Talk:hm5

RFV

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for verification.

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How in all worlds can this be a valid pinyin syllable? -- Liliana • 17:04, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

In pinyin transliteration, characters are written with a tone number, such as ma3 or li4 (this is to enable the indication of tone where a diacritic can't be used). "Toneless" characters are sometimes written with a "0" or a "5", to indicate that there is no missing tone number, but in fact an intentional lack of tone. An example would be ma5. Since hm is a valid pinyin syllable, and since it typically has no tone, it is properly transcribed in pinyin as hm0 or hm5. bd2412 T 04:14, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Is it? Since when can pinyin syllables have no vowel at all, in any form? -- Liliana • 07:57, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

If English syllables can, why not Mandarin pinyin ones? —Angr 08:48, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Exactly. hm5 is one of several possible transliterations of the Chinese way of saying hmm (I suppose a Chinese speaker might ask how in all worlds "hmm" could be a valid English syllable). bd2412 T 12:09, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Correct, no vowel. From ABC dictionary: "噷 - hm intj. (of reproach/dissatisfaction) humph", also transliterated as hèn (hen4), hēn (hen1), hm (hm5), xīn (xin1). hm and hm5] are variant pinyin forms, the former is toned (neutral tone, so no tone mark), the latter is numberer pinyin. One syllable numbered pinyin is allowed here. Another example of a pinyin syllable without a vowel is character "嗯" - ń (n2), ň (n3), ǹ (n4), ńg (ng2), ňg (ng3), ǹg (ng4) or ēn (en1) (a non-verbal exclamation); ńg intj. What?; Huh?; ňg intj. How come?; Why?; ǹg intj. O.K.; Agreed! --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 12:43, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

I asked a few native speakers who regularly use pīnyīn what they thought. None of them had ever seen any of these vowel-less transcriptions and a few said that they must be mistakes. One who is also fluent in Cantonese said that they would be fine there, but unacceptable in standard Mandarin texts. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 16:03, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

The pinyin is from the respectable ABC dictionary (I couldn't find an online version). Ask your friends to check Wenlin (a must have tool for Chinese learners). You won't find pinyin without vowels in the tables for standard Hanyu Pinyin, and some dictionaries replace with syllables from those tables but it's not what is actually pronounced, so other dictionaries attempt to record the sounds more accurately. Characters like "噷" or "嗯" are used when what is said is non-verbal, some mumbling like "hmm", "huh?", e-er. The actual tone and pronunciation differs depending on the speaker and the mood. The characters are seldom used in standard Mandarin texts, I agree, you'll notice if you watch Chinese movies/drama with subtitles. Interjections are often omitted or replaced with more formal words. E.g. if a person says "OK" (common in colloquial Chinese), the subtitles will say "好" but "噷" or "嗯" are used when it's important to convey exactly what a person says. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 22:10, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

I note that, although this entry is said to be a romanisation of 噷, zh:噷 includes several possible romanizations, but not this one. - -sche (discuss) 00:09, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Most likely their source for pinyin is different. Usually hanzi entries are imported from somewhere. I quoted exactly the entries from the "ABC Dictionary" above (ISBN number is 978-0-8248-3485-2), no online version but there's an electronic version incorporated into Wenlin software. Here are two more confirmations

1) 噷@Kxue Please search for [②]［hm˙］ 叹词。表示申斥或不满意。 (on two lines), hm˙ expresses hm in neutral tone. "叹词。表示申斥或不满意" means "An interjection. Expresses reprimand or dissatisfaction".

2) Pleco Dictionary - a world known dictionary producer for PC's pocket PC's and mobile phones - I have an electronic version on my android has pinyin "hm" for "噷" and an example sentence "噷，别提了。" (hm, biétí le) - "Humph, don't bring that up".

I can say the same thing about "嗯", don't make me search for it. :) --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 00:32, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

• If this were pinyin with tone-marking diacritics, this text from Wiktionary:Votes/2011-07/Pinyin_entries would apply: "... a pinyin entry, using the tone-marking diacritics, be allowed whenever we have an entry for a traditional-characters or simplified-characters spelling", and the pinyin entry itself would not be subject to RFV. But this is a member of Category:Mandarin pinyin with tone numbers. Is there a reason to treat pinyin with tone numbers ("bing4") differently from pinyin with tone-marking diacritics ("bìng") as far as attestation requirements? If no reason is found, and editors end up agreeing the pinyin term under discussion does not need attestation, can this RFV be closed as out of scope? --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:31, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

  Pinyin with tone numbers is basically just an alternate spelling of the same pinyin with diacritics. If the diacritic exists, then the tone number exists. If the diacritic exists, but is toneless, the tone number is 0 or 5, which indicates that the absence of an expected 1, 2, 3, or 4 is not a mistake, but that the character is pronounced without tone. It is not surprising that it is incredibly hard to find examples in the wild. That said, here's one. bd2412 T 19:21, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Here is the full reference:

• 2003, Chinfa Lien "Exploring Multiple Functions of Choe³ 做 and its Interaction with Constructional Meanings in Taiwanese Southern Min, in 語言暨語言學, Volume 4, Issue 1, page 90:

  Thus choe³ 做 as in choe³ hm⁵ lang⁵ 做媒儂 'be a matchmaker' in TSM, can be regarded as a 'be' verb.

Cheers! bd2412 T 22:48, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

So is the "5" always a superscript? If so, the entry should be moved there. After all, in chemistry for instance H₂O does not mean the same thing as H.2O. SpinningSpark 23:14, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't think it's standardized in general, but superscripts may be the norm in scientific literature such as this. I've seen full-sized numbers, superscripts, IPA tone symbols, and diacritics, all used for the same sound in different works. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:26, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

I hate to rain on your parade, but "Southern Min" is just the English translation of w:Min Nan, which we treat as a separate language, and which has eight tones, according to the traditional analysis. Although the same methodology applies in both cases as far as using tone numbers instead of diacritics, the actual tones and diacritics don't match. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:16, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Parade rained upon. It is just plain difficult to find hits when there are tens of thousands of false positives to dig through. On the other hand, this raises the question of whether we should add the Min Nan diacritics (of which hm5, obviously, is one). bd2412 T 15:17, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

This book appears to contain a Min Nan example, although it is hard to be sure. I would consider this particle to be one that exists, irrespective of whether it is verifiable through the traditional means of verifying whole words. bd2412 T 18:38, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

I've removed the RFV tag, on the basis that this pinyin syllable / Romanization is validly-formed, and whenever a word is attested in a given language in a non-Roman script, and Romanizations of the words in that language are allowed to exist as entries, the individual Romanizations are not themselves required to meet CFI as words. In particular, when the language is Chinese, Wiktionary:Votes/2011-07/Pinyin entries states that "a pinyin entry, using the tone-marking diacritics, [is] allowed whenever we have an entry for a traditional-characters or simplified-characters spelling", and it makes no sense to treat pinyin with tone numbers (which, as someone points out, is "just an alternate spelling of the same pinyin with diacritics") differently. - -sche (discuss) 17:31, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Since the tag has been removed, is there any objection to closing this discussion? bd2412 T 19:24, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Clearly this is resolved (kept). --WikiTiki89 14:58, 9 December 2013 (UTC)