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

[chrix]

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.

renzhe, this is where I would beg to differ. Have a look at the keyboard layout of zhuyin, it's intuitive and your fingers can memorise in no time. 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]

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.

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

Well, I've never seen a school in Taiwan teaching pinyin,

Probably more for political reasons than practical ones.

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.

The only person suggesting that has been yourself. Look back at the original post in context. It's talking about how using a system with an alphabet isn't a detriment to your overall pronunciation, unless you are learning the system but insist on using the pronunciation of your own alphabet instead of the pronunciation of pinyin. If you keep insisting that yes, it really was directed at you (or "people like you"), then people will start thinking you are being inattentive and stubborn

I just dont know why people have to make it a competition of what's better.

I think what people don't like is when someone who has both stated and demonstrated on multiple occasions and in multiple threads that they have little knowledge or interest in pinyin, then makes claims that run contrary to the general experience of those who use it more regularly.

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

Sorry, but I don't buy the whole "all romanisations schemes are equally good" argument. Some are definitely better than others - both zhuyin and pinyin are better than Wade-Giles for example. For me, pinyin also has numerous advantages over zhuyin that have been enumerated well enough by others in this and other threads such that I won't repeat them all here. Now, I don't know what your definition of better is, but basically, if I draw up a list of pros/cons for each method, then for me pinyin has a higher number of pros and a lower number of cons compared to any other method, and for me, that makes it better. Everyone is different of course, and so you can expect some fluctuation of what system is better for what purpose, however I would suggest that pinyin is more widely used for a reason - and not just because of the influence of mainland China.

[chrix]

Wow, now it all makes sense

this thread is not the place to have a tutorial on the zhuyin keyboard layout. It is ordered according to logical and easy-to-understand principles. Of course the linguistics terms I used make it all look like it's very complicated but it's really not, it just groups similar sounds together in a more or less straightforward order (like the unaspirated above the aspirated etc.)

Well, I've never seen a school in Taiwan teaching pinyin,

Probably more for political reasons than practical ones.

As I said universities will teach hanyu pinyin and nothing else. Maybe some private schools run by uncertified instructors will use zhuyin because that's what Taiwanese people learn in their school system. (the original comment was referring to foreigners learning Mandarin, and not referring to schools for native speakers).

Sorry, but I don't buy the whole "all romanisations schemes are equally good" argument. Some are definitely better than others - both zhuyin and pinyin are better than Wade-Giles for example.

So what's wrong with Wade-Giles? I'm not talking about the stupid Postal WG, but about the proper apostrophed WG. I had to learn that as well, and didn't see a big problem with it particularly.

[imron]

So what's wrong with Wade-Giles?

Tones are mostly left out, but even when you include them WG uses tone numbers which I hate (one of the driving reasons behind Pinyinput ), and which make things cumbersome to read (compare Wei1-t'o3-ma3 P'in1-yin1 to Wēituǒmǎ Pīnyīn), so you are left with the equally undersirable options of leaving them out, or putting them in.

Secondly, WG is far more prone to bastardization than pinyin because the apostrophe plays such an important role but it is all too frequently left out. And I know that really I should be blaming the people who use it incorrectly and not the system itself, but if the system had been more robust, it wouldn't be prone to such abuse. Luckily the apostrophe in Hanyu Pinyin is relegated to a much smaller, and much simpler role, such that when people get it wrong (as they often do) it doesn't have a huge impact on readability.

Then, even with apostrophes, words look too similar to each other e.g. Ku-ting, K'u-ting and K'u-t'ing in Wade Giles, which are Guding, Kuding and Guting respectively in pinyin (example, shamelessly modified from pinyin.info). It's similar to the point Shi Tong made above about pinyin syllables looking too similar to each other, except in my view 100 times worse

So in summary, what I don't like about WG is that basically you either have something that is ugly but conceptually sound, or you drop everything that looks ugly but at the same time lose the accuracy of the system (which is the option most people take). That problem doesn't really exist with Hanyu Pinyin.

[chrix]

I agree that it's more "bastardisable", but from the p.o.v. of an English speaker it should feel much more natural, without all these extraneous x, q and zh and what not. Also it won't lead you into thinking that Chinese has voiced obstruents by avoiding the use of letters like b, d, g and so forth. But the time for WG has already passed, I was only arguing on its systemic merits, not on its practicality in this day and age...

