Reconstruction of Entering Tones From Languages That Lack It
Although it is hard to distinguish words of entering tone origin based on Mandarin pronunciation only, it is possible to do so to an extent with the help of the phonetic component of each Chinese character. Although this is not completely accurate, it is a quick way to identify characters of the entering tone.
- If a character has a phonetic component and is known to have an entering tone, other characters that have that phonetic component probably have an entering tone. For example, if one already knows that 白 (white) is of the entering tone, then one can conjecture that 拍 (beat), 柏 (fir), 帛 (white cloth), 迫 (urgent) are also of entering tone.
- Characters that begin with voiceless unaspirated obstruents and have a second tone in Mandarin almost always have an entering tone.
Read more about this topic: Checked Tone
Famous quotes containing the words reconstruction of, entering, tones, languages and/or lack:
“... I am an instrument in the shape/of a woman trying to translate pulsations/into images for the relief of the body/and the reconstruction of the mind.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
““... Farewell then,
Until, under a better sky
We may meet expended, for just doing it
Is only an excuse. We need the tether
Of entering each other’s lives, eyes wide apart, crying.””
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“There sighs, lamentations and loud wailings resounded through the starless air, so that at first it made me weep; strange tongues, horrible language, words of pain, tones of anger, voices loud and hoarse, and with these the sound of hands, made a tumult which is whirling through that air forever dark, as sand eddies in a whirlwind.”
—Dante Alighieri (1265–1321)
“It is time for dead languages to be quiet.”
—Natalie Clifford Barney (1876–1972)
“The lack of money is the root of all evil.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)