAT long.
Also, the tones have not been fully determined. Only the tone types have been: level, rising, departing or checked.
Since it is mostly just a Romanization that’s meant to be used when presenting Chinese-related things and used in games and stories, the grammar and vocab are a side dish, although they are meant to be based on Classical Chinese, and not using words that are unique to special language groups. One example I could give here, is “Yang Xiao Gui” in Mandarin, which would be written as “Yong Gwi Ds(ê)i” in TCC. (The “g” represents an unaspirated /k/ while the e-circumflex represents a schwa).
(given in the video is the IPA representation of TCC, not the Romanization)
[www.youtube.c...zzLBkeiI4p0]
The Tangent Constructed Chinese (TCC) is meant to resemble a modern Chinese language (like Cantonese, the Hokkien languages, etc) that closely resembles Middle Chinese. In fact, I even prepared for a “future sound change of palatalization of consonants before /i/”, as with many other Asian languages, including Korean, Mandarin and Japanese.
I started to have this idea for TCC when I was learning about ancient Chinese culture at school, and was trying to tell my Western friends about them. I needed a sort of Romanization, for say, concepts like 氣 and 念.
Looking at online sources, they mostly only list the Mandarin readings, and sometimes also the Cantonese readings, although the Jyutping Romanization has been modified to Yale because of opposition (most likely). But the point is, I needed a Romanization for representing these Chinese concepts, but why not use Mandarin or Cantonese, the two Chinese languages I speak?
There are several reasons. I watched a video that was part of a Japanese-teaching series. In one of the videos, the Japanese teacher said that the Japanese kanji have a “Chinese reading”, which is meant to imitate the Chinese pronunciation. And he started with 一, which is pronounced ichi in modern Japanese “Chinese reading”. He comments, however, that it “does not actually sound like Chinese because in Chinese it is pronounced i (English approximation: ‘ee’)”.
Another thing is, I just do not feel comfortable when I tell my friends that say, 念 is pronounced nian in “Chinese”. Because Chinese is a collection of languages (even though people would say that those languages are actually dialects because of political reasons), and the character, as far as I’m concerned, is pronounced with an –m ending in a majority of Chinese languages. So it seems like I’m claiming the character is pronounced “nian” when like 90% of “Chinese” isn’t pronounced this way. In TCC, the character is written as “niem~” in my Romanization.
So I think Mandarin and Cantonese are both not very good representations of “Chinese” when I need to refer to a concept/name/etc. Mandarin lacks one of the prominent “four tones” of Chinese: the checked tone. And Cantonese, the only other Chinese I can say I know well enough, lacks medials, which are also a prominent feature of Chinese that is found in many Chinese languages.
This TCC is designed to be used when I need to refer to Chinese things that aren’t things like placenames to Western people, for games that I make which need a Chinese pronunciation of things and for stories I or my friend Zsolt writes.
The TCC is not, however, a fully designed language. For each character, in constructing the TCC pronunciation, I need to refer to the characters' pronunciations in Cantonese, Mandarin, Hakka, Hokkien, Teochew, Japanese and Korean, and sometimes even Vietnamese and Ng (Wu Chinese), which, not very surprisingly, takes time. Although just Cantonese, Mandarin and the TCC Pronunciation Construction Rules would mostly do the trick, so it doesn’t always take THAT long.
Also, the tones have not been fully determined. Only the tone types have been: level, rising, departing or checked.
Since it is mostly just a Romanization that’s meant to be used when presenting Chinese-related things and used in games and stories, the grammar and vocab are a side dish, although they are meant to be based on Classical Chinese, and not using words that are unique to special language groups. One example I could give here, is “Yang Xiao Gui” in Mandarin, which would be written as “Yong Gwi Ds(ê)i” in TCC. (The “g” represents an unaspirated /k/ while the e-circumflex represents a schwa).