Cantonese Font with Pronunciation

I haven't tried differentiating tones for discrete words with the recent batch of generic models but I think it might still struggle. I suspect a fine-tuned task-specific classifier might be needed for decent results.

The problem with proper nouns is that they don't end up in dictionaries, same with slang and other terms that for reasons don't end up in dictionaries.

The additional problem with Cantonese is that there's a larger class of words where the constituent characters can move around as if they were words themselves. Even for a native speaker with some experience in lexicography, it can be difficult to determine word boundaries as there are many cases where a word with characters X+Y can be interpreted as just word X and word Y with some idiomatic meaning. This issue is more pronounced in Cantonese because there are more single character words in active use.

I've actually done this before. My experience is that naive segmentation on Mandarin text with wordlist is probably 80+% accurate, while using the same algorithm in Cantonese text (with cantonese wordlist) will definitely end up "wtf".

Yes, people often confuse the "way I do it", "the way it's always been done" or the "official way" as the only way it can be done.

Here's another quote from the source you use:

> "There is no doubt that romanized Classical Chinese would be gibberish"

Invariably these proponents of phonetic writing for Chinese are non-native speakers[1] from the west who seem to have an intense hatred for any aspect of the Chinese language that they consider "Classic Chinese" derived[3]. This of course extends to any sentence that goes beyond "where's the bathroom" and "hello my name is bob" except not even the second example because Chinese names are what these people would consider "classical derived". So you propose a system that would not be able to transcribe __names__. Go to Korean wikipedia and click on a disambiguation page[0]. Or go ask them to show you their ID card[2]. These are a people whose entire national identity is based around not using Chinese writing. A lifetime of both native chinese speakers and non-chinese alike not being able to pronounce my NAME right when rendered in Pinyin is apparently not evidence enough that it's an inadequate system.

> This is a Chinese dictionary: https://imgur.com/a/rdxVh9i

You also leave out that double digit percentages of the Dungan language comes from Arabic and Persian, Russian, Turkic etc. Not even their names are Chinese. What little Chinese is left is a fraction of the amount of Chinese morphemes a normal Chinese speaker knows. Even in your example the entry for "da" has 10 semantically, phonetically, and etymologically different entries. The PRC also tried to enforce phonetic writing on the Yi and Zhuang languages, which had their own scripts that work on the same principles as Chinese. The result was low literacy rates and a population that predominantly still used the old writing system.

I could very well turn your argument against you. Why doesn't English spell pique, peak, peek the same? Pours, pores, poors? Why did a phonetic writing system slowly evolve into what is essentially a logographic script. Why were you able to read the above example relatively easily, but sdrow eht esrever I fi ylkciuq sa ylraen ton? It's almost as if mature readers of all scripts focus primarily on morpheme clusters when reading, and whatever gains you have from supposedly phonetically regular spelling are offset by that, assuming no pronunciation differences of course. By the time you force everyone to either memorize the "proper" pronunciations or simply force them to only use your privileged dialect your orthography will already be out of date. You can reform again, but by then your lexicon will be so etymologically and semantically starved[6] that you'll probably have to construct all your technical terms from some dead language with a stable orthography anyways.

> an actual analysis whether Sinitic languages

It's called general Chinese. The only phonetic system that works for most dialects, and whose spelling requires the same amount of memorization as writing with logographic characters. Of course if your kind had your way, by the time you could force it on every Chinese speaker it would be out of date and not even regular anymore. Of course these discussions usually don't even touch on the concept of morpheme regularity.

Of course all this text is useless because you probably don't speak Chinese well enough to evaluate any primary source, and the motivation for all this is less rational and more a personal vendetta you non-native speakers hold against Chinese being "too hard to learn"[5]. What's funny is it's the same sentiment you expats have for Vietnamese and Korean, Arabic or even Dutch. Even if we lobotomize our language for your sake you'll simply demand we all adopt English anyways.

[0] https://ko.wikipedia.org/wiki/%EC%88%98%EB%8F%84_(%EB%8F%99%...

[1] or some sort of deranged newspeak proponent, usually diaspora

[2] https://learn.microsoft.com/en- us/answers/questions/815368/acceptable-types-of-identification-%28az-900-test%29?orderby=newest

[3] Usually the argument against 施氏食獅史, somehow a several sentence long story every native chinese reader would understand being rendered as gibbereished shi shi shi shi shi shi, or maybe shi Shi shi shi shi if you're generous, is a totally reasonable reform in your eyes.

[4] https://www.ddginc-usa.com/can-you-read-this.htm

[5] Not limited to language apparently, no cultural differences can be tolerated by you globalists types. Even chopsticks compel your type to proclaim > "Really? A fork and a spoon is far more superior. It shocks me that chopsticks are still used and that people like using them" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35877051

[6] > Romanticized bullshit views built around Chinese characters.

Leads to Oxymoronic statements where Refusing To "Romanize" is because of "Romanticism". How absurdity like this is supposed to be easy for non-native learners and native children to grasp is beyond me.

>You can still do something similar in English where you say your name is "rainbow" but you spell it "rhaynbeau",

This is an insulting borderline racist comparison and ties to the same old western trope of treating our names like random sounds. "rhaynbeau" Isn't a word and doesn't carry any meaning.