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

[chrix]

Ah, I wasn't meaning to disagree with you on zhuyin. I agree that it's pretty useless unless you know a lot of Taiwanese people as they use it. As a learner, I've always preferred pinyin due to reasons of processing speed.

The original reason I started learning it was because back in the day, Traditional IME was only possible through Cangjie or Zhuyin. Also, the parser of Simplified IME is abominably bad, but now there's Sogou pinyin.. If you really get used to typing Zhuyin, you might also be able to type faster, as Zhuyin uses less graphs.

[Shi Tong]

Why are people so judgemental, and actually rude about Zhuyin and it's learners?

Just because someone doesn't like the use of pinyin, doesn't mean they're slow or stubborn, it just means they're different.

I personally like Zhuyin better, because to me it gives me the full pronunciation without any room for possibly getting it wrong- this means that if I'm reading something like suo or sou, I can get it wrong if I read it too fast, whereas with Zhuyin, I feel it's clearer.

Sure it's not as fast or as convinient to type it if you're without a bpmf keyboard, and pinyin is pretty handy, but I still make mistakes even now that I've been looking at it for a very long time.

Oh, and I dont see how it's so laborious to learn. Took me a week from a position of complete ignorance about Mandarin, Chinese and characters in general.

It's obviously not useful for showing any complete outsider how to pronounce something though.

Edited February 17, 2010 at 11:39 AM by Shi Tong

[skylee]

Why are people so judgemental, and actually rude about Zhuyin and it's learners?

Who are you referring to? I don't see anyone on this thread being judgemental or rude.

[Shi Tong]

skylee,

phonetic system has nothing to do with your pronunciation, unless you are a stubborn or inattentive learner and keep reading "q" as /k/ or something like that.

I feel this is rude. Just because someone might think that a q looks like a k, or a zh or z looks like they should start with a z sound, doesn't mean that they're stubborn or an inattentive learner.

It makes them different.

Consider those people (of which I am not one) who are dyslexic and may find Zhuyin much easier than these long scrawled pinyin words, which, to me, look like a mess sometimes.

[skylee]

Shi Tong, I don't see anything wrong with that reply. But then I am not you.

[HashiriKata]

Consider those people (of which I am not one) who are dyslexic and may find Zhuyin much easier than these long scrawled pinyin words, which, to me, look like a mess sometimes.

How do you know dyslexic people find Zhuyin easier than pinyin?

[Shi Tong]

I dont know. I was just thinking it might do, dyslexia, as I'm sure you know, involves jumbling up long complicated words because there are too many letters to a single word. I was thinking that Zhuyin takes away some of that problem.

skylee, if someone said to you:

you are a stubborn or inattentive learner

because you prefer one system to another, do you think this is rude?

[renzhe]

According to the wiki, different writing systems can indeed affect dyslexics differently:

From a neurological perspective, different types of writing, for example, alphabetic as compared to pictographic, require different neurological pathways in order to read, write and spell. Because different writing systems require different parts of the brain to process the visual notation of speech, children with reading problems in one language might not have a reading problem in a language with a different orthography. The neurological skills required to perform the tasks of reading, writing, and spelling can vary between different writing systems and as a result different neurological skill deficits can cause dyslexic problems in relation to different orthographies.

Is there any evidence that dyslexics find bopomofo easier in principle than pinyin? Both are extremely simple in terms of orthography.

BTW, dyslexia doesn't only affect long words, most common examples are very short words: dog-god, say-saw, that-than, etc.

[Lu]

Shi Tong, nobody said that people who prefer zhuyin are stubborn and unattentive. Do read again. The quote you refer to says that some learners may keep pronouncing pinyin q as /k/, and that that would be a result of being stubborn and inattentive. And that perhaps such learners might find zhuyin helpful because, presumably, they would find it easier to correctly pronounce unfamiliar symbols than to assign an unfamiliar pronounciation to symbols they already know.

People here are generally nice and tolerant. Once in a while someone slips up, or threads get mean, but generally, it works to assume everyone is acting in pretty good faith, and there's no Taiwan-bashing or zhuyin-bashing going on.

[skylee]

I might. But the statement in question is "phonetic system has nothing to do with your pronunciation, unless you are a stubborn or inattentive learner and keep reading "q" as /k/ or something like that". It is not "you are a stubborn or inattentive learner because you prefer one system to another". There is a phrase in Chinese called 對號入座 and it is silly to do so.

For me, zhuyin and pinyin are just tools. I read and write Chinese fluently so they are not really important to me. I only need pinyin for typing. I use it instead of using zhuyin or cangjie or other methods because it is easy and I don't need to learn anything else.

I find people rude when they call me a dialect speaker, implying that I am inferior, or say that I have Cantonese pride. But I let those things pass. Personally I don't find the comments on this thread offensive. But as I said I am not you.

