S. L. Wong (romanisation)

Wong Shik Ling published a romanisation scheme accompanying a set of for Standard Cantonese based on International Phonetic Alphabet in the book ''A Chinese Syllabary Pronounced according to the Dialect of Canton''.

Phonology

Cantonese like other Chinese languages is monosyllabic. Each syllabus is divided into initial , final and tone.

Finals

Chinese phonology traditionally stresses on finals because it is related to rhymes in the composition of poems, proses and articles. There are 53 finals in Standard Cantonese.

Vowels

The 10 basic vowel phoneme symbols , , , , , , , , and in the scheme mean following:


''For detail explanation of the phonetic system, see S. L. Wong .''

Falling diphthong finals

All vowel phonemes except ''a'' formed vowel 9 finals themselves.

Some vowel phonemes can followed by vowel phonemes -i, -u or -ue to form 8 falling diphthong finals:



# The combination of ''eu'' and ''ue'' is ''euue''. The double u is reduced to a single u and the combination becomes eue.

''For detail explanation of the phonetic system, see S. L. Wong .''

Nasal phoneme finals

The nasal consonants , and in finals can be written as:



Some vowel phonemes can followed by nasal consonants -m, -n or -ng to form 17 nasal phoneme finals:



''For detail explanation of the phonetic system, see S. L. Wong .''

Plosive phoneme finals

The plosive final can be written , and as:



Some vowel phonemes can followed by inaspirated plosive consonants -p, -t or -k to form 17 plosive phoneme finals:



''For detail explanation of the phonetic system, see S. L. Wong .''

Nasal consonantoids fully voiced finals

For the nasal consonantoids fully voiced finals

and in voiced form and are also 2 finals in Cantonese.


''For detail explanation of the phonetic system, see S. L. Wong .''

Initials

Initials are made up of consonants. Most of characters are preceding finals with initials while some characters are pronounced without initials. There are 19 initials in total.



''For detail explanation of the phonetic system, see S. L. Wong .''

Tones

There are basically 9 tones in Standard Cantonese. Tones play an important role to distinguish meanings in Cantonese. Tones also forms melodies in poem and prose composition.

There are two ways to mark tones in the scheme. One is by number and another by marks.

It is hard to type the tones by typewriters. It therefore simply uses the one in the phonetic symbols for reference.



''For detail explanation of the phonetic system, see S. L. Wong .''