Pinyin and Pronunciation

Most people in Taiwan have never studied pinyin--they'll know bopomofo, um, more technically zhuyin I believe. It's a different phonetic system that doesn't use the western alphabet at all. Often people will spell their names in completely different ways from day to day. When the government switches parties, spellings may even change. As an example, in Tainan 西門 Road was spelt, in different blocks, Ximen, Shimen, and Hsimen. (I wish I could say there was a Semen, but alas, they never tried that one.) My students find it immensely amusing when I write a transliteration chart up on the board--they don't even seem aware that there IS a system for writing Chinese in English. I've heard Mainland China is a bit more consistent with "translations" into English, but I can't speak from personal experience. However, worldwide there's a long history of numerous spelling systems, and their legacy remains. And yeah, it's confusing. Oh, and of course there are issues where the word is pronounced one way in Mandarin, and another in Cantonese, and another in Hakka, and in Hoklo...

Thanks Goulniky, and everyone else, I'll have to remember that in Taiwan, Zhuyin, is used, not Hanyu pinyin, which is used in Chinesepod, and all my dictionaries, and my computer!!!! Ahhh, I suppose that's life.

In mainland China, character romanization is pretty much standardized on pinyin. Taiwan and overseas communities don't seem to have any standard way to write out the pronunciation in English. It's just a mix of several, and yes it is confusing.

Thanks for the info. I've used the BoPoMoFo thing. It was hard to use. Much prefer to use pinyin for typing chinese. So it seems it's kinda trial and error, and if I get it wrong at least I can explain the Pinyin way of spelling. Sould be interesting

Hi sarahjs, > CHeng rather than the Pinyin ZHeng > TSang rather than Cang They are based on Wade-Giles (威妥玛拼音or 韦氏拼音), not on Hanyu Pinyin. You can find a very helpful comparison chart of major pronunciation systems, such as IPA, 汉语拼音, 通用拼音, Wade-Giles, and 注音 (bopomofo), in the lower part of the following web page. It is interesting to know the history of those systems. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wade-Giles

Most Taiwanese don't even know how to romanize their names. No offense though but they spell 漢字 according to how their ears hear it. It's not a problem though when they type in Chinese because, they type in 注音 or ㄅㄆㄇㄈ( BoPoMoFo).

I just remember, there is another system, “Yale Romanization” (耶鲁拼音). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yale_Romanization

Thanks Changye, now I get it!!! Ah, yes I have heard of the Wade-Giles system. Just adds an extra complication to learning and understanding Chinese. Lost in Asia, My Taiwanese from sent me a book 'Chinese Characters for Beginners' with CD-rom! and that had the Zhuyin. I think the problem I had was first the fact that I have a western keyboard. Second, the information on the internet (well the stuff I got) was sometimes hard to understand to get the right character, but Zhuyin WAS good in the fact that it uses the tone markings so you usually got the right Character first time. I have a book called 'What Character is That' by Ping-gam Go. And that uses the radical way of finding characters. It can be fustrating to use sometimes, but it has like 5,000 characters, in traditional chinese with their simplifed counterparts. I am hoping to be in Taiwan in July/ August, so I may see if I can get a Bopomofo keyboard overlay, and look more in to using it for typing.

I was just looking through my 'A guide to proper usage of Spoken Chinese' for the reduplication of verbs, when I noticed a pinyin, wade-giles, yale. table. So My wonderful friend's surname 鄭 is: In Pinyin: Zheng(3) Wade-Giles: Cheng Yale: Jeng (which is closer to the pinyin) Now for the wonderful confusion of Wade-Giles: So we have Cheng for pinyin Zheng (Yale is Jeng) and we have Ch'eng for pinyin Cheng. (Yale is Cheng) Tsang for pinyin Zang (Yale is Dzang) Ts'ang for pinyin Cang (Yale is Tsang) I could show you all many others but this is crazy. Clearly Wade-Giles isn't suitable for people learning Mandarin Chinese, It doesn't have the scope, And Yale isn't that great but an improvement. But how can you get a country to change it's system for romanization of it's words from Wade-Giles to Pinyin?

There are even more romanization systems, e.g. the French had EFEO, and Taiwan did have a go at pinyin, theirs was called Tongyong Pinyin (通用拼音) and not Hanyu Pinyin (汉语拼音) as is being used in PRC. I don't think BPMF / zhuyin is significantly more or less complicated than any of the other systems, they're all somewhat arbitrary, ultimately you have to choose one, zhuyin if you're in Taiwan, hanyu pinyin in all other cases.

BoPoMoFo isn't that hard, and has its merits--for me the big one is how it emphasizes that these aren't English sounds you're making. That being said, I've totally abandoned it now that I do so much more of my Chinese studying on the computer. My Taiwan-bought computer does have BoPoMoFo on the keys, but typing in pinyin is so much faster for me. Oh, a big plus of zhuyin bopomofo: in Taiwan, lots of children's books have big Chinese characters and small bopomofo adjacent. Therefore, looking up words in a pinyin-organized dictionary is MUCH faster, and reading printed material is actually feasible--no way I'd ever do it if I needed to look up characters by stroke order/ radicals.