[chrix]

-Yeah, I also disagree that the remark was unfair towards zhuyin users, maybe unfair towards dyslexic learners though.

But I doubt that zhuyin would be more helpful for people with dyslexia, a lot of symbols look quite similar to one another and might also lead to problems (I know dyslexic people who would constantly confuse b, d, p, q and so forth).

So for now that might be enough anecdotal evidence and let's not continue the dyslexia debate unless someone really digs up a study..

[chrix]

Also just to clarify my earlier post: I think zhuyin might have some systemic advantages over hanyu pinyin, but I still prefer hanyu pinyin for other reasons, namely it's ubiquitousness and the processing speed thing I mentioned. Though as I said, I actually enjoy using zhuyin to type Chinese...

And atitarev, I got my cell phone to use zhuyin too And since it's phonologically ordered just like it is on a computer keyboard, I have no problem using it even without stickers of any kind on either one...

[atitarev]

Good stuff, Chrix, I have yet to get a phone, which supports Chinese input (currently on a contract but may reflesh in the future), I can only read on mine. I meant, you need stickers, if you don't have the letters displayed. Stickers would come off quickly from a mobile, anyway.

Since you mentioned the advantage of Zhuyin over Pinyin because it has less graphs, Cyrillic has also this advantage over Roman - ch, sh, shch (Polish szcz), zh (French j), ya, yo, yu, ye, kh (Polish, Czech ch) are written in one letter in Russian - ч, ш, щ, ж, я, ё, ю, е, х (some letters are written as one Roman letter with diacritics in some Slavic languages using Roman).

[Shi Tong]

Is there any evidence that dyslexics find bopomofo easier in principle than pinyin? Both are extremely simple in terms of orthography.

BTW, dyslexia doesn't only affect long words, most common examples are very short words: dog-god, say-saw, that-than, etc.

Hello

Anecdotally again, my wife said that she'd not heard of dyslexia before she heard of it from a western state using Romanised characters.. that said, I dont think western states liked to say that people were dyslexic (just stupid), before, so maybe it's just not recognised as such yet.

This is anecdotal again though!

I did realise that short words were also a difficulty for dyslexic people, but not to that kind of extent. Interesting.

Shi Tong, nobody said that people who prefer zhuyin are stubborn and unattentive. Do read again. The quote you refer to says that some learners may keep pronouncing pinyin q as /k/, and that that would be a result of being stubborn and inattentive. And that perhaps such learners might find zhuyin helpful because, presumably, they would find it easier to correctly pronounce unfamiliar symbols than to assign an unfamiliar pronounciation to symbols they already know.

Well.. upon reading pinyin for the first time, and subsequently, I've done that kind of thing, especially when you have sounds like q and ch "grouped" togeher on occasions, and I still find it difficult to spell pinyin words sometimes too.

Maybe it's because I'm yet to have formal learning of pinyin, (which is about to change), and I picked it up a lot myself, but I've always found it a bit confusing.

I'm not dyslexic, but I did find it hard to read as a youngster, and I find the "unrelatedness" of Chinese really refreshing and helpful for a learner like me.. like zhuyin.

Though the sentance above isn't directed at someone in particular, I feel it's a little directed at people like me, who do prefer this system. I do feel a bit like I'm being accused of stubborness/ inattentiveness because I prefer Zhuyin and find pinyin confusing.

I personally think that's not very fair, because if someone is much better at zhuyin and really finds it easy to use (which I did and do.. all of my tests for my 3 months learning were over 93% mostly- reading, writing, zhuyin, speaking and listening), then saying that they're maybe not trying hard enough, when, to me, it's just confusing, is a bit unfair. Unattentive or stubborn would assume that the student was pretty poor at learning Chinese, and I certainly am not that!

People here are generally nice and tolerant. Once in a while someone slips up, or threads get mean, but generally, it works to assume everyone is acting in pretty good faith, and there's no Taiwan-bashing or zhuyin-bashing going on.

Maybe not, but the bias is towards the Chinese system of learning. It's not a bad thing, but it's that people say that one system is better than another, and that grates with my senses. IMO, there is no "better system", just different ones, and I think pinyin and simplified characters always get the best reviews because they're the "biggest".

"對號入座"

This is "due4 hao4 ru4 zuo4", correct?

I'll have to ask the wife about that one.. I can read it, but I've not heard it yet

I'm a little wary of using sayings in arguments, because I think for every saying there is an equal and opposite saying.

I think maybe the original wording should be changed, because personally I think that people work better using different rules and guidelines. Someone who keeps pronouncing "q" as "k" needs working on, and maybe a different system, not to be accused of stubborness or inattentiveness. Maybe it just doesn't "work" for them.

