How useful is zhuyin / 'bopomofo'? How to use it?

[Shi Tong]

Hello Lu

I understand why you're having problems with sounds like Zheng 正 and the zhuyin version.

There's a reason for it.. and that is because the zhuyin version isn't particularly logical.

Case in point:

ㄓㄥ4 spells 正 which has a clear "eng" sound at the end.

ㄓㄨㄥ1 spells zhong (middle), with a clear "ong" sound at the end (the sound you would use at the end of 用.

Logically scanning this across, 用 should be spelled ㄩㄨㄥ4, since the ㄨㄥin ㄓㄨㄥ sounds like the ong at the end of zhong.

ㄩ is pronounced as the end sound of 魚

I dont see how this makes sense because ㄩ is the only sound in 魚, but again, this is why I dont like pinyin because it's often spelled as yu. There is no seperate sound, just one ㄩ

Just like Lu ㄌㄨcan be written lazily as Lu for ㄌㄩ.

Given that a lot of thought was put into zhuyin when it was invented, there's probably a sound reason for the rule, so I'll just have to ask someone else sometime.

Personally it's one of the things which I think is a fault with zhuyin- just like ㄧㄥ1 spells "ying" as in "hero".

Logically there should be a few more seperated sounds in zhuyin to actually bring it to the correct amount of sounds in Chinese.

-ing, -eng, -ong, -ang are all cases in points, since there is only ㄥand ㄤ for these sounds.

Thanks.

Now pronounce ㄩ and ㄥ separately, and explain to me why neither ㄩ or ㄥ have anything to do with ㄩㄥ.

Renzhe, I fail to see why ㄩ and ㄥ dont make ㄩㄥ. I pronounced each sound seperately and then stuck them together to get ㄩㄥ.

If you cant hear the difference, I suggest you ask your girlfriend to pronounce these separarely and then stick them together for you for you to observe.

[Lu]

Renzhe, I fail to see why ㄩ and ㄥ dont make ㄩㄥ. I pronounced each sound seperately and then stuck them together to get ㄩㄥ.

Actually you do see it, and quite clearly:

There's a reason for it.. and that is because the zhuyin version isn't particularly logical.

Logically scanning this across, 用 should be spelled ㄩㄨㄥ4, since the ㄨㄥin ㄓㄨㄥ sounds like the ong at the end of zhong.

Personally it's one of the things which I think is a fault with zhuyin- just like ㄧㄥ1 spells "ying" as in "hero".

Logically there should be a few more seperated sounds in zhuyin to actually bring it to the correct amount of sounds in Chinese.

From this, I gather you agree that zhuyin isn't always logical and is sometimes inconsistent, and that you can't always get the right pronunciation from just gluing the letters together. 用 is a case in point, as you are well aware.

[renzhe]

Well, the problem is that neither me nor my girlfriend, and apparently also Lu, chrix nor imron, have any idea what you're talking about

There's no ü sound in yong. No ㄩ sound in ㄩㄥ. Period.

Logically there should be a few more seperated sounds in zhuyin to actually bring it to the correct amount of sounds in Chinese.

Actually, you would need FAR more than that. Each final would have to be written separately, using a single character, and some finals would need several characters, because they are pronounced slightly differently depending on the initial.

All phonetic writing is an approximation.

EDIT: Anyway, pronunciation is always difficult to discuss without being face to face.

Edited March 17, 2010 at 01:44 PM by renzhe

[Shi Tong]

From this, I gather you agree that zhuyin isn't always logical and is sometimes inconsistent, and that you can't always get the right pronunciation from just gluing the letters together. 用 is a case in point, as you are well aware.

Yeah, but if you pronounce ㄩ and ㄥseperately (as I did in my snippet), and then pronounce the whole thing as ㄩㄥ4, it is pronounced using exactly those two sounds (ㄩ and ㄥ). If you consider that ㄥ is pronounced "eng" to start with (like the eng in cheng2), then of course, you would have trouble.

So, though I accept that ㄥ can be pronounced differently in different contexts, ㄩㄥ is exactly the two sounds stuck together.

There's no ü sound in yong. No ㄩ sound in ㄩㄥ. Period.

Well, I disagree. My pronunciation definately had an ㄩin it, weather you heard it or not my old matey pie!

Actually, you would need FAR more than that. Each final would have to be written separately, using a single character, and some finals would need several characters, because they are pronounced slightly differently depending on the initial.

All phonetic writing is an approximation.

Which is exactly why this discussion is going nowhere.. neither pinyin or zhuyin are perfect.. they both have their given advantages and disadvantages, whatever system suits you better is a better system for yourself, so use that system.

EDIT: Anyway, pronunciation is always difficult to discuss without being face to face.

Agreed.. especially when writing words or sounds like ㄥ and eng on the page.. it would be very cool to actually have a face to face discussion with you, but I'm guessing we're too far apart!

Oh, and I'm not so sure that Chrix would disagree that ㄩㄥ4 is the correct pronunciation.. I suggest you ask him. I've been pronouncing this word exactly this way for ages, and I've never been told it's wrong.. actually, I've been told the opposite, which is that yong is wrong!!

