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Gwohngdongwaa Pengyam (廣東話拼音, Gwohng2dong1waa2 Peng3yam1) is an improved Romanization system for the Cantonese dialect of Chinese. It has considered several shortcomings of the current Yale, Sydney Lau , Penkyamp and Jyutping Romanization systems and has improved on these accordingly.
1 Alphabet
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P (q) S T U W Y
Shengmus (Consonants aided by International Phonetic Alphabets. In order to see proper display of IPA, you must download a Unicode font)
- B [p] unaspirated
- C [ts'] aspirated
- D [t] un...
- F [f]
- G [k] un...
- H [h]
- J [ts] un...
- K [k'] asp...
- L [l]
- M [m]
- N [n]
- P [p'] asp...
- S [s]
- T [t'] asp...
- W [w]
- Y [j]
Special Attention
- C is [ts'] as "tz" in Politzer.
- J [tz] is the unaspirated form of C.
- q is a glottal stop, Arabic "hamsa", as it appears in Cantonese interjection lâq, which is interchangeable with lâg.
Vowels:
- long: aa(ah) eh(ee) i oh(oo) u oe ue
- short: a e o
- diphthongs1: aay(ai) ooy(oi) uy aaw(au) iw ay ey oy aw ow
- diphthongs2: single vowels and diphthongs1 preceded by semi-vowel w, such as way as in gwây (expensive)
Yunmus aided by International Phonetic Symbols
long
- aa [a] ("a" alone or followed by "g", "b", "d", "ng", "m", "n", "i", "u")
- eh [ɛ] open-mid front unrounded
- i [i]
- oh [ɔ]open-mid back rounded
- u [u]
- oe [ɶ] open-mid front rounded
- ue [y]
short
- a [ɠ]open-mid back unrounded
- e [e] close-mid front unrounded
- o [o] close-mid back rounded
diphthongs
- aay(ai) [ai]
- ooy(oi) [ɔy]
- uy [uy]
- aaw(au) [au]
- iu [iw]
- ay [ɠj]
- ey [ej]
- oy [øy] (ø is mid-close front rounded)
- aw [ɠu]
- ow [ow]
Short vowels are those in short yunmus, and long vowels in long yunmus. All short vowels are pronounced with tighter, smaller
enclosure of lips than are their long counterparts.
3 Orthography
Long yunmus followed by consonants:
- Ru:
- Ping/shang/qu:
- aam aan aang
- ehk ehng
- ip it im in
- oht ohk ohn ohng
- ut un
- oet
- uet uen
Short yunmus followed by consonants:
- Ru:
- P/S/Q:
- am an ang
- ek eng
- ot ok on ong
4 Tones
Diacritic mark is usually displayed above the FIRST letter in a bi-letter vowel like "aa" and "oe":
- Yin1Ping2 or high Yin1Ru4 (Yam1Peng4 also high Yam1Yap6): aa1, äa (umlaut)
- Yin1Shang3(Yam1Soeng5): aa2, ãa (tilde)
- Yin1Qu4 or low Yin1Ru4 (Yam1Hoy3 also low Yam1Yap6): aa3, âa (circumflex)
- Yang2Ping2(Yoeng4Peng4): aa4, aa (plain)
- Yang2Shang3(Yoeng4Soeng5): aa5, áa (acute)
- Yang2Qu4(Yoeng4Hoy3): aa6, àa (grave)
6 tones represented by numerical scales of pitch, "1" being the lowest, "6" the highest
- First: "Jäw" tone, scale= 66
- Second: "Hãw" tone, scale= 35
- Third: "Dîm" tone, scale= 44
- Fourth: "Hoh" tone, scale= 11
- Fifth: "Mów", scale=24
- Sixth: "Dòw", scale=22
Either the tone numbers 1-6 or the diacritic marks may be used
- note: a shortcut for memorizing all 6 of them is a couplet:
- Jaw1 Haw2 Dim3, Hoh4 Mow2 Dow6
- Zhou1 Kou3 Dian4, He2 Mu3 Du4 ( Mandarin)
- (周口店, 河姆渡)
Zhoukoudian is an archeological site near Beijing containing a 500,000 year old Homo Erectus habitat; Hemudu is a Zhejiang archeological site of Neolithic human activities.