Maybe they will never be able to learn Mandarin, (I've known a lot of people like that!!), but it doesn't make them a bad learner, just because it wont go in, it means that they just cant do it- they're different.

I find people rude when they call me a dialect speaker, implying that I am inferior, or say that I have Cantonese pride.

What a silly attitude.. to me, Cantonese and Taiwanese (fujian hua) are more difficult, so therefore you're "smarter" aren't you??

But I doubt that zhuyin would be more helpful for people with dyslexia, a lot of symbols look quite similar to one another and might also lead to problems (I know dyslexic people who would constantly confuse b, d, p, q and so forth).

Not sure, and as you say, this is kind of dead end if there is no evidence, but, IMO,

ㄓㄨㄤ is a lot shorter and easier on the eye than Zhuang.. I'm not sure I've got that right.. but there you are!!

I even would go as far to say that, from a laowai perspective, why is Z pronounced as a J, a silent h, where is the "oooo" sound, and "ang" is supposed to be more like "ung", and that is the whole problem of a Romanised system. Sure it works, and it is unambiguous, IF YOU KNOW HOW TO USE IT, and IF YOU'RE GOOD AT IT.

atitarev, this is what makes a good system, IMO, one sound per symbol, otherwise you end up with doubles and triples of things which dont really add up properly, IMO!!

[renzhe]

Most people start learning Chinese by getting a good grounding in pinyin and going through all the initials and finals with a teacher until they can hear and pronounce them correctly.

I think that this is a reasonable thing to with any transcription method you intend to use. It's not surprising that you had some trouble with certain letters if you didn't go through this initial training phase. Just like people learning Spanish first go through the alphabet and the pronunciation of the letters that are specific to Spanish (like 'll' or 'y' or 'z'), or English people learning German ('g', 'ch', 's', 'z'...), people should do this when starting with pinyin ('q', 'z', 'zh'...)

And, as we discussed in a different thread, nobody is saying that Zhuyin is bad as a transcription system. It is perfectly fine for that purpose.

The argument is simply that pinyin has many other uses which Zhuyin cannot fill, and all of this put together make it a more attractive system to learn for the majority of us, even the ones learning in Taiwan. Pinyin can be typed on any keyboard or typewriter in the world, it can be represented in printed media everywhere in the world, it can be used to register your name almost anywhere in the world, and Zhuyin doesn't work for any of this. So, although Zhuyin is a fine as a transcription method and a learning aid, there are many other arguments supporting the use of pinyin, and they are good arguments.

I don't see why you find this offensive.

[chrix]

Not sure, and as you say, this is kind of dead end if there is no evidence, but, IMO,

ㄓㄨㄤ is a lot shorter and easier on the eye than Zhuang.. I'm not sure I've got that right.. but there you are

I don't see how this is a meaningful response to what I've said about easily confused symbols. Have a look at the zhuyin table again and look for similar symbols...

對號入座 should be in a good dictionary... And as I understand skylee here, this is meant here like the German saying "you don't have to wear this shoe" = "why do you take this personally"...

[Lu]

Well.. upon reading pinyin for the first time, and subsequently, I've done that kind of thing, especially when you have sounds like q and ch "grouped" togeher on occasions, and I still find it difficult to spell pinyin words sometimes too.

Maybe it's because I'm yet to have formal learning of pinyin, (which is about to change), and I picked it up a lot myself, but I've always found it a bit confusing.

Yes, that is most likely the reason. Being unfamiliar with a system can easily result in not fully understanding it and finding it confusing. Just like Zhuyin, pinyin is a fairly straightforward, logical* and easy system, but one has to learn it first. As you haven't really done that, it's perfectly normal that you don't really know how to use it. So perhaps it would be good to do that first, and then continue to discuss the merits and shortcomings of both systems. (For extra fun, throw in Wade-Giles.)

*I know it's not 100% logical, as has been discussed elsewhere, but it is fairly logical.

[Shi Tong]

for the majority of us, even the ones learning in Taiwan. Pinyin can be typed on any keyboard or typewriter in the world, it can be represented in printed media everywhere in the world, it can be used to register your name almost anywhere in the world, and Zhuyin doesn't work for any of this. So, although Zhuyin is a fine as a transcription method and a learning aid, there are many other arguments supporting the use of pinyin, and they are good arguments.

I don't see why you find this offensive.

Hello!

Well, I've never seen a school in Taiwan teaching pinyin, it's always zhuyin, but they do have it alongside the zhuyin/ chinese characters, so that foreign students get an idea of both. Personally, I feel that could be a method adopted elsewhere when people find pinyin a pain.

Zhuyin can also be input into a keyboard, easily, my wife only uses zhuyin keyboard input.

