ㄅㄆㄇㄈ呢? Any bopomofo users out there?

garfaldo
July 29, 2008, 04:06 AM posted in General Discussion

I'm curious in getting some feedback from people who have studied both pinyin and bopomofo for learning Chinese.  I recently picked up bopomofo to try and force myself out of some bad pronunciation habits I had when reading english letters in pinyin.

In my opinion, I find that studying bopomofo really helps in understanding the full vocal components of Chinese words.  Of course pinyin is still awesome for picking up pronunciation quickly, but I really think bopomofo helps you fine tune it and get as close to natural speech as possible.

Just throwing this out there to get some ideas, and see if anyone experienced in both can tell me if I am wasting my time or not.

I put together some small training excercises for myself that worked well and allowed me to pick it up in 3 weeks with only half an hour a day.  If anyone is interested I'd be happy to share.

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man2toe
July 29, 2008, 04:51 AM

Looking back over my 15 years of learning Mandarin,注音符號 ,ㄅㄆㄇㄈ was, and still is an extremely helpful tool. 

IMO, western learners in particular, would benefit from researching the situation between ㄅㄆㄇㄈ and pinyin.  (Just because China uses pinyin, does not automatically mean that it is the best way for non-Chinese learners of Mandarin to use pinyin.)

 

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junquanx091
September 12, 2008, 05:07 PM

Hello,

  I started learning BoPoMoFo during the summers when I was a kid in Taiwan. I then learned Pinyin in college. I would have to agree with Garfaldo that BoPoMoFo makes your "English" mind switch gears. I think that learning BoPoMoFo would also help with learning to read characters faster because you are not focused on a Roman type alphabet.

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lostinasia
July 29, 2008, 11:39 AM

Pronunciation in  注音符號 is definitely more "consistent" than in pinyin - for example, when is "ǔ" a "ǔ" or a "ǚ" in pinyin? That being said, it's not a huge advantage. I began learning with bopomofo but switched over to pinyin when I started doing more on the computer; why learn to type again for only a marginal benefit?

One thing that is great about bopomofo: in Taiwan, lots of children's books have Chinese characters with small 注音符號 beside the character. This makes the books considerably easier for learners, and also makes dictionary use much faster. (Does the same thing happen with pinyin on the Mainland?)

Also, in Taiwan nobody knows pinyin. I use 注音 quite a bit in classes when students want to ask me how to spell something in English - they'll write the 注音 and I'll give them pinyin. Or I'll even write 注音 on the board if my Chinese pronunciation is particularly dire and they have no idea what word I'm mangling.

Most of the Chinese as a foreign language textbooks in Taiwan use both 注音 and pinyin.

I guess I mean I'm glad I've learned it, but if you don't know it, don't worry too much about it.

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changye
July 29, 2008, 12:09 PM

Hi lostinasia,

The situation is the same here in Mainland. You can find a lot of children books with pinyin sold at a bookstore. Thankfully, there are even Chinese classical literature (excerpts, but original text!) with readings in pinyin (and of course plus modern translations) mainly targeted for elementary school students. I have several of them, such as 论语,唐诗,楚辞,诗经 and so on. They are really helpful and inexpensive!

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hitokiri6993
July 29, 2008, 12:32 PM

Hi guys! I type in 注音符號。In my opinion, it's a lot better than 漢語拼音。 Yes, it's much easier to look at 漢字 in the 詞典 in ㄅㄆㄇㄈ order. I'm just curious if one could type in 簡體字 in 注音符號。。。

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garfaldo
July 29, 2008, 02:55 PM

Thanks guys for the advice.  While I agree that the benifits don't seem that great initially, it has absolutely made me slow down and think about pronunciation.  I created a bunch of flashcards with 注音 only and I feel like I'm learning the words all over again.  I think for native English speakers, seeing letters just flips your brain into English mode even when you're dealing with another language.

Lost, I know what you mean about the kids books from Taiwan.  I've bought a few for myself to study and they're great.

Pinyin is obviously easer to type with for non-natives, but when I type using 注音 it's like I'm learning and memorizing each word as I type.

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garfaldo
July 29, 2008, 09:16 PM

Just ran across a good example here.

朋 - ㄆㄥˊ- peng2

In Pinyin, I read it and would never pronounce it properly because it's 'eng'.  But when you learn the sound for  'ㄥ' , which is more like 'ong', it clears up the confusion.

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changye
July 30, 2008, 02:04 AM

Having read this thread makes me want to try to learn bopomofo symbols again. Actually, I like them very much because they look like a kind of 'secret code', and furthermore they resemble Japanese Katakana, which is understandable since both of them were invented by taking parts from Chinese characters.

Interestingly, you can also find bopomofo symbols used in some Chinese dictionaries edited and published here in Mainland China. For example, 现代汉语词典 (by 中国社会科学院语言研究所), one of the most authentic dictionaries, shows 注音符号, not for every character, but only for evey pronunciation index.

