Hi TADA:

Thank you for the information on Japanese accent. A written language,
including Japanese which I don't know much, needs just enough elements to
convey clear meaning. The han`ji~ (ganji) in Japanese seems to convey a lot
of message already. 

I am glad and rather surprised that you can master the tonal feature of Holo
that easily. (I understand you are Japanese by birth.) I got it as a child
from "natural learning" in my mother's arms and with every body around me.
It is "natural and easy" for me as a result. When I tried to "learn" it
through academic analysis, I found it very complicated. There are two kind
of tonal variations, regular and irregular. The regular is relatively easy,
except for some local varieties. I found the irregular part complicated and
difficult to master. They are almost like English verb tenses, regular and
irregular.

Thx. 

-----Original Message-----
From: TADA [[mailto:tada@](<https://web.archive.org/web/20060117083433/mailto:tada@>)...]
Sent: Tuesday, August 26, 2003 11:34 AM
To: Yan, M
Cc: ''; ; 'keith cheng'; 'Hokkchu'
Subject: Re: [TGB] Konrad's introduction


Hi, M:

Holo tones/variations are not so complex, rather simple.
Though these are more complicated than ones of Mandarin,
Hakka...

Japanese accent is much more complicated. This may be one 
reason why we don't show accent in spelling.

I heard that Fuzhou (Hokchiu) seems to have the most 
complex tone sandhi system.

TADA 

>Levin:
> 
>Thanks for your discussion. 
> 
>Holo tones/variations are the most outstanding and complex characteristics
>among known languages. It MAY exclude pure phonetic coding for Holo, my
>opinion. Vietnamese, for example, is tonal but not "changing". They don't
>have as much problem in their Romanization.
> 
>Thx
>
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