[imron]

Actually, to me as a native English speaker, pinyin feels more natural. Even though pinyin has a couple of unnatural sounds, WG seems more unnatural because it swaps more things around (b is p and p is p', g is k and k is k' etc), plus it's also not short of unnatural combinations such as hs, tz etc. Also, just looking at a comparison table now, I'm reminded that WG maps both j and zh to the same letter combination, and q and ch also, which also counts as another negative in my book.

[chrix]

What do you mean, it swaps them around? "b" is not really "b", that's the problem with pinyin. They're all voiceless in Mandarin. So with WG, you could tell an English speaker, without an apostrophe they're just pronounced like in French without any aspiration, and with an apostrophe with strong aspiration, like in English.

ch isn't too big of a problem either as it's in complementary distribution, where followed by i and ü, it's j in pinyin, and where followed by other vowels it's "zh", and "hs" might mimic the way English speakers are taught to pronounce the sound.

Well, at the end of the day, one can't argue about what feels more natural I guess, and I can't believe I'd ever end up defending WG

[imron]

you could tell an English speaker, without an apostrophe they're just pronounced like in French without any aspiration

So basically, the only native English speakers who'll have a problem are those without a background in linguistics and French and which system is supposed to be more natural to the native English speaker again?

Personally, I also think that having a voiced b, is a smaller mistake than what happens the otherway round, when it ends up being pronounced as an English p, rather than the French p without any hopes and dreams (p.s. yes I know what aspiration means in the linguistic sense, but just so there's no misunderstanding that was a joke).

[chrix]

Back in the day any educated English speaker would have known French And it was a system developed by English speakers for English speakers (I think your preference for hanyu pinyin might cloud your judgement )

Anyway, WG is dead, so the debate is moot

[Kobo-Daishi]

Dear all,

If you're studying Chinese in traditional characters it would be a good aid in using the Far East Chinese-English Dictionary.

The Far East Chinese-English Dictionary

The Far East Chinese-English Dictionary is arguably the best Chinese-English dictionary in traditional characters out there.

The head character will have Hanyu Pinyin but all the words (ci) that fall under the head character will only have pronunciations in Zhuyin Fuhao.

sample page

Knowing Zhuyin Fuhao would save on having to look up characters that are unfamiliar.

They do have a simplified version that uses Hanyu Pinyin where the traditional version of the head character is next to the simplified version but the words (ci) won't have the traditional characters which is not much help for traditional learners.

The dictionary comes in three sizes. Try not to get the concise version as it doesn't include the sample sentences in the more expensive large edition.

I have the concise edition but never learned to read Zhuyin Fuhao.

There are flashcard sets for learning Zhuyin Fuhao but I never bothered.

Supposedly, learning to read Korean Hangul only takes an hour or two so I suppose Zhuyin Fuhao shouldn't take any longer to master.

Also Zhuyin Fuhao would be a help in reading annotated editions of old texts published on Taiwan as characters with more than one reading would have the reading in Zhuyin Fuhao for the intended meaning. They did in the old days. Don't know if they use Pinyin nowadays.

According to a February 17, 2010 Agence France Presse (AFP) article titled "Taiwan to Challenge China's 'Soft Power'" found at the mysinchew.com web site, President Ma Ying-jeou has told the Cabinet-level Council for Cultural Affairs to work out a plan for establishing a string of "Taiwan Academies" around the world in a race with Beijing to promote traditional Chinese language and culture.

Taiwan to Challenge China's 'Soft Power'

I wonder if they'll use Hanyu Pinyin to teach Chinese or Zhuyin Fuhao.

Both?

Kobo-Daishi, PLLA.

[chrix]

Kobo-Daishi,

I'm happy you posted a sample of the comprehensive version, because I'm not happy with the concise version at all, chiefly due to its lack of example sentences. But I have to disagree with you, neither do I think it's the best traditional dictionary available (even if it included the example sentences, the number of words/characters is still too little), nor is it true that all fantizi versions are zhuyin only. Last time I was in Taiwan I bought a pinyin-ordered edition of the Far Eastern dictionary that consistently uses traditional characters (I also have the standard radical-ordered zhuyin-centric version, but as you move on from the character to the word phase, a pinyin-ordered dictionary is so much more effective than a radical-ordered one). (The best traditional dictionaries IMHO are the MOE Chinese only dictionary and the 21st century Great Chinese-English Dictionary, the version published in Taiwan).

Due to its limitations, I mainly use the Far Eastern dictionary to carry it around in my pocket (the pinyin-ordered dictionary is also a pocketsize edition), and to check if a given word or character belongs to the "basic vocabulary".

