Texts with Zhuyin Fuhao (BoPoMoFo) online

[atitarev]

I was surprised not to be able even a few online books with a phonetic guide in Zhuyin Fuhao (BoPoMoFo). Maybe they are all saved as graphics? I've got some books for kids but I'd like to download something as text, so that I could use electronic dictionaries.

Is Bopomofo dying or is it only used in printed paper and very little online?

Just one good resource I know using Bopomofo (+ 2 versions of Pinyin):

http://edu.ocac.gov.tw/biweekly/animation1/index.htm

[tuxoar]

I been in Taiwan for over a year now and the only place you see BMPF is in text books and some buddhist scriptures (specially printed by local buddhist groups here for when they read sutras). Other than using it to type, it is almost never used in daily life.

As far as online, I can't really be of much help, I never really found anything online of significant worth.

I don't mean to start another pronunciation system war but... Can I ask why you want to study it?

[Lu]

I did a quick google search and found nothing. Seems there are no bopomofo texts online, and I too only ever saw it used in children's books and the Guoyu Ribao.

Makes sense though, like pinyin, zhuyin is only a tool, a means to an end, the end being reading and writing characters. Why would anyone write in zhuyin if they can write characters.

But it's by no means dying, afaik kids are still taught Chinese with it, and it's used in newspapers and commercials and the like to write words that have no generally accepted characters.

tuxoar: can't speak for other people, but I learned zhuyin because it's the most widely used system here in Taiwan. The effort of learning it is minimal, and it comes in useful.

[tuxoar]

I don't disagree, it is widely used in Taiwan and does come in handy occaisionally. I learned it once I got here. I think the effort I put into learing was worth it. To me it was useful for dictionaries and the myriad of classical chinese texts that I was burying myself in when furriner chinese class got too boring. So anyway, good for you taking the time and learning it, makes us more versatile

[semantic nuance]

Makes sense though, like pinyin, zhuyin is only a tool, a means to an end, the end being reading and writing characters. Why would anyone write in zhuyin if they can write characters

Quite right. Books with zhuyin are mostly for children who cannot read all the characters. Only a tool to help understand the pronuciation.

I been in Taiwan for over a year now and the only place you see BMPF is in text books and some buddhist scriptures (specially printed by local buddhist groups here for when they read sutras).

Buddhist scriptures are characters transliterated from Sanskrit, so they need bpmf the phonetic system we learn in Taiwan to help read these difficult words.

Links for texts with bpmf: please click

pronunciation learning

Chinese learning for kids-elementary

Children's Chinese Reader

Global Chinese Language and Culture Center

Hope it helps!

ADDED: E-Newsletter subscription for understanding Aboriginals in Taiwan (with bpmf)

This article is from that subscription.

[atitarev]

Hi all, thanks for your answers.

Thanks for the nice links, Semantic nuance

I don't mean to start another pronunciation system war but... Can I ask why you want to study it?

No need to start wars, Tuxoar. I can afford to learn another system, even if just for the heck of it. Just because it may come in handy, as it does at the moment. I like the short stories book (for kids) I borrowed. It's in traditional Chinese and it uses Zhuyin Fuhao. I prefer Hanyu Pinyin too but I wish to broaden my horizons and learn ㄅㄆㄇㄈ.

[aafrophone]

i'm learning mandarin from this taiwan site thing (so with traditional characters) and next to each character is teh BoPoMoFo pronunciation. it kinda helps b/c its not as vague to me as Pinyin (b/c i'm having issues with pinyin...) but it helps me. i understand how most learners dont' want to learn it so my suggestion, if you don't need to learn them, dont.

PDF file of the text thing from Taiwain that i'm learning from:

http://edu.ocac.gov.tw/interact/ebook/digitalpublish/MPDF%5CE-H-N.pdf

[atitarev]

Thanks a lot! No wonder, I couldn't find resources myself - Zhuyin Fuhao 注音符號 / 注音符号 is published as image.

There are also some stories in Chinese with Bopomofo in gif image files with English translations (also images).

--

Perhaps, it's too difficult to make vertical scripts on a web site, although, I tried converting a Word document with Zhuyin Fuhao as ruby (furigana) into an HTML file. The Bopomofo characters become horizontal in HTML.

Well, Japanese are not too fussed, they use both horizontal (if vertical is not practical or if the text is mixed with another script) and vertical (more traditional)

See attached screenshots - vertical (from MS Word) and horizontal (converted to HTML):

They could do it in horizontal, if vertical is not feasible. I'd prefer this to image files but, anyway, the site is great. Not sure if this is true but they say Arabic was only rendered as images on the web until year 2,000 - there were problems with right-to-left directions.

--

Not sure what happened with my tone marks in the second word

[JimmySeal]

I don't understand why, in this day and age, the browser giants (Microsoft & Mozilla) and the W3C haven't made any substantial effort towards making ruby text standard. As it is, people have to resort to using images, or placing the pronunciation in parentheses after the characters. Both pretty ugly solutions, especially if one is doing it after every character.

[atitarev]

Chinese

Japanese

Russian

Arabic

Korean

你好

nǐhǎo (ㄋㄧˇㄏㄠˇ)

今日は

こんにちは (konnichi-wa)

Привет

Privet

مرحبا

marHaba

안녕하세요

annyeong haseyo

[aafrophone]

actually, Firefox has a plug in that converts pronunciation parenthesis into furigana (ruby character) for japanese. idk if it works for BoPoMoFo as well or not

Also, there are certain traditional fonts (i have downloaded one) where each character has the zhuyin fuhao with each character. the one i downloaded is called.... [checks microsoft word]... HanWangKaiMediumChuIn and found it here: http://www.wazu.jp/gallery/Fonts_ChineseTraditional.html

and this is a sample of the font:

http://www.wazu.jp/gallery/views/View_HanWangKaiMediumChuIn.html

[aafrophone]

oh yea, i found the add on for firefox (for whoever wants it)

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1935

[atitarev]

Aafrophone, In my previous I mentioned this plug-in (the actual development site).

Hmm, interesting, fonts with Bopomofo embedded. You can't change the readings, if it's different, can you? But interesting, anyway. Thanks.

[aafrophone]

oops, sorry about that :-D

[JimmySeal]

I misspoke about Microsoft, but as for Mozilla, I don't consider a feature to be supported if it requires a 3rd party plugin. If you ask me, it should be a W3C standard.

Nobody's going to bother writing HTML with Ruby tags if they're only supported to this degree.

[atitarev]

...it should be a W3C standard.

It is too:

http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/REC-ruby-20010531/

Mozilla is behind in making it standard but they might do it in the future.

Aafrophone, no worries

I fixed my Ruby example on the first page, feel free to try, I like it. Looks cooler in MS IE, although it doesn't have any bells and whistles, just a Furigana (Ruby) test. You need to save with UTF-8 encoding (I used MS Visual Studio .Net)

Here's the result of the HTML code.

[semantic nuance]

Here's another online audio picture books for children (audio texts with zhuyin) :

有聲圖畫故事書

Hope it helps!

[atitarev]

Nice link, Semantic nuance, thanks

[Raser]

Hello. I would like to know how did you do this vertical zhuyin from MS word?
The only available information on net is for Macbook. How do you do that in Windows 10 laptop? 
Please email me, I really need to learn how to do that. Thank you so much. (raseralfante2@gmail.com)