User:Wikipean/Modified Yale romanization of Cantonese

I suggest a modified version of Yale romanization of Cantonese to improve the original scheme.

Additional initials
Sibilant initials may distinguish their plain and palatalized allophones:


 * ch → ts and ch
 * j → z and j
 * s → s and sh

Finals

 * Chinese characters with an asterisk (*) refer to their colloquial pronunciations.
 * Eu represents ~. The colloquial final is represented by eŭ (capital counterpart: EŬ) with the breve (˘).
 * Bold letters refer that they are different to original Yale romanization of Cantonese.
 * Only the finals m and ng may be used as standalone nasal syllables.
 * If a syllable begins with i or u without any initial, y or w should be added before the i or u, respectively (e.g. yī, yīn, wū, wūn).
 * and is almost identically pronounced to  and  in Cantonese. However, they are not merged in this document due to allophones.

Additional finals
Short allophones of some syllabic vowels may be represented by the breve (˘):


 * e → e and ĕ (capital counterpart: Ĕ)
 * i → i and ĭ (capital counterpart: Ĭ)
 * o → o and ŏ (capital counterpart: Ŏ)
 * u → u and ŭ (capital counterpart: Ŭ)

Both and ~ is written as yu in Yale. The former may be represented by the umlaut (¨):


 * yu → yü (capital counterparts: YÜ) and yu ~
 * The latter may be also distinguished to yu and yŭ (capital counterpart: YŬ)

Eu may be also distinguished to long/front and short/central allophones like as in Jyutping:


 * eu → oe and eo

Tones

 * Diacritics for tones (ˉ, ` and ´) should be written above syllabic letters (e.g. lē, sēn, hēi, m̀h). If the syllabic letters are digraphs (such as aa, eu/oe/eo, ng), diacritics should be written above the first letter (e.g. māai, ēun/ēon, ēung/ōeng, ǹgh). However, if the syllabic digraph is yu, diacritics should be written above the u exceptionally (e.g. yūn).
 * The h is added to syllables of the fourth to sixth tones. The h should be written after the last vowel letter in the syllable. If the final is a standalone syllabic nasal consonant (such as m or ng), the h should be written after the last letter of the syllable (e.g. m̀h, ǹgh).
 * Diacritics for tones should be written above other optional diacritics (e.g. sĕ̄i, yǖ).
 * By default, the first tone should be written with the macron (ˉ) if it does not needed to distinguish its two allophones (high-flat 55 and high-falling  52).

Syllable separator
The apostrophe (’ or  ' ) is the syllable separator for resolving ambiguous situations.

Simplified spellings in handwriting
aa, ch/ts, eo/eu/oe, ng and yu/yü/yŭ may be replaced with α (Greek small letter alpha; capital counterpart: α, enlarged Greek small letter alpha; See also Latin alpha), c, ö (capital counterpart: Ö), ŋ (capital counterpart: Ŋ) and ü (capital counterpart: Ü) respectively. The shape of the capital letter Ŋ may be written as both of the capital N with a tail of opentail g and the enlarged ŋ, but the latter is preferrable.

The diacritics with an additional h may be replaced with diacritics below the letters without an additional h: