General Chinese () is a diaphonemic orthography invented by Yuen Ren Chao to represent the pronunciations of all major varieties of Chinese simultaneously.Chao (1983). It is "the most complete genuine Chinese diasystem yet published".Branner 2006:231. More recent diaphonemic systems, such as Ao (1991) and Norman (2006), cover a smaller number of morphemes. Norman also excludes Min, though he covers a larger number of non-Min dialects than Chao. It can also be used for the Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese pronunciations of Chinese characters, and challenges the claim that Chinese characters are required for interdialectal communication in written Chinese.
General Chinese is not specifically a romanization system, but two alternative systems: one (Tung-dzih Xonn-dzih) uses Chinese characters phonetically, as a syllabary of 2082 glyphs, and the other (Tung-dzih Lo-maa-dzih) is an alphabetic romanization system with similar sound values and tone spellings to Gwoyeu Romatzyh.
Character-based General Chinese
The character version of General Chinese (General Chinese Characters, GCC, 通字汉字) uses distinct characters for any traditional characters that are distinguished phonemically in any of the control varieties of Chinese, which consist of several dialects of Mandarin, Wu, Min, Hakka, and Yue. That is, a single syllabic character will correspond to more than one logographic character only when these are homonyms in all control dialects. In effect, General Chinese is a syllabic reconstruction of the pronunciation of Middle Chinese, less distinctions which have been dropped nearly everywhere.
The result is a syllabary of 2082 syllables, about 80% of which are single morphemes—that is, in 80% of cases there is no difference between GC and standard written Chinese, and in running text, that figure rises to 90–95%, as the most common morphemes tend to be uniquely identified. For example, kai can only mean 開 'open', and sam can only mean 三 'three'.Excepting rare, obsolete, or variant characters, such as 叁, the bank variant of sān 'three'. Chao notes, "These syllables then are morphemes, or words with definite meanings, or clusters of meanings related by extensions. About 20 percent of the syllables are homophones under each of which there will be more than one morpheme, [which are traditionally] usually written with different characters [...] The degree of homophony is so low that it will be possible to write text either in literary or colloquial Chinese with the same character for each syllable [...] as has been tested in texts of various styles." Chao compares General Chinese to how Chinese was written when the writing system was still productive: "This amounts to a 100 percent use of writing Chinese by 'phonetic loan' [...] The situation is that when the ancients wrote a character by sound regardless of meaning, it was a 'loan character', whereas if a modern schoolboy writes one, he is punished for writing the wrong character!"Chao 1976:107–108.
Taking a telegraphic code-book of about 10,000 characters as a representative list of characters in modern use,Since, as he put it, "most of the additional [characters in a large dictionary] are simply graphical variants or quite obsolete words" (Chao 1976:115). Chao notes that General Chinese results in a reduction of 80% in the number of characters needing to be learned.
In the 20% of cases where a syllable corresponded to more than one word, Chao generally selected the graphically most basic traditional character for General Chinese, as long as it wasn't unduly rare. However, when that character had strong semantic connotations that would have interfered with a phonetic reading, he selected a more neutral character. This phenomenon is familiar from Chinese transcriptions of foreign names.
Romanized General Chinese
Romanized General Chinese has distinct symbols for the onsets (many of them digraphs, and a few trigraphs) and the rimes distinguished by any of the control dialects. For example, it retains the final consonants p, t, k, and the distinction between final m and n, as these are found in several modern dialects, such as Cantonese. General Chinese also maintains the "" distinction, such as sia vs. hia, though those are both xia in Beijing Mandarin. It also indicates the "muddy" (voiced) stops of Shanghainese. Indeed, Chao characterized GC as having "the initial consonants of the Wu dialects [...], the vowels of Mandarin, and the endings of Cantonese. It can, however, be pronounced in any dialect, and it is meant to be, by a relatively short list of rules of pronunciation."Chao 1976:106.
Like Chao's other invention, Gwoyeu Romatzyh, romanized General Chinese uses tone spelling. However, the system is somewhat different. The difference between the yin and yang tones is indicated by the voicing of the initial consonant, which is possible because the original voicing distinctions are retained. Given that some tones are indicated by changing rather than adding letters, writing tone requires on average only one additional letter for every three syllables of text.
The digraphs are not reliably featural; for example, the digraphs for the voiced stops do not all follow the same pattern. This is because Chao ran frequency tests, and used single letters for the most common consonants and vowels, while restricting digraphs and trigraphs to the more infrequent ones. Overall, syllables in the texts he transliterated averaged under 3 letters apiece.
An example of Romanized General Chinese can be illustrated with Chao's name:
Traditionalcharacters 趙 元 任 Notes General Chinese dhyao qiuan remm Mandarin Chinese jaw yuan renn (GR) zhào yuán rèn (Pinyin) Cantonese jiuh yùhn yahm (Yale) ziu6 jyun4 jam6 Moiyan Hakka cau ngian yim (Pinfa) Taiwanese Hokkien tiō gûan jīm (Tâi-lô) Suzhounese dzau* gnioe gnin (Wugniu, Vernacular) dzau* yoe zen (Wugniu, Literary) Japanese, go'on reading deu gwan nin Historical kana orthography jō gan nin Modern kana usage Japanese, kan'on reading teu gen zin Historical kana orthography chō gen jin Modern kana usage Korean tywo wen zim Middle Korean spelling cho wŏn im (McCune–Reischauer) jo won im (Revised Romanization) Vietnamese triệu nguyên nhiệm (Chữ quốc ngữ) * <dz> is reduced to <z> in downtown accents.
All the General Chinese initials here are voiced: The h in dh shows that this is a "muddy" consonant, and the q in qiuan represents an initial ng- (becoming g in Japanese). This voicing shows up in the Cantonese yang tones, which are represented by h in Yale romanization. "Heavy" codas, such as remm, indicate the "departing" () tone, as in Gwoyeu Romatzyh. Similarly, the spelling ao in dhyao indicates the "rising" () tone, but because of the voiced initial, it merges with "departing" in Mandarin and literary Cantonese (though not in colloquial Cantonese). The y in dhyao indicates that the initial is a stop in Min, Japanese, and Vietnamese, but otherwise an affricate. Cantonese and Korean retain the final m of remm. These pronunciations are all predictable given the General Chinese transcription, though it was not designed with the Sinospheric languages specifically in mind. Both the pre-war and post-war Japanese orthographies are recoverable.
In every control dialect, some syllables with different spellings will be pronounced the same. However, which these are differs from dialect to dialect. There are some irregular correlations: Often a particular variety will have a pronunciation for a syllable that is not what one would expect from other syllables with similar spellings, due to irregular developments in that variety. This is especially true with the voicing of Japanese consonants, which has evolved idiosyncratically in different compound words (see rendaku). However, except for Japanese voicing, the system is phonetic about 90% of the time.
Onsets and rhymes Character GC has a separate character for each syllable. However, romanized GC has distinct onsets and rhymes. The onsets are as follows:
Onsets +The 36 initials stops and affricates fricatives sonorantstenuisaspiratevoicedtenuisvoiced bilabial labiodental An unusual initial; shows up today as either or . dental stops , sibilants retroflex Replacing , which does not have the proper modern reflexes. An unusual initial; generally shows up today as or . palatalThe palatal and retroflex sibilants fell together early on, with the conflated series labeled , , , , . stops sibilants Replacing , which does not have the proper modern reflexes. velar laryngeal ∅ 泥 and 娘 are both transcribed , as these are not distinct in modern dialects. 喻, a conflation of two older initials, 云 hy~hw and 以 y~w, is transcribed or ∅ according to modern rather than ancient forms; when palatalization is lost, it is transcribed . The palatal and retroflex fricatives 照穿牀審禪 fell together early on in the rime tables of Classical Chinese, but are still distinguished in some modern dialects, and so are distinguished here. The convention for nasal 疑, which drops in many dialects, is repeated in the finals, where it represents with a departing tone.
Although to some extent systematic—the retroflex series are digraphs ending in , for example—this is overridden in many cases by the principle of using short transcriptions for common sounds. Thus is used for 精 rather than for the less common 邪, where it might also be expected; is used for frequent 微 rather than for 奉; and and , for the high-frequency 見 and 羣, have the additional benefit of being familiar in their palatalized forms (Peking ~ Beijing for example is -) from English words like cello and gem.
Dialectal correspondences The voiced obstruents (the 濁 "muddy" column) are only distinct in Wu dialects. In Min, they are collapsed with the consonants of the tenuis column. Elsewhere they are generally collapsed with the aspirated column in the even tone, and with the tenuis column in other tones. An exception is Cantonese, where in the rising tone they are aspirated in colloquial speech, but tenuis in reading pronunciations. The sonorants do not vary much apart from , , which in Wu are nasals colloquially but fricatives when read.
Velars , , are palatalized to affricates before , (the high-front vowels ) apart from Min and Yue, where they remain stops before all vowels; , also palatalize, but remain fricatives. For instance in Mandarin, they are g, k, h before non-palatalizing vowels and j, q, x before palatalizing vowels, whereas in Cantonese they remain g, k, h everywhere. (Compare the alternate spellings of Beijing and Peking; see ) The alveolar sibilants , , , , (Mandarin z, c, s) are also generally palatalized before , (to Mandarin j, q, x), collapsing with the palatalized velars , , , , in dialects which have lost the "round-sharp" distinction so important to Peking opera.
The palatal stops , , remain stops only in Min among the Chinese topolects (though also in Japanese and Vietnamese loan words); elsewhere they are conflated with the affricates. The palatal and retroflex sibilants are generally conflated; in Yue and Min, as well as in much of Wu and Mandarin, they are further conflated with the alveolar sibilants. This contrast remains in Beijing, where 'three' is distinct from 'mountain'; both are in Sichuanese and Taiwanese Mandarin.
There are numerous more sporadic correlations. For instance, the alveolar affricates , , become stops in Taishan Yue, whereas the alveolar stops are debuccalized to , as in Hoisaan for Cantonese Toisaan (Taishan). In Yüchi, Yunnan, it is the velars , , which are debuccalized, to . In the Min dialects, , become or . In Xi'an Mandarin, the fricatives , , , are rounded to before rounded vowels, as in 'water' (Beijing shuǐ ).
Medials
The categories of the Late Middle Chinese rime tables are reduced to the four medials of modern Chinese, plus an intermediate type : Division I Division II Divisions III and IV others back initials Open (開) ∅ Closed (合)