Now as for your bit about the "Taiwan Academies", I think if university-level CSL courses are any indication to go by, they will strictly use hanyu pinyin and not teach zhuyin at all (or just mention it in passing maybe). Taiwan Mandarin has an uphill battle anyways globally, and while people might still be amenable to "put up with" traditional characters, using zhuyin would be too much. Maybe it would work in Southeast Asia, but we all know the reason why...

Edited February 20, 2010 at 02:11 PM by chrix

[Kobo-Daishi]

Dear Chrix,

I didn't write that I thought it was the best Chinese dictionary in traditional characters or that all traditional character dictionaries used Zhuyin only.

I wrote that it's "arguably the best Chinese-English dictionary in traditional characters out there".

Is there a better Chinese-English traditional character dictionary with a greater number of words/characters?

Does the Pinyin ordered edition have more characters?

I haven't been in the market for a Chinese-English dictionary since I bought the F.E. C-E dictionary nearly 20 years ago so didn't know there was a traditional character edition of the 21st Century Great Chinese-English Dictionary. I suppose it has more characters than the Far East dictionary.

And I wouldn't know why Taiwan Mandarin Chinese would play in Southeast Asia while it wouldn't work elsewhere.

Kobo-Daishi, PLLA.

[chrix]

As far as I understand the pinyin-ordered edition is identical in number of characters/words to the other ones, but also without example sentences... Yes, the 21st century dictionary (not the concise edition!) has a far greater coverage of characters, words and idioms, and is also replete with explanation of usage and example sentences...

Well, look at the situation of foreign labourers (and foreign exchange students too) coming to Taiwan, and you'll see why. Also, if you look at TOP (the Taiwanese equivalent of the HSK) testing sites, you'll see that TOPs are regularly sat for throughout Southeast Asia, but outside of that it's hard to get by any concrete info on test dates etc...

[Kobo-Daishi]

Dear all,

A knowledge of Zhuyin Fuhao would also be of help when using one of the two online versions of the Guoyu Cidian put out by the Republic of China (Taiwan)'s Ministry of Education.

The online Guoyu's don't do Hanyu Pinyin lookups.

Kobo-Daishi, PLLA.

[atitarev]

I wish they (China and Taiwan) would start talking to each other about textbooks for overseas students, methods to use, etc. Well, in mainland China, they accommodate for people wishing to learn traditional characters or, at least, to be exposed to both and there are textbooks (like NPCR) in fantizi, the jiantizi version has fantizi texts at the end. There is some work going on making the dictionaries combined, smoothing out the vocabulary differences or making both PRC and Taiwan words known to learners.

Re: "Taiwan to Challenge China's 'Soft Power'"

Zhuyin is less popular with foreign students, I think they may have problem using it for promoting learning Chinese.

[chrix]

A knowledge of Zhuyin Fuhao would also be of help when using one of the two online versions of the Guoyu Cidian put out by the Republic of China (Taiwan)'s Ministry of Education.

that may be so, but I don't think that dictionary alone would be a reason to learn zhuyin, but as I said above, if you have a lot of contact to Taiwanese people or even live in Taiwan, zhuyin will be useful, and that dictionary is just one of those things...

I personally use the MOE dictionaries a lot, but I've used the zhuyin lookup very very rarely, and that's due to another feature of the dictionary: if you enter a character (or a string of characters), it will list all words that have that character (or that string), regardless of the position.

[Shi Tong]

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

I know my wife can, and I'm pretty sure that most of her generation can touch type zhuyin too.

TBH, I type zhuyin vary rarely, but I think that even I remember most of the order, since it's very logical.

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.

As I've said before, they have Romanised names in Taiwan too. What difference does Fung Shi Tong and Fang Xi Tong make to someone pronoucing this in the UK or elsewhere?

What difference does it even make if they use Wade Giles?

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).

I was taught Zhuyin at wenhua daxue, remember this was about 9-10 years ago. They did have (and do) have pinyin in shiting huayu, but I wasn't taught pinyin.

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...

Yes, but does it make no difference to you that I (a Mandarin learner), has trouble with pinyin due to the length of the words and the strange pronunciations attached to sounds that I'm so used to seeing in English?

I understand that it would be better to have a study, but we dont have that luxury.

Probably more for political reasons than practical ones.

Hold on, I'm on the phone to ma ying jiu asking him........ He says it's not.

