Eitel Romanization

Eitel Romanization is a Cantonese Romanization that forms the basis of the Cantonese Romanization used for Hong Kong placenames and in Hong Kong ID cards. A reconstruction of it is featured with relative frequency in the TCC blog and sometimes called Tangent-Eitel.

The reconstruction is aided by Wong Shik Ling and James Dyer Ball's works on Cantonese, the dated looks of latter giving rise to the TCC aesthetic of yellowish pages.

An analogous reconstruction called Pac-va-chi exists for the Cantonese Romanization used in Macau.

Summary
The original Eitel Romanization is in theory the unmodified form of what has been called the "Hong Kong Government Romanization", before English influences were put in (e.g. writing "u" for, "oo" for , and "b" for ) and diacritics were removed (e.g. "Tam" can be Jyutping dam, daam, tam, or taam in any possible tone). However some distinctions no longer found in modern Cantonese in Hong Kong that are too difficult to reconstruct may be left out, such as the distinction between the 2 陰平 tones.

Initials
*: Not written when í, ú, or ü follows (but written if i or u follows).

Monophthongs
*: z after alveolar sibilants and i after postalveolar sibilants.

**: é syllable-finally, otherwise e.

***: Found also in om/op after velars.

Diphthongs
*: "ei" does not exist in Eitel's Romanization.

**: ui is equivalent to Jyutping's eoi.

***: As éu is reserved for, "eu" may in theory be used to represent.

Tones
*: Usually unused in the Tangent-Eitel reconstruction and written instead as ( at bottom left.