Subject: Liu's numbers for Chinese phonetics

From: christian wittern <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1993 19:58:37 JST

Cc: [email-masked]

Dear netters,

I recently came across a scheme for numbering the Chinese syllables,
which apperently was developped by a Professor Liu. It simply iterates
over all syllables, which are possible and used, based on the zhuyin
fuhao syllablary.
The result looks something like this [I substitute pinyin]:

0001 ba1
0002 ba2
0003 ba3
0004 ba4
0005 ba5
0006 bo1
0007 bo2
0008 bo3
0009 bo4
0010 bo5
0011 bai1
....
2050 yun5
2051 yong1
2052 yong2
2053 yong3
2054 yong4
2055 yong5

A closer examination shows, that in a few cases obsolete syllables are
included and two syllables, which are actually in use have somehow been
forgotten.

Nevertheless, after some revision, I believe this system could be used for
internally represent the input-tables of Chinese software, thus laying a
layer of abstraction between the phonetics and the actual keystrokes used for
inputting these phonetics. This would easily allow even for user-modified
inputkey-tables, given everybody the shortcuts he likes and finds convenient
on his keyboard.

One could even think of similar tables developped for reconstructions of
archaic and ancient spellings and relate them to the characters, so that
old and obsolet pronounciations could be as easily used and looked up as
todays pinyin. I believe this is a better way for representing these
phonetics than building a font of its own (and thus a code of its own) for
rhyme dictionaries like qieyun or guangyun, as somebody suggested here some
while ago.

And even one step further, a standard similar to HBF, lets say HPF ;-),
could be developped to let different software use the same table for lookup
of readings.

Greetings from Kyoto,

Christian Wittern

---

From: Ed Lai <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1993 09:05:31 -0700

I am all in favor of a fixed width transcription system independent
representation of Chinese sound, and I had in fact tried to invent them
a few times when I worked on a HyperCard Chinese dictionary. Liu's system
can be considered one of those scheme and I had looked at it during the
early phrase of the dictionary project when I took data from the CCDB
database and put it into my dicitonary and CCDB uses Liu' system.

However in recent years I basicly just use the ShuangPin as the internal
code. It is fixed width, phonentically netural, and most important of all,
since it is already a standard, we don't have to formulate a new standard
that people has to agree on then. It has advantage over Liu code that you
can read it directly with some training and it is easier to translate
between Pinyin/BoPoMoFo/WadeGile <-> ShaungPin than Pinyin/BoPoMoFo/WadeGile
<-> Liu code.

Of course there are still a few detail to be standardized, there are a
few sounds in GB code like Hmg that does not seem to be in ShuangPin so
I have to invent a code for it. ShuangPin is three byte long, we need a
two byte version (it is very easy, just take 5 bits + 5 bits + 3 bits,
so just to have to agree on how to put these bits). Also when I use it
with a prefix of "B" so that in future we can use other prefix for
Cantonese and other dialects.

/* Disclaimer: All statments and opinions expressed are my own */
/* Edmund K. Lai                                               */
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