For starters, a Chinese language which preserves final stops (-p, -t, -k) would be a better choice (e.g. Cantonese). These disappear completely in Mandarin, leaving rhymes (the vowel + final consonant) underspecified or ambiguous in many cases.
+1 to this, amazing how you managed to deliver this, and iff you're willing to share i'd be most interested in learning what you did in terms of train data..!
> - Characters starting with the vowel i sound more an e. Therefore, "to invite", 請 (cing2), sounds more like ceng2, and "to hear/listen", 聽 (ting1), sounds more like teng1.
As a Cantonese speaker, I love the effort here! However, the above isn't correct. This is an example of vernacular vs. literary pronunciation, and 請 has both pronunciations, depending on context. For instance, 請 is ceng2 when used as the verb "to invite", but cing2 in compounds like jiu1 cing2 邀請.
It shouldn't be conflated with the phenomenon later in that same paragraph about 懶音 "lazy pronunciation".
Thanks for that! Yup I'm well aware of the differences between literary and casual (and of course the differences between Standard Chinese and Written Cantonese). My goal for this project is to help preserve and teach the Cantonese language based on my understanding (which is still improving), but more importantly teaching it as a completely independent language because that's what it is. In this instance Standard Chinese or any sort of literary pronunciation is essentially useless to me since people aren't speaking that way, and I also am a strong believer of writing the way you speak. Mandarin speakers also used to have this problem until the mid 1800s when the transition from 古文 to 白話 took place, and standardized on Beijing dialect.
And you are definitely right about 懶音. They are both explained in the same section not because they are the same thing but because they are both modifications occuring for the sound pronunciations.
> In this instance Standard Chinese or any sort of literary pronunciation is essentially useless to me since people aren't speaking that way
Thank you for creating this! But I'm afraid this is the misunderstanding -- words like san1 cing2 申請 are very much everyday words, even though the reading of the character is deemed literary. You should think of characters like 請 and 聽 as just having multiple in-context pronunciations, some of which you should learn, some of which you probably don't need to.
Definitely. I'm not saying the word 申請 itself isn't used in normal speech, but more that the pronunciation of 請 in normal speech would sound more like an e. So I would rather teach people the normal way people would pronounce words and not the literary form, since as I said before, I also do want to stay away from Standard Chinese as much as possible and teach Written Cantonese. It will take me some time to continue to extract the essence of the language and document it at the core level. Once I've extracted the language it could (and should) be used to create full literary writings in Written Cantonese, and not need to use nor ever learn Standard Chinese. If my target audience is to speak to Cantonese people specifically and not every single person of any Chinese language in existence, then writing in Written Cantonese is enough for my purposes and goals.
I definitely appreciate the feedback :). Thank you!
As a native speaker I assure you that 請 is pronounced differently in context, and that both readings are perfectly Cantonese.
For a more clear example, see 平: 大平賣 ("vernacular" reading; peng4) (lit. big cheap sale; i.e. sale) vs 平面 ("literary" reading; ping4) (lit. flat surface; i.e. surface). peng4 is the "vernacular" reading but used exclusively for meaning cheap. ping4 is "literary" but used everywhere else. "vernacular" versus "literary" is a linguistic classification, but do not necessarily represent either being more common than the other reading. Both readings exist.
I'm happy to hear that both can be used, normally I always have heard more of the "e" shift in a relatively consistent way. I normally say "大減價" for a big sale, but I understand your point was more about showing a demonstration where the "i" may be used. Although I would say that it really depends on the speaker and how they feel. I would most likely use the "e" shift consistently and be perfectly understood.
The example is meant to demonstrate that whether I say 平 as ping or peng changes the meaning of the sentence. It does not depend on how I feel like it.
Another example: I buy some raisins, and the lady gives me some. I say: 咁多！ If I pronounce "gam3do1", I say "That's so much!". If I pronounce "gam3doe1", I say "That's so little!".
(Yes, contrived. Almost always the former is used. But both can be.)
Adoption makes it entirely possible for an Asian-presenting person to have a European first name _and_ surname and, frankly, is not something you should be asked about in an interview.
Of course, in theory, there's a possibility that someone named Simon Cartwright, with a North Korean accent, who has amnesia and can't remember a thing about the place they claim they grew up in, is actually not a spy. I personally don't think that's a situation where an employer is required to give the benefit of the doubt.
But it might be worth paying extra attention to any clues that they might not have lived in that place and have a falsified history.
As he said, "we should treat each individual with respect and assumption of good intent." But a decent proportion of people showing this particular characteristic will be engaging in employment fraud, and we shouldn't be blind to that signal.
It's not racial profiling to say that people usually have an accent similar to where they grew up. Or that they usually don't have the accent of somewhere thousands of miles from where they grew up.
You can make no such assumption I'm afraid. You might expect a native speaker to have perfect English, but you'd be wrong.
There are people with issues like dyslexia and people who don't fit the education system and perform poorly.
I've met non-native speakers who have far better spelling, grammar and an enlarged vocabulary than people who have lived in my English-speaking country for their whole lives.
I've also successfully used this in production — another side effect is that you can inspect the exact information that each step is using to compute its own output, if you ensure that the output plan is a pure function of the input plan.
This is occasionally quite useful. A few weeks ago, my phone's display went haywire, and the only way I could operate it to secure a backup was through the somewhat hidden mirroring functionality via QuickTime screen recording.
The end result seems to have been the intentional desecration of the corpses of a previous ruling dynasty in a massive, public bonfire, and the (probably intentional) use of the undifferentiated remains — jewellery, precious beads and more — as construction material.
