ABSTRACT
The links between language and writing are often overestimated, as proven by the popular question well known to every Sinologist: “Is it possible to write the Chinese language with Latin letters?” Chinese writing is panchronic and pantopic. The sequence of two Chinese characters meaning “great” and “to learn, a school” from the very beginning signified “great school” and is used to mean “a university” or “a college.” International Phonetic Alphabet has a rather complicated system to note tones. In modern languages, symbols for tones must refer to the real phonetic value, but as far as the reconstructed tones are concerned these symbols must only indicate “differences”, because the real phonetic value of tones is unknown. As far as the notation of reconstructed tones is concerned, the situation is even more complicated. They are noted by symbols with no reference to any phonetic value and authors are using various devices for this purpose.
