S. L. Wong (romanisation)

Wong Shik-Ling (also known as S. L. Wong) published a romanisation scheme accompanying a set of phonetic symbols for Cantonese based on International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) in the book A Chinese Syllabary Pronounced according to the Dialect of Canton.

Cantonese, like a number of other varieties of Chinese is monosyllabic. Each syllable is divided into initial (consonant), final (vowel and following consonant) and tone.

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 Cantonese.

The ten basic vowel phoneme symbols [a], [ɐ], [ei], [ɛ], [i], [ou], [ɔ], [œ], [u] and [y] in the scheme mean following:

For detail explanation of the phonetic system, see S. L. Wong (phonetic symbols)#Vowels.

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:

1. ^ 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 (phonetic symbols)#Falling diphthong finals.

The nasal consonants [m], [n] and [ŋ] 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 (phonetic symbols)#Nasal phoneme finals.

The plosive final can be written [p], [t] and [k] as:

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

For detail explanation of the phonetic system, see S. L. Wong (phonetic symbols)#Plosive phoneme finals.

For the nasal consonantoids fully voiced finals

[m] and [ŋ] in voiced form [m̩] and [ŋ̩] are also two finals in Cantonese.

For detail explanation of the phonetic system, see S. L. Wong (phonetic symbols)#Nasal consonantoids fully voiced finals.

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 (phonetic symbols)#Initials.

Cantonese has six tone contours. Historically, finals that end in a stop consonant were considered as "checked tones" (entering tone) and treated separately by diachronic convention, identifying Cantonese with nine tones (九声六调). However, these are seldom counted as phonemic tones in modern linguistics, which prefer to analyse them as conditioned by the following consonant.^[1]

S.L. Wong romanisation uses two ways to mark tones: by marks and by number. The entering tones are considered allotones by marks, but separate by number. Many typewriters have difficulty typing tones, so marks are often used only for reference.

For detail explanation of the phonetic system, see S. L. Wong (phonetic symbols)#Tones.

• S. L. Wong (phonetic symbols)

• Bauer, Robert S.; Benedict, Paul K. (1997), Modern Cantonese Phonology, Walter de Gruyter, ISBN 978-3-11-014893-0

• Cukda Cantonese IME