Years ago I came up with a similar rewrite for pinyin consonants. I used s,
c (x), and j (sh) as the basic consonants (although I don't remember why I
chose c and j), then prefixed t (for aspirated) and d (for unaspirated)
consonants. Using t-th instead of d-t makes sense.
j > dc
q > tc
x > c
zh > dj
ch > tj
sh > j
z > ds
c > ts
s = s

stevo
On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 9:44 AM, BPJ <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>  On 2011-10-01 20:31, Douglas Koller wrote:
>
>> Date: Sat, 24 Sep 2011 21:16:43 +0200
>>> From: [log in to unmask]
>>> Subject: Re: Favourite consonant clusters?
>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>>
>>
>> I can't believe I forgot to send this both
>>> yesterday and today!
>>>
>>
>> On 2011-09-21 17:22, Roberto Suárez Soto wrote:
>>>
>>
>>  What about you? Do you have any favourite ("favorite"?) consonant
>>>> clusters?
>>>>
>>>
>> How could I miss this thread?! Answer: WORK (Waste Of Rare Knowledge)!
>>>
>>
>> I don't have any pet cluster *graphies*, but I have a major peeve:
>>> I don't like<letter>  + _h_ or _h_ +<letter>  for anything but
>>> indicating aspirated/voiceless thingies.
>>>
>>
>> Alas, in my way of transliterating Shanghainese, I've resorted to "hh" for
>> the voiced "h" sound (e.g.: "hhong" for "red", "hhia" for "key", etc.). I
>> also have "yy" for voiced [C] ("yyia" for "thank"). I'm really not fond of
>> either of them *at all*, but it makes for a consistent use of doubled
>> letters starting off the yang tones without running way far afield of pinyin
>> by introducing some way unfamiliar diacritics. Oh well, nothing to be done.
>>
>> Kou
>>
>
>
> A curse on Pinyin for its aberrant way of using _q_
> (actually as a replacement for Cyrillic _ч_ which was
> used in the proto-version because of the Sino-Soviet
> friendship of those days.) If you are going to use _k_
> and _q_ for a distinction, then _k_ should be the more
> front and _q_ the more back, as evidenced by media
> mispronunciations like _Qin_ ~~ _Quinn_.
>
> And another curse on PY for not writing out _iou_ (and
> _uei_) properly, not only because all newsreaders
> mispronounce them, but because it deprived them of the
> opportunity to spell /y/ as _iu/yu_!
>
> And a double curse on Wade for using that rough
> breathing/apostrophe instead of just _h_!
>
> And a triple curse on history for making Matteo Ricci
> an Italian instead of a Basque!  Basque has, like
> Mandarin, three different voiceless sibilants:
>
> -   _s_ = /s̺/ (apico-alveolar)
> -   _x_ = /ʃ/
> -   _z_ = /s̻/ (lamino-alveolar)
>
> and the corresponding affricates _ts, tz, tx_. It
> wouldn't have taken a great leap of genius for a Basque
> learning Mandarin to remap those thusly:
>
> ----------  ------  ------  ------  ------  ------  ------
> 'Palatal'   _s_     /ɕ/     _ts_    /tɕ/    _tsh_   /tɕʰ/
> Retroflex   _x_     /ʂ/     _tx_    /ʈʂ/    _txh_   /ʈʂʰ/
> Alveolar    _z_     /s/     _tz_    /ts/    _tzh_   /tsʰ/
> ----------  ------  ------  ------  ------  ------  ------
>
> In my ATL i have rectified this: there it *was* a
> Basque Mate Arriaga (廖瑪泰) who came to China in the
> 16th century and developed a transcription of Chinese
> based on Basque with some additions from Spanish, and
> Portuguese. He devised the above spellings so that his
> alphabet for Mandarin was
>
> _p, ph, m, f, t, th, n, l, k/c/q, kh, j/h, ts, tsh, s,
> tx, txh/ch, x, r, tz/c/ç, tzh/çh, z, i/y, u/v, iu/yu,
> a, o, e, æ, ai/ay, ei/ey, au, ou, n, ñg/n͠g, -y_.