Someday I will definitely get a Chinese dictionary written with traditional characters, where words are arranged not in pinyin order (which means alphabetical order), but in bopomofo order. I'm sure that it would be very cool to have such a unusual-in-Mainland dictionary on a shelf and show it off to my Chinese friends!

By the way, 注音符号 was originally invented for the purpose of substituing Chinese characters in Mainland in the early 20th century, and 汉语拼音 also had the same "secret of its birth." Which do you like best, Chinese text written only in bopomofo, only in pinyin, or written in 汉字 the way it is today?

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hitokiri6993
August 01, 2008, 03:11 PM

Hi changye, just saw your reply (thanks to school:(). I prefer using good, old 漢字 because of it's uniqueness. Even if one has to learn 4000 characters (or more...or less), I enjoy writing in 漢字.How about you guys?

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man2toe
August 01, 2008, 03:27 PM

 

http://chinesepod.com/community/conversations/post/636

Just a year ago I posted this.  Note how busy the thread was:)

Here is another link that is helpful for those interested in   ㄅㄆㄇㄈ

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuyin

And for the sounds one can go here:

http://www.mdnkids.com/BoPoMo/

 

 

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changye
July 29, 2008, 11:12 AM

I tried to memorize 注音符号 a few times before, but without any success. As other guys said above, 注音符号 can describe Chinese pronunciation slightly better, although still not perfect, than 汉语拼音 can. For example, the pronunciation of (jiu3) is actually very close to “jiou”, not “jiu”, and 注音符号 ㄐ丨ㄡ” (j - i - ou) can beautifully describe it.

The same goes for the character (dui4). It should be pronounced something like “duei”, but pinyin only describes it as “dui”, which sometimes misleads Mandarin learners. Let me take (kan) and (xian) as another example. Confusingly, the pronunciations of the two “a” in them are not the same. The former is “a” in IPA, but the latter is read as “e”.

Good or bad, pinyin is virtually an only phonetic system used in Mainland China, and fortunately it’s easy to memorize. I still don’t think that you, learners of 普通话 in 简体字, need to take the trouble to memorize bopomofo, but only provided that you carefully learn some special rules in pinyin system at the very early stage of learning Chinese.

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changye
August 01, 2008, 11:53 PM

Hi man2toe,

Thanks for your links. The third one, bopomofo sounds samples, is just great.

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garfaldo
August 06, 2008, 11:34 PM

I just finished creating about 120 beginner level flashcards using bopomofo.  Since I'm focusing on character reading and writing right now, they are geared more towards that.  If anyone is interested I can send them over, here's a preview of one

 

I just cover up the characters or fold it over, and try to write it by viewing the 注音符號.  It has type style for reading and caligraphy for writing.

Here's a link for the zip: http://ncincott.tripod.com/Characters.zip

 

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ewong
August 07, 2008, 09:49 AM

I really miss using bofomofo and I still prefer writing in 繁體字。The strokes are beautiful and challenging to write. I still use my high school ㄅㄆㄇㄈ-字典 :)

When typing though, I prefer to use 拼音 to type and just change the charset to 繁體字

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jane
August 13, 2008, 12:34 AM

When I came to Taiwan I chose to learn ㄅㄆㄇㄈ on    my son's advice .  I also felt that it would be easier to learn something completely different rather than try to relearn the familiar alphabet in a new way. 

It used to be possible to alter the pinyin in the vocabulary manager to ㄅㄆㄇㄈ until the new site appeared in May. I have asked many times for that facility to be restored, with no response.

One of my oddities is that I display the ㄅㄆㄇㄈ centered on top of the word because if find it easier to focus on the characters and I only look at it when I need to.

I have often wondered how Chinese children in the mainland learn their characters. Perhaps someone can tell me

 

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hitokiri6993
August 31, 2008, 05:22 PM

Jane: Mainlanders learn their characters with 漢語拼音。

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Speaking of 台灣, I've been learning Taiwanese for quite a while now. Do you guys know any Online Taiwanese dictionary with Peh-oe-ji?

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ewong
September 11, 2008, 02:17 AM

hi hitokiri6993,

what is peh-oe-ji?

yahoo has an online Taiwanese dictionary, I use this all the time

http://tw.dictionary.yahoo.com/

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jane
September 11, 2008, 05:06 AM

To all bo po mo fo users out there the facility to edit the pinyin in the vocabulary has been restored and it is even easier to use than before.

The welovechinesepod created by A.Corrigan offers a choice of the lesson expansions with bo qo mo fo in the 2008-08-14 version.

 

many thanks to all

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hitokiri6993
September 11, 2008, 11:42 AM

Hi ewong,

Pinyin is to Mandarin as Peh-oe-ji 白話字 is to Taiwanese. :)

BTW, thanks for the dictionary!:)

 

Hi jane! Thanks for the info.:)

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daizi
August 01, 2008, 03:44 PM

Bopomofo is useful for transcribing Characters vertically. Also, I have a cool font with zhuyin on each character. Too bad I only use pinyin. I memorized bopomofo once and never used it. Even had a special keyboard layout for my Mac. Never used that either. ㄅㄆㄇㄈ: the Beta format for Chinese language learning.