Chinese languages

Why don't a lot of people use tone numbers when typing Chinese in Pinyin?

Regards,
rathpy

Perhaps some folks don't feel confident about deciding which tone mark is which tone.

Dyl.

> Perhaps some folks don't feel confident about deciding which tone mark
> is which tone.

Like which tone number to use instead of a diacritic? Yeah, maybe.

I was just wondering, since some people say that without characters it is too hard to tell what is meant in writing, (and "that's why pinyin will never replace characters, etc."). Nevertheless, people seem to attempt to communicate in pinyin without tones - which provides even less information that what can be heard from a speaker (and, without having the interactive advantage of face-to-face conversation).

Regards,
rathpy

A little while ago, I came across the following story by Yuen Ren Chao called The Stone Rooms Poet.

shi2 shi4 shi1 shi4 shi1 shi4 ,
shi4 shi1 ,
shi4 shi2 shi2 shi1 .
shi4 shi2 shi2 shi4 shi4 shi4 shi1 .
shi2 shi2 ,
shi4 shi2 shi1 shi4 shi4 .
shi4 shi2 ,
shi4 shi1 shi4 shi4 shi4 .
shi4 shi4 shi4 shi2 shi1 ,
shi4 shi3 shi4 ,
shi3 shi4 shi2 shi1 shi4 shi4 .
shi4 shi2 shi4 shi2 shi1 shi1 ,
shi4 shi2 shi4 .
shi2 shi4 shi1 ,
shi4 shi3 shi4 shi4 shi2 shi4 .
shi2 shi4 shi4 ,
shi4 shi3 shi4 shi2 shi2 shi1 shi1 .
shi2 shi2 ,
shi3 shi4 shi4 shi2 shi1 shi1 ,
shi2 shi2 shi2 shi1 shi1 .
shi4 shi4 shi4 shi4 .

It is in a kind of Classical Chinese. If we remove all the tone marks, you'll just get a lot of shi's. How many of these syllables can you render back into the Chinese characters? In fact, it is a lot easier to understand if you can read the characters themselves, even though it may be in Classical Chinese.

If you want the characters, I'll write a webpage for it and give you a link in by the end of next week - a bit busy at the moment.

Dyl.

Um...I'm confused...yeah....please write the story in character form.

Yinwei Shengdiao Fuhao bu fangbian yong, erqie rongyi chuxian luan4ma3. Buguo women keyi yong shumuzi biaodiaofa, piru Shu4mu4zi4 biao1diao4fa3.
Zai dabufen de qingkuang women keyi shenglue tone mark, you xuyao de shihou cai yong. Jiaoxue Putonghua de shihou jiu xuyao yong tone mark.

As promised, I have uploaded the above story into my website.

http://www.sungwh.freeserve.co.uk/hanzi ... mspoet.htm

This extreme example shows how Chinese characters can fulfill a role still in the future of Chinese speaking people. A romanisation does not impart the information very well in this case, whereas the individual characters do allow the readers to understand the plot, so to speak.

Dyl.

people seem to attempt to communicate in pinyin without tones - which provides even less information that what can be heard from a speaker (and, without having the interactive advantage of face-to-face conversation).