>
> As was usual in his time Arriaga didn't really
> distinguish between _i/y_ and _u/v_ but used the
> members of each set interchangeably, except that he
> *tended* to use _y_ and _v_ word initially, both as
> consonants and vowels, and _y_ word finally. _J_ was
> only ever used as an alternative to word-initial _h_.
> He used both belt and suspenders in distinguishing
> between disyllabic 西安 _Syan_ and monosyllabic 鲜
> _Siæn_!
>
> For tones he used what he had in his printshop, but was
> under the influence of the traditional Chinese
> analysis, so that the four tones became:
>
> -   â   --  even aka level (平 phíng),
> -   á   --  rising (上 xǎng),
> -   ã   --  going aka departing (去 tshù),
> -   à   --  entering aka checked (入 rù).
>
> Furthermore he used a dot below the letter to
> distinguish light/yang tones from dark/yin tones. <when
> trying his hand at dialects with more than eight tones
> he experimented with stacking diacritics and using dots
> above the letters like _ồ, ṍ, ỗ, ő, ȍ, ȯ_. Notably he
> omitted tone marks when writing stuff directed at
> Europeans which wasn't directly language-instructional,
> a practice which sadly has continued in the ATL.
>
> He also used some other spellings for sounds not found
> in Mandarin, including when writing Non-Chinese Asian
> languages which he came across in both Macau and
> Peytsiñg as well as elsewhere, like _ñ_ for /ɲ/ and
> _ll_ to distinguish /ʎ/ from /l/ or /l/ from /ʟ/.
> Voiced affricates he rendered with _ds, dx, dz_, but he
> had a harder time with distinguishing voicelss and
> voiced fricatives: *when needed* he employed doubled
> letters for the voiceless and single letters for the
> voiced, even to distinguish _f_ /v/ from _ff_ /f/, a
> practice no doubt based on how _-s-_ and _-ss-_ were
> used in Portuguese, French and Italian. In the 19th
> century Endlicher István László tried to replace these
> with digraphs inspired by Hungarian, but only created a
> mess, as scholars from Germany, and Austria-Hungary
> took up Endlicher's system, while others stuck to the
> old Arriaga system. It was only in the 20th century
> that scholars agreed on using a dot above to
> distinguish voiced sibilants, but that did of course
> not catch on outside the scholarly community!
>
> ------------------------------**----------------------------
>            Vcl.    Vcd.    Vcl.    Vcd.    Vcl.    Vcd.
>            affr.   affr.   asp.    asp.    fric.   fric.
> ----------  ------  ------  ------  ------  ------  ------
> 'Palatal'   _ts_    _ds_    _tsh_   _dsh_   _ss_,   _s_,
>                                            _s_     _zs_,
>                                                    _ṡ_
>
> Retroflex   _tx_    _dx_    _txh_   _dxh_   _xx_,   _x_,
>                                            _x_     _zx_,
>                                                    _ẋ_
>
> Alveolar    _tz_    _dz_    _tzh_   _dzh_   _zz_,   _z_,
>                                            _sz_,   _z_,
>                                            _z_     _ż_
> ------------------------------**----------------------------
>
> The other parts of Endlicher's reform however
> eventually caught on everywhere: the use of _y/w_ for
> initial consonants and _i/u_ for full vowels and
> finals, so that 西安 now is _Sian_ and 鲜 now is
> _Syan_, where formerly spelling had differed according
> to the whim of the writer and the moment. Also Endlicher
> made the first push to abolish _c, ç, ch, çh, q_ so that
> the alphabet for Mandarin now is:
>
> _p, ph, m, f, t, th, n, l, k, kh, j, ts, tsh, s, tx,
> txh, x, r, tz, tzh, z, y, i, w, u, yu, iu, a, o, e, æ,
> ai, ei, au, ou, n, ñg_.
>
> /bpj
>