Look back at the original post in context. It's talking about how using a system with an alphabet isn't a detriment to your overall pronunciation, unless you are learning the system but insist on using the pronunciation of your own alphabet instead of the pronunciation of pinyin.

Fine.

I think what people don't like is when someone who has both stated and demonstrated on multiple occasions and in multiple threads that they have little knowledge or interest in pinyin, then makes claims that run contrary to the general experience of those who use it more regularly.

The only other person I've met on here so far that claims to use Zhuyin regularly is Chrix, and he seems pretty well respected around here, being an admin and a regular poster.

Not only that, but he claims to like zhuyin. If zhuyin was such a bad system, then why would someone who was an admin and regular poster say that kind of thing?

I'm not even suggesting that people who like pinyin are "wrong" or "bad" or "stupid" for liking it, I'm suggesting that these people may not have experience with zhuyin, so why not either a) give it a try, or B) accept that it's a valid useful system with a lot of benefits to it's users.

My point is not to try to say that one system is fundamentally better than the other, but that one of these systems may offer some really useful elements for people like me who find the other too difficult to use.

Sorry, but I don't buy the whole "all romanisations schemes are equally good" argument. Some are definitely better than others - both zhuyin and pinyin are better than Wade-Giles for example. For me, pinyin also has numerous advantages over zhuyin that have been enumerated well enough by others in this and other threads such that I won't repeat them all here. Now, I don't know what your definition of better is, but basically, if I draw up a list of pros/cons for each method, then for me pinyin has a higher number of pros and a lower number of cons compared to any other method, and for me, that makes it better. Everyone is different of course, and so you can expect some fluctuation of what system is better for what purpose, however I would suggest that pinyin is more widely used for a reason - and not just because of the influence of mainland China.

Sorry, where did I say that I thought all romanisation schemes are equally good?

I said:

I think there is no perfect romanisation system for almost any language because there are always more sounds than 26.

Now prove me wrong.

I also agree with Chrix that Wade Giles is no better than pinyin, they both suffer with the "trying to be phonetic" problem. Pinyin may be generally easier to read due to the fact that you dont have to add tons of commas, but they're basically a very similar system.

Tell me again, why are you trying to make pinyin "better" than zhuyin? This is what I find confusing.

For myself, and probably a lot of other people, if they were to list out pros and cons for zhuyin vs pinyin, they would have a longer list for zhuyin. Personally, I think that it would make more sense in Taiwan if they used pinyin on the street signs with Chinese characters and zhuyin when teaching phonetic to kids and foreign learners. It would even make more sense for them to use pinyin for their names, but they dont.

It doesn't make any sense, however, to suggest that foreigners find it easier to pronounce or to spell, since, as I said before (for example)-- cheng bay low and zheng pei lao are the "same thing" to anyone who has never learned Chinese before.

Actually, to me as a native English speaker, pinyin feels more natural. Even though pinyin has a couple of unnatural sounds, WG seems more unnatural because it swaps more things around (b is p and p is p', g is k and k is k' etc), plus it's also not short of unnatural combinations such as hs, tz etc. Also, just looking at a comparison table now, I'm reminded that WG maps both j and zh to the same letter combination, and q and ch also, which also counts as another negative in my book.

In review of the above, I agree with Imron here.. these issues do make WG more annoying for pronunciation purposes. Especially the bp/ gk thing.

However, I would say that "hs" and "tz" make more sense for phonetic pronunciation for me, the sound Xi starts with a hiss in the mouth (where the H comes from), and says an S sound afterwards, so to me, hs makes sense.

Tz makes much more phonetic sense than "C" to me, how many people have called the villain in Three Kingdoms "Cow Cow"? "Tz" sounds more like "t" and "s", and would make your tongue make a pinyin "c" sound IMO.

at the end of the day, one can't argue about what feels more natural I guess, and I can't believe I'd ever end up defending WG

And this kind of makes my point here.. what feels more natural.

Of course, people who start with zhuyin or pinyin would probably end up saying one or the other is more natural and therefore be biased towards them.

bpmf in pinyin makes more sense to me than WG's version, but then hs and tz more sense to me in WG.

What makes most sense to me is zhuyin.

I wish they (China and Taiwan) would start talking to each other about textbooks for overseas students, methods to use, etc. Well, in mainland China, they accommodate for people wishing to learn traditional characters or, at least, to be exposed to both and there are textbooks (like NPCR) in fantizi, the jiantizi version has fantizi texts at the end. There is some work going on making the dictionaries combined, smoothing out the vocabulary differences or making both PRC and Taiwan words known to learners.