[renzhe]

How can "yong4" be wrong, when it's exactly the same thing, only written using pinyin instead of zhuyin?

[chrix]

Oh, and I'm not so sure that Chrix would disagree that ㄩㄥ4 is the correct pronunciation.. I suggest you ask him. I've been pronouncing this word exactly this way for ages, and I've never been told it's wrong.. actually, I've been told the opposite, which is that yong is wrong!!

Time for a little bit of IPA I suppose.

A. [yŋ]

B. [joŋ]

C. [juŋ]

If you took the zhuyin literally it would be pronounced like A, which would be totallzy wrong. Now the pinyin, taken literally, would give you B, which is only slightly wrong (and -ong is pronounced [uŋ] consistently throughout pinyin, so it shouldn't pose too many problems. So if I understand renzhe and Lu correctly, we'd all pronounce it like C and think B is a better approximation than A.

[renzhe]

I agree with chrix (only I don't think that either B nor C are perfectly right, it should be somewhere inbetween )

I've listened to your sample and I have to admit that your "yong" sounds very strange to me. This is not meant as criticism, but it explains some of the confusion. I've never heard 用 pronounced like that.

This is what I'm used to and what it should sound like http://www.uvm.edu/~chinese/pinyin.htm. Very much like pinyin would lead you to believe.

With 用, your lips start relaxed, and round up towards the end. If you pronounce ㄩ + ㄥ, your lips go the other way around. You need very round lips to pronounce ㄩ, then relax them. The two sound very different.

[Altair]

A. [yŋ]

B. [joŋ]

C. [juŋ]

If you took the zhuyin literally it would be pronounced like A, which would be totallzy wrong. Now the pinyin, taken literally, would give you B, which is only slightly wrong (and -ong is pronounced [uŋ] consistently throughout pinyin, so it shouldn't pose too many problems. So if I understand renzhe and Lu correctly, we'd all pronounce it like C and think B is a better approximation than A.

My references seem to split about whether A or C is the correct pronunciation. Can anyone cite an authoritative source?

Also, I think that Zhuyin has a very high degree of phonemic spelling, and so ㄩ + ㄥ would seem to be called for according to the chart under "Vowels" from this page of Wikipedia.

Edit: I just realized that I originally and mistakenly wrote "morphemic" above instead of "phonemic," but have now corrected it.

Edited March 19, 2010 at 02:24 AM by Altair

[Altair]

I should add that I think Pinyin is fine, and even ingenious in places, but that Zhuyin seems better designed with its fewer constraints. The only concern I have about Pinyin is that its admirable spelling economy has laid a few traps for the unwary, such as the diphthong in "chun" or the optional lack of an initial glide in words like "yin," "wu," and "yun." Despite this, I would not advise beginners outside of Taiwan to bother with learning Zhuyin.

[renzhe]

My references seem to split about whether A or C is the correct pronunciation.

I've never heard it pronounced as A.

Do you have a link to an example of a native speaker pronouncing it as A? In a TV show, or a podcast, or similar? I don't know what counts as an official source, but here are some training audio recordings for the 普通话水平测试. For example, there is a clear yong at around 2:46 of the first sample.

Perhaps this is a development similar to the weng -> wong difference between the Mainland and Taiwan?

[valikor]

I don't have much to add as I don't know anything about Zhuyin, but I do understand what Shi Tong means when he says he sometimes cannot figure out how to "spell" a word in pinyin. I know pinyin quite well I think, but occasionally have trouble "spelling" a word I know very well. (It's not common, and maybe it is just a fluke and could happen with any system)

The real reason I wanted to post here is because the following exchange was just priceless and should be preserved forever. Thanks to the following 2 people.

Chrix:

Basically it's plosives and homorganous sonorants and fricatives - bilabial, alveolar, velar, followed by alveolopalatal, retroflex and alveolar fricatives and affricates, then two rows of monophthongs, diphthongs, final nasals and er.

Imron:

Wow, that's amazingly intuitive - now it all makes sense

;)

[Altair]

I do not have an online source for any of the pronunciations of "iong"; however, on pp. xii- xiv, good old Mathews' Chinese English Dictionary surprisingly shows IPA /yʊŋ/ rather than /jʊŋ/. On page xiv, footnotes (i) and (j) also say with respect to this final:

"Note (i). There is usually a slight rounding in the semi-vowel, but it is written -i- in the Wade system.

"Note (j). When the initial is a (rounded) y-, the syllables are written thus: yü, yüeh, yüan, yün, yung. (See Table II.)"

Perhaps this pronunciation indeed has to do with the older Nanjing Mandarin standard that is prevalent in Taiwan. I think Mathews' tends to show very conservative pronunciations that may be obsolete in the Mainland standard.

I also think that the diffences between a semivowel ü and u are quite subtle, expecially between a front vowel and a back vowel. I am not sure a pronunciation of /yʊŋ/ would really be that noticeably different from /jʊŋ/.

[Shi Tong]

Hello Renzhe.

