4.2. One Syllable for One Chinese Character in Section 2.3
How about adding a description, something like "There are tens of
thousands of Chinese characters. Each Chinese character has its own
meanings and is pronounced with one syllable." in Section 2.3?
Unfortunately, one character may be pronounced in different ways, but when
it is translated into English letters, the pronunciation has been
determined.
The reason is that I guess readers are expected to have this knowledge
(especially, the relationship between a Chinese character, a Chinese word
and a syllable; e.g. each Chinese character represents a word, and each
Chinese character is pronounced by one syllable with a tone), but
non-Chinese people might not know of this.
== > I will check Cao Zhen, come back to you later, thanks for your
waiting.
I do not feel compelling to make the above change. Because this document
does not intent to be theoretic textbook, it only intents to offer a
straightforward way of using and pronouncing Chines names. For this goal,
this knowledge is not necessary.
4.4. "Inflection" in Section 2.3
So, how about explaining the Chinese tones by something like "Spoken
Chinese also has tones (shifts in pitch) within a syllable.
The four main tones of Chinese are first tone (high-level), second tone
(rising), third tone (down then up), and fourth tone (falling)." ?
We do not need to rely on Wikipedia, which is sometimes not accurate as we
know. We used "inflection" to mean the shifts in pitch. I will find some
authentic references for this, not wiki.
If the first tone is denoted as 'high-level', I am concerned about if the
reader can get what it means, compared to 'no inflection' we used. If we
do not reply on the textbook, which one do you prefer? I personally favor
'no inflection'.
Thanks for your comments,
-CZ