I agree with this, but also, have you considered that Taiwan also has a lot of help for jianzi?

I have a 3000 chinese character far east dictionary, and they list everything in zhuyin, pinyin, traditional and simplified characters. It seems to me like they should offer the whole lot to help people if they're struggling with one system or one idea.

For an example, I just started learning simplified characters on Sunday, and I find some of the radicals really confusing in simplified terms. I'm sure I will get used to it, but it seems to make less sense to me.

Why not offer everyone everything, especially if they're struggling with one system, to help them make their own sense of it?

I don't think that dictionary alone would be a reason to learn zhuyin

Chrix.. just out of interest, how long did it take you to master Zhuyin, because it really only took me a week (at the most) with the 4 tones.

Sure, if you want to avoid it, you can, and if you dont want to "waste" a week, great, but IMO, it's very easy..

[renzhe]

We are going around in circles again. You're arguing that Zhuyin has its advantages as a transcription system, and that for some people (including you) it is the more intuitive way to write Chinese phonetically. For other people (including me), pinyin is more intuitive by far, but this is a matter of taste. Both systems fulfill this purpose well, as long as you have learned them properly from the beginning.

However, the facts are that:

- pinyin serves more purposes than zhuyin, which have been listed before

- far more people are familiar with pinyin than zhuyin. I've never met a person who knew zhuyin, and outside Taiwan, this is bound to be a rarity.

- pinyin is far more widespread than zhuyin. Count the number of websites using pinyin and zhuyin. Count the number of learning materials. Number of dictionaries

- pinyin is the standard used by most international bodies to romanise Chinese, including the UN

The short story is -- you MUST know pinyin. You can and should use zhuyin if you prefer it, but you don't have to know zhuyin.

Sure, you can use bopomofo/zhuyin to transcribe Chinese, and learn a bopomofo keyboard layout for typing, and use a bastardised, improvised Wade-Giles for transcribing names, and use Tongyong pinyin for city names, and use four-corner lookup for dictionaries, and you'd have all the bases covered. And you would STILL have to learn pinyin because that's what the rest of the world uses.

Or you can simply learn pinyin and be done with it.

For this reason, many of us find pinyin to simply be far more important, and anecdotes about English speakers being confused by "c" pale in comparison next to all these reasons.

[Lu]

For the record, I know zhuyin and use it to type (as this computer doesn't know pinyin). Not saying that it's not useful for Taiwanese, who have used it all their lives, but for typing I definitely prefer pinyin. Zhuyin is much slower, and if it's not a Taiwanese keyboard, it slows down even further. Shi Tong, perhaps you should try touch-typing zhuyin sometime, see how easy you really find it.

As I've said before, they have Romanised names in Taiwan too. What difference does Fung Shi Tong and Fang Xi Tong make to someone pronoucing this in the UK or elsewhere?

What difference does it even make if they use Wade Giles?

With pinyin, I (and all other Chinese) can write down a person's name on hearing it, and say it on seeing it. With all the bastardized romanisations used in Taiwan, you always have to guess what on earth their name might really be. (To illustrate what a mess Taiwanese romanization of names is: you don't like pinyin, you do like Taiwan, and yet you spell the name of Taiwan's president different from how the man himself has decided to spell it.) Hanyu pinyin would be nice here, but if they would only be consistent I'd gladly settle for Tongyong.

I also agree with Chrix that Wade Giles is no better than pinyin, they both suffer with the "trying to be phonetic" problem. Pinyin may be generally easier to read due to the fact that you dont have to add tons of commas, but they're basically a very similar system.

As far as I know pinyin is not trying very hard to be phonetic. It makes an attempt to write sounds with the letters most widely used to represent them (the vowels, b p d t m n and a few more), but certainly doesn't go out of its way (x, c, -ui, -iu).

Anyway, what else are we disagreeing about? Whether pinyin is better than zhuyin? In representing the Chinese language, both are fine; in use, pinyin is more useful (typing, passports, writing down names, etc).

[skylee]

The short story is -- you MUST know pinyin.

This is not true, I am afraid. You can skip both pinyin and zhuyin by learning the language and characters direct (as for kids). I didn't use any of these tools when I learnt Chinese. And there are a LOT of people who use and type Chinese everyday without knowing either system. They type Chinese using Cangjie or stroke order input or via a writing pad.

That said, I use pinyin, simply because I find it easy.