15-05-2026, 12:24 AM
(14-05-2026, 11:42 PM)ReneZ wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Option 2: "how to distinguish the two different sounds both represented by 'i' "
By the way, in pinyin the "consonants" y and w are actually silent. Logically, "yí" and "wú" should be written just "í" and "ú".
AFAIK those dummy consonants are hacks (maybe used already by Matteo Ricci?) to remove ambiguity when compound terms are written together without tone marks. Thus "mai" is one syllable, while "mayi" is a compound with two syllables, "ma" and "yi" (which is basically "i"). Apparently this ambiguity does not arise with other vowels.
When I found that the histogram of word type lengths for Vietnamese had a nice symmetrical distribution, I checked that of Mandarin in pinyin, and was disappointed because it was rather lopsided. It turned out that the culprit was those two dummy consonants. Erasing the w and y from all words made that histogram symmetric too.
Which shows how a small spelling quirk can ruin language startistics and confuse the statitsticians...
All the best, --stolfi