Yunmus
Vowels:
- long: aa(ah) eh(ee) i oh(oo) u oe ue
- short: a e o
- diphthongs1: aay(ai) ooy(oi) uy aaw(au) iw ay ey oy aw ow
- diphthongs2: single vowels and diphthongs1 preceded by semi-vowel w, such as way as in gwây (expensive)
Yunmus aided by International Phonetic Symbols
long
- aa [a] ("a" alone or followed by "g", "b", "d", "ng", "m", "n", "i", "u")
- eh [ɛ] open-mid front unrounded
- i [i]
- oh [ɔ]open-mid back rounded
- u [u]
- oe [ɶ] open-mid front rounded
- ue [y]
short
- a [ɠ]open-mid back unrounded
- e [e] close-mid front unrounded
- o [o] close-mid back rounded
diphthongs
- aay(ai) [ai]
- ooy(oi) [ɔy]
- uy [uy]
- aaw(au) [au]
- iu [iw]
- ay [ɠj]
- ey [ej]
- oy [øy] (ø is mid-close front rounded)
- aw [ɠu]
- ow [ow]
Short vowels are those in short yunmus, and long vowels in long yunmus. All short vowels are pronounced with tighter, smaller
enclosure of lips than are their long counterparts.
Orthography
Long yunmus followed by consonants:
- Ru:
- Ping/shang/qu:
- aam aan aang
- ehk ehng
- ip it im in
- oht ohk ohn ohng
- ut un
- oet
- uet uen
Short yunmus followed by consonants:
- Ru:
- P/S/Q:
- am an ang
- ek eng
- ot ok on ong
Tones
Diacritic mark is usually displayed above the FIRST letter in a bi-letter vowel like "aa" and "oe":
- Yin1Ping2 or high Yin1Ru4 (Yam1Peng4 also high Yam1Yap6): aa1, äa (umlaut)
- Yin1Shang3(Yam1Soeng5): aa2, ãa (tilde)
- Yin1Qu4 or low Yin1Ru4 (Yam1Hoy3 also low Yam1Yap6): aa3, âa (circumflex)
- Yang2Ping2(Yoeng4Peng4): aa4, aa (plain)
- Yang2Shang3(Yoeng4Soeng5): aa5, áa (acute)
- Yang2Qu4(Yoeng4Hoy3): aa6, àa (grave)
'''6 tones represented by numerical scales of pitch, "1" being the lowest, "6" the highest"
- First: "Jäw" tone, scale= 66
- Second: "Hãw" tone, scale= 35
- Third: "Dîm" tone, scale= 44
- Fourth: "Hoh" tone, scale= 11
- Fifth: "Mów", scale=24
- Sixth: "Dòw", scale=22
Either the tone numbers 1-6 or the diacritic marks may be used
- note: a shortcut for memorizing all 6 of them is a couplet:
Jaw1 Haw2 Dim3, Hoh4 Mow2 Dow6
Zhou1 Kou3 Dian4, He2 Mu3 Du4 (Mandarin)
(周口店, 河姆渡)
Zhoukoudian is an archeological site near