ILE romanization of Cantonese

The ILE system directly corresponds to the S. L. Wong system, an IPA-based phonemic transcription system used in A Chinese Syllabary Pronounced According to the Dialect of Canton by Wong Shik Ling. Generally, if an IPA symbol is also a basic Latin letter, the same symbol is used directly in the romanization (with the exception of the IPA symbol "a"); and if the IPA symbol is not a basic Latin letter, it is romanized using basic Latin letters. Thus, →aa, →a, →e, →o, →oe, →ng. This results in a system which is both easy to learn and type but is still useful for academics. In the following table (based on Zhan's variant), the first row inside a cell shows the ILE, the second row shows a representative "narrow transcription" in IPA, while the third row shows the corresponding IPA "broad transcription" using the S. L. Wong system. == Initials ==

• The finals m and ng can only be used as standalone nasal syllables. == Tones ==

The system recognises nine tones in six distinct tone contours. == Comparison with Yale romanization ==

ILE and the Yale romanization system represent Cantonese pronunciations with these same letters: • The initials: b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, ng, h, s, gw, kw, w. • The vowels: aa (except when used alone), a, e, i, o, u. • The nasal stops: m, ng. • The codas: i (except for being the coda in Yale), u, m, n, ng, p, t, k. But they have these differences: • The vowels oe represent and in ILE while the eu represents both vowels in Yale. • The vowel y represents in ILE while both yu (used in nucleus) and i (used in coda) are used in Yale. • The initial j represents in ILE while y is used instead in Yale. • The initial dz represents in ILE while j is used instead in Yale. • The initial ts represents in ILE while ch is used instead in Yale. • In ILE, if no consonant precedes the vowel y, then the initial j is appended before the vowel. In Yale, the corresponding initial y is never appended before yu under any circumstances. • Some new finals can be written in ILE that are not contained in Yale romanization schemes, such as: eu , em , and ep . These three finals are used in colloquial Cantonese words, such as deu6 (掉), lem2 (舐), and gep9 (夾). • To represent tones, only tone numbers are used in ILE while Yale originally used tone marks together with the letter h (though tone numbers can be used in Yale as well). == Comparison with Jyutping ==

ILE and Jyutping represent Cantonese pronunciations with these same letters: • The initials: b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, ng, h, s, gw, kw, j, w. • The vowels: aa, a, e, i, o, u. • The nasal stops: m, ng. • The codas: i (except for being the coda in Jyutping), u, m, n, ng, p, t, k. But they have these differences: • The vowels oe represent and in ILE while eo and oe represent and respectively in Jyutping. • The vowel y represents in ILE while both yu (used in nucleus) and i (used in coda) are used in Jyutping. • The initial dz represents in ILE while z is used instead in Jyutping. • The initial ts represents in ILE while c is used instead in Jyutping. • To represent tones, numbers 1 to 9 are usually used in ILE, although to use 1, 3, 6 to replace 7, 8, 9 is acceptable. However, only numbers 1 to 6 are used in Jyutping. == Examples ==

Sample transcription of one of the 300 Tang Poems by Meng Haoran: ==References==