Talk:SASM/GNC romanization

Mongolian IPA

The current IPA column of the Mongolian section shows an additional unaspirated sign (˭) for the consonants /p/, /t/, /k/, /ts/ and /tʃ/. This is very unconventional and should be removed. This sign is not even part of standard IPA. It is not used in the source, or in Mongolian language#Phonology. Daltac (talk) 07:16, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

1. It does not need to be standard IPA - the article slack voice uses a system even not compatible to be IPA (m̥ refers both tenuis and slack voiced m); unaspirated sign (˭) here is ExtIPA, which is generally used in Wikipedia.
2. It's important to preserve the source, but the source use “'” to refer the aspiration, which conflict with ejectives. So we would have to chenge to a complete different system to distinguish them.
3. /t/ is confusing - it means tʰ in English but t˭ in French. Here in Mongolian, [t˭] and [tʰ] is not one phoneme, so we should clarify it. If we use [t] and [tʰ], the latter will be a proper subset of the former.

––虞海 (Yú Hǎi) ✍ 11:23, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

I still don't see the necessity to use /t˭/. Could you cite one source that uses this symbol to describe Mongolian phonology? At the minimum the column should not be named IPA if /t˭/ is used.Daltac (talk) 01:59, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Palatalized consonants

Khalkh Mongolian has an extensive series of palatalised consonants, similar to in Russian and Irish. See Mongolian language#Consonants. Does SASM/GNC romanisation for Mongolian represent those at all?—Greg Pandatshang (talk) 19:02, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure. I think they just manipulate [ɡʲ] as [ɡj] and represent them as gy. ––虞海 (Yú Hǎi) ✍ 11:08, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

That would look normal before vowel but it would look weird before a consonant or at the end of a word.—Greg Pandatshang (talk) 17:55, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Could give an example (that palatalised consonants appear at the end of a syllable)? As far as I know, few Mongolian word has that feature. ––虞海 (Yú Hǎi) ✍ 08:09, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Anywhere that the soft sign (ь) appears in Cyrillic Mongolian. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Mongolian) gives Дарьганга (Dar'ganga) as an example. Just looking at the front page on mn.wikipedia.org there are several other examples: толь, дахь, Байгаль, Польш.—Greg Pandatshang (talk) 13:07, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

(Sorry, I removed a CR-LF pair in your comment.)

Ahh, you mean this...

1. As far as I know, Дарьганга is generally transcribed as Dariganga. I've never/rarely see “Dar'ganga” before (Dar'ganga is ISO 9 transcription, not specialized for Mongolian).
2. Even though SASM/GNC is a phonetic transcription, it's still based on Mongolian script to some degree, so (as I added before) ᠳᠥᠷᠪᠡᠳ is transcribed as Dorbod rather than Dorvod. For the same reason, “ь” in Cyrillic may generally have a corresponding in Mongolian script (most oftenly i), and that might have been used in SASM/GNC transciption. Still, I'm not sure if palatalized consonants may occurs in Chakhar dialect since ь [ʲ] seems to be a relaxed pronunciation of [i] and since there's no evidence it occurs in Middle Mongolian.
3. As I told you, I'm not a specialist in SASM/GNC transcription, and the original document (Regulation of Phonetic Transcription in Hanyu Pinyin Letters of Place Names in Minority Nationality Languages) is (personally) not very clear, that is, largely depending on the interpretation by an expert. The same case occurs on transcription into Chinese characters#Official Standards, even though official standards exists, the job can still only be done by an expert. Not for example, "Yü" may generally refers to [ɥy] or [y], but in Tibetan, as you told me that [jy] is a valid syllable in Lhasa dialect, "Yü" can nolonger refers to དབུས. Take another example, a syllable starts with "gya" does not need a astrophe, but since "Zag" is valid in Tibetan, the correct SASM transcription is Za'gya Zangbo instead of Zagya Zangbo. These rules, were never explicitly written in the original document, but were implemented for decades.

––虞海 (Yú Hǎi) ✍ 14:02, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Well, my point isn't that it should be written Dar'ganga, but just to question how SASM/GNC would spell the word [darʲgaŋga]. However, your next point provides a plausible answer: it may be that ʲ simply does not occur in dialects in Inner Mongolia. Or, if it does occur, it may be that the transcription is so conservative that it writes ʲ as if it were /i/. Either way, this would mean that SASM/GNC is not equipped to represent the palatalised consonants.—Greg Pandatshang (talk) 05:06, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

• My first point is to say common Wikipedia naming convention distinguish ʲ and i. ––虞海 (Yú Hǎi) ✍ 09:55, 3 December 2011 (UTC)
• I think so. SASM/GNC transcription is designed for Standard Mongolian, not for the Khalkha dialect, nor is it designed for Oirat dialect/language. So phonology feature occured in certain dialect may not be represent in SASM/GNC, i.e. it's not equipped to represent every dialect of Mongolian. In Qinghai Mongolian, Hoh Nur is read as Kokonur, while in SASM/GNC this different is yet to be designed even if SASM/GNC allows k in its alphabet. Again I'm not familiar to this system enough and cannot trancribe most words still. ––虞海 (Yú Hǎi) ✍ 09:47, 3 December 2011 (UTC)
• If you want to represent every dialect of Mongolian, the best but still imprefect way is used scientific transliteration of tradition Mongolian script. ––虞海 (Yú Hǎi) ✍ 09:47, 3 December 2011 (UTC)
• To be honest, I don't like SASM/GNC Mongolian very much (unlike SASM/GNC Tibetan) but still I think certain features of SASM/GNC Mongolian, which is labeled as red in SASM/GNC romanization#Mongolian-Examples. ––虞海 (Yú Hǎi) ✍ 09:53, 3 December 2011 (UTC)