ㄅㄆㄇㄈ呢? Any bopomofo users out there?

There has recently been an in-depth discussion of the pros and  cons of hanyu pinyin vs. Zhuyinfuhao (aka: bo, po, mo, fo) on the forumosans web site.  

Check it out here. The last few pages of the discussion are especially good.

http://forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=90719

I went to ktv in Taiwan and I had to know bopomofo to look up songs that way, but since I didn't understand it, I had to bother a Taiwanese friend to help me find every song!

That reason alone is enough to make me want to learn it.

I have been in Taiwan for 6 months now trying to learn Chinese on my own.  I work full-time here as an English teacher, so I have little time to take Chinese classes.  Fortunately I was introduced to bopomofo and I find it very helpful.  I prefer it to the pinyin system, for many reasons, but the main one being that with bopomofo you can learn all the possible sounds in the Chinese language.  My Chinese pronunciation is more precised too, and it helps me learn the characters better. 

I find it an amazing tool, and luckily here we can find many dictionaries to learn how to use bopomofo properly to learn vocabulary, characters and so on.  I am a big fan of bopomofo!!!!!!!!!!! 

P.S.: It took me about a month to learn the whole bopomofo alphabet, so it is really not that hard to do it!  :)

I've never used in my language studies per se, but whenever I was typing Chinese characters, the only method available to me for 繁體字 was Microsoft IME, which uses Bopomofo. Now that I'm used to it, I don't really see the need to switch to pinyin-based systems. Moreover, with most Bopomofo methods you need to input the tones as well, which helps me remember them...

Sydcarten, you have a good point.  I think it is (a little) difficult to learn ㄅㄆㄇㄈ characters once you've already learned pinyin...however, I think ㄅㄆㄇㄈ is phonetically superior if you haven't learned pinyin.

Chinese is written using characters, so learning 37 more ㄅㄆㄇㄈ characters is pretty easy...and there's a lot to be said about the cons of mixing Chinese phonetics with romanization, especially when many of the pronunciations are completely different from how we pronounce them (q, x, zh, r, c, ou, en, etc.). 

I learned pinyin first, and I still love it, but I would have to say that ㄅㄆㄇㄈ forces you to pronounce Chinese more like a native speaker.  I guess no one could say which is better for a westerner to learn first...it'd be interesting if there were such a study out there.

I took classes here in Sydney with a teacher who used teaching material from Taiwan.

She insisted that the Taiwanese bopomofo characters represented the sounds of spoken mandarin more accurately than standard romanized pinyin.

I argued, unsuccessfully, that the relatively slight increase in phonetic accuracy (if it really exists) was trivial compared to the difficulty of teaching native English speakers via a totally different writing system to one that is already familiar to them.

Here's an online test for practicing the ㄅㄆㄇㄈ "initials":

http://quizlet.com/learn/54182/

I can't seem to locate the "finals" test.

hitokiri, the iPhone does support ㄅㄆㄇㄈ.  My boss has it on her phone.  I haven't seen it, but she says it works well.

『日+完=軟』果然是創意的！

here is an interesting take on learning how to pronounce 软that was sent to me buy a local friend on qq. it shows a teacher in front of a group of students explaining the pronuciation, very funny, but perhaps a bit lude ;-P

日+完=软

Like some of the other posters, I learned ㄅㄆㄇㄈ to be able to read children's books and for sending text messages on my cell phone. Being in Taiwan, it also helps when I ask someone to write the pronunciation of a word. I also added ㄅㄆㄇㄈ stickers to my US keyboard.

However, despite having used ㄅㄆㄇㄈ for a year now, I still read pinyin much more quickly.

Calkins, does an iPhone support ㄅㄆㄇㄈ input?

I recently started learning ㄅㄆㄇㄈ for the sole purpose of texting in Chinese (my Taiwanese phone doesn't have pinyin).  Talk about improving character learning and retention!

I also agree with many of the above posts...ㄅㄆㄇㄈ  definitely produces more accurate pronunciation.  I would recommend it to anyone, especially if you live in Taiwan.  It can be picked up very quickly, especially if you use it to text.

Duncan,

Both.  For words where you know the pronunciation of the first character, there is a section at the beginning  (or end) listing the bopomofo in "alphabetical order" along with the page numbers were the characters can be found. 

However, the stroke order and radical listing is provided for situations in which the  pronunciation of the first character is not known.  It would be pretty hard to look up a word with only bopomofo if you can't pronounce it!

How does the bopomofo dictionary look like compared to 现代汉语词典？It is put in alphabatical order, stroke order?

ㄅㄆㄇㄈ太好了！  同意嗎?

Hi,

I just registered on Chinesepod. When you process the registration, they are asking what would be your comment to improve the site. I mentionned that I would like them to implement a 注音transcription.

I am pleased to see that it would be appriciated by others.

Thank you to man2toe for the web liks on bopomofo learning tools. It will help.

Thank you to Garfaldo for the flash cards that I already downloaded. Keep us informed if you update the file further. I can not promiss that I will help. Lets see if I can.

Now my opinion on 注音. My speaking Chinese knowledge is coming from my wife. She is Taiwanese. For the writing I was using the Pinyin as it looks easier. Recently, I decided to switch 注音 so taht we can clear our disagrements on some pronounciation issues. Of course she must be rigth as she is native speaker and I am not. Having a common sway to write it will be easier.

Bye

Alexandre

Hi,

I also use BoPoMoFo. First I hated it - now I love it. Cause it is realy helpful. I´m from Germany and when you read Pinyin in german it is also a very funny result. I know the right pronounciation of Pinyin, but it often happends, that I forget and say it wrong. In BoPoMoFo I don´t make so much mistakes.

And if you can read BoPoMoFo you can use School Books from Taiwan for your chinese training. If you have friends in Taiwan, ask them if it is possible to send you some of them. They are full of BoPoMoFo. I like them very much and it´s a lot of fun to learn with them.

Please excuse my bad (and maybe funny?) english :)

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.

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.:)

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

hi hitokiri6993,

what is peh-oe-ji?

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

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

Jane: Mainlanders learn their characters with 漢語拼音。

--------------------------------

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?

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

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

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

Hi man2toe,

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

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.

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/

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?

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？

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.

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.

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。。。

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!

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.

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 酒 (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 对 (dui4). It should be pronounced something like “duei”, but pinyin only describes it as “dui”, which sometimes misleads Mandarin learners. Let me take 看 (kan) and 先 (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.

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.)