Granted, pinyin can be used to represent names across the world, but I dont think it's particularly relavant, Taiwanese people still have romanised versions of their names for passports etc. To be honest, it has no relevance. IMO, pinyin, wade giles, Taiwanese "crappo Romanisation" method and zhuyin mean nothing to anyone forign, and they will always mispronounce these sounds.

IMO, pinyin and zhuyin are only useful for learning Mandarin. How many times have you heard someone in the west pronounce Zhang as "zang" and/ or "chang" (Wade Giles), as "chang", when we Chinese learners all know how to say it? Also, lets not get started about people saying beijing with a soft French style j.

Granted, Zhuyin doesn't work for any of it, but how does pinyin help anyone? As I said, Taiwanese still have a Romanised version of their name too.. what's the difference here?

I do think there are many good applications to pinyin, but I dont think it makes it a better method, and I dont find it offensive, I just dont know why people have to make it a competition of what's better.

What I found offensive was the suggestion that learners like me, who prefer zhuyin and not pinyin could be suggested to be inattentive or stubborn.

I don't see how this is a meaningful response to what I've said about easily confused symbols. Have a look at the zhuyin table again and look for similar symbols...

Why not? Oh, and I'm not directly suggesting that people might find it hard to distinguish between the symbols, I'm suggesting that pinyin is longer and more complicated to write.

There are many similar looking symbols, but even with the longest words, there are only 3 zhuyin symbols.

What this means is that, for a half "phonetic" system like pinyin, where they cant spell one word with 3 symbols, you end up with words like zhuang, and IMO, that's 6 letters instead of 3= longer= more complicated.. pour moi.

對號入座 should be in a good dictionary... And as I understand skylee here, this is meant here like the German saying "you don't have to wear this shoe" = "why do you take this personally"...

"the correct number for the space to sit in".. "sit in the space that's right for your size"??

I get it now.

The arguement is that the suggestion is that people like this= inattentive/ stubborn. I am one of those people.

Maybe it's not directed right at me, but it's directed at people like me.

Yes, that is most likely the reason. Being unfamiliar with a system can easily result in not fully understanding it and finding it confusing.

I guess I'll have to do more understanding!!

Just like Zhuyin, pinyin is a fairly straightforward, logical* and easy system

I agree that it's pretty logical, if a bit confusing at times!

but one has to learn it first. As you haven't really done that, it's perfectly normal that you don't really know how to use it.

I'm just getting through a simplified character/ pinyin text book because I think I should probably get used to a more widely used system (even though I dont like it as much), it would be more practical.

Actually.. I think that's more what pinyin is- more practical- and more widely used- not better!!

So I will be doing that learning from the bottom up!

For extra fun, throw in Wade-Giles.

No thanks, Wade Giles is just as flawed as pinyin. I think there is no perfect romanisation system for almost any language because there are always more sounds than 26.

[renzhe]

Zhuyin can also be input into a keyboard, easily, my wife only uses zhuyin keyboard input.

This is OK if you carry your own keyboard around, but good luck finding a keyboard with zhuyin on it in a public library in Spain, or your workplace in France. That's what I meant.

Most people can't touch-type, and I'd expect that the number of people touch-typing zhuyin is quite low.

How many times have you heard someone in the west pronounce Zhang as "zang" and/ or "chang" (Wade Giles), as "chang", when we Chinese learners all know how to say it?

All the time.

You should hear them pronouncing French and German names incorrectly too. Or even English!

What pinyin does is make Chinese names just as printable as French or German (or English) names. If it's not a problem for German and French, then I don't think it's a problem for Chinese either.

[chrix]

Well, I've never seen a school in Taiwan teaching pinyin, it's always zhuyin, but they do have it alongside the zhuyin/ chinese characters, so that foreign students get an idea of both. Personally, I feel that could be a method adopted elsewhere when people find pinyin a pain.

A school teaching foreigners Mandarin only using zhuyin? I hope it isn't a university you are talking about, because even in Taiwan, for university-level CSL courses hanyu pinyin is standard (even if some freshly graduated instructors do not yet show a complete grasp of it).

Why not? Oh, and I'm not directly suggesting that people might find it hard to distinguish between the symbols, I'm suggesting that pinyin is longer and more complicated to write.

There are many similar looking symbols, but even with the longest words, there are only 3 zhuyin symbols.

What this means is that, for a half "phonetic" system like pinyin, where they cant spell one word with 3 symbols, you end up with words like zhuang, and IMO, that's 6 letters instead of 3= longer= more complicated.. pour moi.

Of course, nobody is disputing that zhuyin will be shorter. But apparently another issue dyslexic people might have is to confuse similar symbols, and zhuyin does have its share of them. But this doesn't necessarily mean hanyu pinyin would cause less problems, it might even be that zhuyin causes less problems, but due to political reasons we won't really have studies comparing the two systems under comparable conditions...

Edited February 19, 2010 at 01:14 PM by chrix