User:Gniw/Temporary Items

This space is a temporary holding area for my drafts for relatively drastic revisions to some articles.

=Emigre magazine (partial rewrite)=

Originally intended to be a journal for graphic design, Emigre also served as a medium for typographical experimentation and to showcase Emigre’s typefaces. Many issues of Emigre contain articles of design criticism or theoretical discussions about graphic design. Some issues do not contain any meaningful amount of editorial content, but the letters section may still contain critical or theoretical discussions.

The magazine has changed formats a few times: originally published quarterly in a large format with pages roughly in the US ledger size; its size was halved to roughly US letter size in issue 33; halving its size again, it was turned into a multimedia kit (booklet plus CD/DVD) starting with issue 60; and finally, it became a book, co-published by Princeton Architectural Press, in issue 64.

=Hong Kong English (partial rewrite)=

Accent of spoken English

 * Main article: phonemic differentiation.

The accent of Hong Kong English speakers is influenced by the phonetics of Cantonese in various degrees depending on the fluency of the speaker. It is also influenced by English English. The influences from Cantonese can generally be categorized as
 * lack of non-nasal voiced consonants in Cantonese,
 * lack of various other sounds in Cantonese,
 * structure of the Cantonese syllable, and
 * the current phonological drift in spoken Cantonese in Hong Kong.

Influences from English English


 * Like English English, Hong Kong English is also non-rhotic, which means 'r' is not pronounced except before a vowel.
 * 'wh' read as 'w', as in English English.
 * 'r' sound is often even entirely omitted, such as "course" becomes "caughts" or "calls"; the worst speakers may even say "causy" with the "sy" sound over-emphasized.

Lack of non-nasal voiced consonants

Influences from the lack of non-nasal voiced consonants often causes the following pronunciation errors:

Lack of various other sounds


 * beginning 'r' read as 'w' sound. (the word 'read' is a good example.)
 * 'r' in other positions may be read as 'w' or 'l' . (eg. 'error' as E-WA, the famous 'flied lice' and 'frame', respectively.)
 * 'r' and 'l' in positions other than the beginning are also often confused. (Breakfast becomes BLEG-FUSS for some, 'bleach' and 'breach' both become 'beach')
 * beginning 'v' read as 'w' sound. (eg. 'Vector' and 'Aston Villa')
 * other 'v' becomes 'w' or 'f' mostly with a consensus yet no obvious pattern. (eg. 'f' in 'favour', second 'v' in 'Volvo' and either 'f' or 'w' in 'develop' depending on the speaker.)
 * Merging of certain 'a' and 'e' sounds, which becomes the schwa sound most of the time. eg. 'bad' and 'bed', 'mass' and 'mess'.

Influences from the structure of the Cantonese syllable


 * producing the 'w', 'h' or 'l' sounds in words like Greenwich, Bonham, Beckham, Salisbury. This is reflected in the transliteration of the words, for example, Beckham is transliterated as 碧咸.
 * some letters are spoken with phonemes used in Cantonese, such as 'e' as 'YEE', 'f' becomes 'E-fu', 'h' becomes 'IG-chyu', 'l' becomes 'E-lo', 'q' becomes 'KIW', 'r' becomes 'AA-lo', 'w' becomes 'DUB-bee-you', 'x' becomes 'IG-si', 'z' becomes 'yee-ZED'.
 * Differences or omission in ending sounds. (as the ending consonants are always voiceless and unreleased (glotallized) in Cantonese with the exception of 'm', 'n' and 'ng', similar to Basel German)
 * Omission of entire syllables in longer words. ('Difference' become DIFF-ENS, 'temperature' becomes TEM-PI-CHUR.)

Influences from the current phonological drift in spoken Cantonese in Hong Kong


 * beginning 'n' and 'l' often confused (these two sounds are becoming allophones for younger speakers of Cantonese)


 * beginning 'j' and soft 'g' read as 'dz' (e.g., Gigi pronounced as "zhi-zhi").
 * ending 'ge' read as 'ch'.
 * 'th' read as 'd' (as in them) or 'f' (as in thick) sound. ('th' sound is not used in Cantonese)
 * ending 'l' often pronounced as 'w', as in Polish. This  is sometimes strengthened and becomes like  (e.g., sale becomes SAY-o)
 * ending 't' pronounced as 'ts' (i.e. German 'z')
 * Exaggeration of ending 'd' sound of past-tense form of verbs.
 * multi-syllable words might sometimes be wrongly stressed, since Chinese is tonal and largely monosyllabic.
 * producing the "ces" sound in Leicester or Gloucester.
 * The same is true for some for 'g' becoming 'DZEE', 'j' becoming 'DZAY' and 'v' becoming 'WEE'. (The reasons were mentioned above.)
 * Merging or interchangeability of 's' and 'z' sound.
 * Difficulties in pronouncing certain syllables: 'salesman' become 'sellsman', 'round' becomes 'WAANG'. (Without the ending consonant pronounced and occasionally with an ending 'd'.)
 * Replacement of the contrast of voiceless / voiced consonants with aspirated / unaspirated if there is any contrast exists in Cantonese. [p] becomes [pʰ] and [b] becomes [p]; [t] becomes [tʰ] and [d] becomes [t]; [k] becomes [kʰ] and [g] becomes [k].
 * Merging voiceless / voiced consonants into voiceless if no contrast in aspirated / unaspirated in Cantonese. Both [f] and [v] become [f]; both [z] and [s] become [s]; both [tʃ] and [dʒ] become [tʃ] ; both [ʃ] and [ʒ] become [ʃ]; both [θ] and [ð] become [θ] ( difficulty in pronouncing [θ] too).

Archaisms


 * The letter “z” is generally pronounced as, a corrupted version (due to various of the above-mentioned reasons) of a very archaic pronunciation ; the correct pronunciations, and , are sometimes not understood

Such accents as mentioned above is especially significant in engineering field, that when people tried to talk with local technical supports, or listening to local lectures in Computing, they always have to tolerate with people speaking these sorts of "accents".

=Hong Kong Government Cantonese Romanization (new section)=

Pronunciation in English
In Hong Kong, the pronunciation of words romanized under this system is somewhat anglicized, but does not correspond to normal English pronunciations. In other English-speaking areas, for example Canada, many of these romanized words are frequently mispronounced because they do not actually follow English phonetics.

Consonants
Initials Finals