I understand why you think I might be pronouncing yong wrong, but IMO, this is exactly the way to pronounce this word. Granted, the actual quality of the recording was a bit pants, including the fact that it faded out at the end, but that's my poor equipment for you.

I also thought that the pronunciation on the site you sited is (almost) exactly the same as my own.

There are a few sounds which are definately different from the mainland, for instance er, which is pronounced almost like ar in some places on the mainland and given a huge emphasis on the curled tongue.

EDIT: I've looked at those pronunciations for IPA, and would definately say that B is better than C, I discussed this with my wife last night and after pronouncing Yong at her several times, it was concluded that in zhuyin it would be written as I said, and that that is the correct pronunciation.

It's the only pronunciation I've ever heard too.

But it would not surprise me at all to find that mainlanders pronounced this more like C than B.

Edited March 18, 2010 at 01:08 PM by Shi Tong

[renzhe]

I also think that the diffences between a semivowel ü and u are quite subtle, expecially between a front vowel and a back vowel. I am not sure a pronunciation of /yʊŋ/ would really be that noticeably different from /jʊŋ/.

Should still be noticeably different from /yŋ/ though, right? In the fact that it misses ʊ.

-iong should rhyme with zhong, not with yun. Exactly because of the ʊ sound. So if there is an older standard that prescribes /yŋ/, it must have been obsolete on the mainland by the time pinyin was developed.

[Daan]

I was accused by some Taiwanese friends yesterday of having a "nasty mainland accent", so my word might not count for much, but I have the impression that the pronunciation renzhe linked to is by far the most common in Taiwan Mandarin. I don't even think I've ever heard anything else, but I'll readily admit I haven't really paid attention to it either. I'll keep an ear out.

[renzhe]

I notice that only three people have listened to Shi Tong's audio sample.

I think that the difference between /yʊŋ/ and /jʊŋ/ is essentially in how much you round your lips in the beginning, and probably isn't very noticeable.

I think that the case where you drop the ʊ completely sounds very different, and very unusual to me.

[Daan]

I just had someone completely random who hadn't read a single post in this thread listen to the audio file. Initially he thought it was yòu but then on the third attempt he remarked "or perhaps it's yòng". Admittedly, he was not a native speaker, so I would be interested to hear from native speakers on here whether they would recognise this as yòng and if yes, what flavour of Mandarin they speak.

[Altair]

I notice that only three people have listened to Shi Tong's audio sample.

I listened to Renzhe's example, and that is the sound I recall hearing as "yong." It seems to be /jʊŋ/ and matches what I would expect of pinyin "yong."

I also listened to Shi Tong's recording. If someone told me that it was recorded by a native speaker, I would believe it, although I would wonder if it was a different accent than what I was used to. I do not hear it as /yʊŋ/, but rather with a schwa instead of the /ʊ/, which matches what I would expect of zhuyin ㄩㄥ and seems more in line with the underlying phonemes.

In pinyin, /ʊŋ/ is produced as contraction of "weng" either after an initial or as part of the conversion of /yəŋ/ into /jʊŋ./ (In case, the character does not display, I want to make clear that /yəŋ/ in the previous sentence has a schwa as the nuclear vowel). In other words, /ʊ/ has two roles: one as an allophone of two phonemes and one as an allophone of another single phoneme that follows a front semivowel.

[chrix]

Sorry about using the wrong conventions, I should have used //, then it's ok to use /u/. But if you do insist on further specifying the vowel quality, you probably should use [], so that would be [ʊ]

About the /y/: until I hear a native speaker say it or attest here that they really pronounce it that way, I won't believe it

I also find the quote from Matthews a bit confusing, but if we can corroborate that in the old Nanjing standard it was indeed /y/, it would provide a motivation for how it is spelt in zhuyin, but this would still be different from what's happening nowadays...

[Shi Tong]

Hello all

I just had someone completely random who hadn't read a single post in this thread listen to the audio file. Initially he thought it was yòu but then on the third attempt he remarked "or perhaps it's yòng". Admittedly, he was not a native speaker, so I would be interested to hear from native speakers on here whether they would recognise this as yòng and if yes, what flavour of Mandarin they speak.

Daan.. yeah, the recording kind of "fades" at the end- the ong sound is not as audible as it should be.

I tried recording it a few times, but it wouldn't come out clear enough, so that's my eqipment!!

Just to tidy this argument up, are we quibbling about the START of the word, or the END?

Seems like the main argument is over the start either sounding like a /y/ (?) or a /j/ (?), and the end sounding like an ong or an eng.

Now, in zhuyin, (since this is what I'm most used to and have practiced a lot of.. apologies!!) are we talking about the start being a y as in ㄧ(iong) or the start being an ㄩ or uong.. the u including the "umlout" sound.

Then, are we talking about the ong being an ㄥ, as in an ong sound (as in pong4 (touch)), or an ㄥ as in an eng sound (as in cheng2 (become))

I wish I could find a better article about the IPA, but the only one I seem to be able to find is a Wiki one, which isn't really that great- either that or I'm reading it badly!!

Edited March 19, 2010 at 10:21 AM by Shi Tong