Chinese tone marks and which vowel they go on

[pne]

(Mostly for my own personal reference)

I was wondering what the rule was as to which vowel takes the tone mark in Pinyin transcription; I seemed to recall that there was an ordering of the type "if there's an A in the syllable, it gets the tone, else if there's an ..." but then was confused because I felt that syllables such as duì and liú should both get the accent on the final letter, yet they both consist of the vowels I and U.

I found an answer in this page on Chinese pronunciation (at the bottom):

9. Tone marks are written above the main final of a syllable. The main final can be identified according to the following sequence: A-O-E-I-U-u. For example, in “AO”, the main final is “A”; in “IONG”, the main final is “O”. When “I” and “U” are combined into a syllable, the tone mark is written above the second final: “liu”, “shui”.

(In the transcription that page uses, apparently, U = Pinyin "u", u = Pinyin "ü".)

Other useful pages:

• A Pinyin-to-GR [Gwoyeu Romatzyh] conversion table (Other GR stuff on that site:
  • GR Junction
  • PY to GR conversion table (complete syllables)
  • GR to PY conversion table (complete syllables)
  )
• A conversion chart bopomofo-Hanyu Pinyin/Tongyong Pinyin/Wade-Giles (illustrating nicely the way codas are written depending on whether they have an initial or not, e.g. wen/un, weng/ung, wei/ui)
• A similar chart
• And another one (this one also has a list of syllables at the end—presumably, all possible syllables are enumerated)

(That reminds me: I thought I remembered a chart in plain text form which had Pinyin, Gwoyeu Romatzyh, Yale, and an example hànzì for all possible syllables. I don't know where I got it from, though. Anyone have any idea?)

Incidentally, this confirmed what I had previously suspected: that zhongwen.com does not correctly position its tone marks for all syllables; for example, it has dùi, líu, and xíong instead of the correct duì, liú, and xióng.

Comments

[maycontain.livejournal.com]

Hello there,

I'm sorry to be posting this here but when I emailed you it was sent back to me with an error. I apoligise for contacting you though a journal reply, I hope it's ok...

I'm an admin over at GreatestJournal.com and I stumbled upon your very nice kanji mood theme here: ( <http://www.livejournal.com/moodlist.bml?moodtheme=17068>
http://www.livejournal.com/moodlist.bml?moodtheme=17068 ) while browsing LiveJournal.com. I noticed you said anyone could use your mood theme if they sent you an email so I was wondering if you would allow your kanji mood theme to be a public mood theme on GreatestJournal.com? We are a new site and we are in need of things like mood themes, S2 styles, etc so I am on the hunt for things to use. Let me know if you are interested.

Thanks for reading!

-MayContain

kanji mood theme

[pne.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry to be posting this here but when I emailed you it was sent back to me with an error.

Hm? I got two email messages from you. *checks* Oops, I had recently changed my mail forwarding script and had made a silly mistake which issued a warning; this made it look like a bounce. The email was delivered, though.

Thanks for notifying me; I've fixed this now (hopefully).

I noticed you said anyone could use your mood theme if they sent you an email so I was wondering if you would allow your kanji mood theme to be a public mood theme on GreatestJournal.com?

Wow :) I'm honoured. Um. Yeah, I suppose so (as long as you host the images on your own site). Just download either the ZIP file or the tarball (URL is in my journal entry (http://www.livejournal.com/users/pne/131920.html)).

If it's a public mood theme, it'd be appreciated but not required if you'd credit me (e.g. by calling it "pne's kanji mood theme" or something like that). (I'm pne (http://www.greatestjournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=pne) on GJ as well, though I haven't written in my journal yet.)

And thanks for asking beforehand!

Re: kanji mood theme

[maycontain.livejournal.com]

Oh ok, sorry it sent twice :) Each time it sent it back to me. I tried your LJ addy and the one you listed on your site.

We would of course, host the images so we don't use your bandwidth and the theme would be named after you for credit. Would you like it to be called "pne's kanji mood theme" ? I assume since that's your journaling name ^_^

I'm glad you have a GJ so if people look for the creator it is easier to find you :)

We are setting up all of the mood themes shortly so as soon as it's up, I will make sure to notify you.

Thank you very very much for the use of your theme :)

Re: kanji mood theme

[pne.livejournal.com]

"pne's kanji mood theme" is fine.

We are setting up all of the mood themes shortly so as soon as it's up, I will make sure to notify you.

OK; thanks! (This time, the address in my userinfo [username at livejournal] should work, I hope.)