The best Romanisation System for Mandarin<>English

[shibo77]

Which Romanisation System for Mandarin-English do you think is the best? Why do you think it is the best. Please don't take politics into account, just from a linguistic side of view. Here is a list of systems I know of:

1 Wade-Giles

2 Chinese Post Office System

3 Gwoyeu Romatzyh

4 Juyin 2

5 Yale

6 Hanyu Pinyin

7 Tongyong Pinyin

8 Why not just use IPA symbols?

9 Your own system, describe it.

I am a big advocate for IPA symbols, it is internatinal and avoids politics, but the bad part is that a lot of the lettres doesn't exist on the computer. My second choice would be Hanyu Pinyin, it has proven itself to be quite popular. Also, if you compare these systems to their representative IPA symbols, Hanyu Pinyin is the closest. I would be happy to hear your opinions!

- Shibo remember, avoid politics...

[shibo77]

One more system that I forgot:

10 Latinhua Sin Wenz (Beila)

- Shibo

[Altair]

You pose an interesting question.

There are three things you may want to consider before you receive your answers.

First, whose point of view are you asking for. In other words, what do you presume to be the purpose behind the transcription system? Are you talking about the best system to use as a national script, or the best system for English speaking learners of Chinese, or both? Of course, there is politics imbedded in my questions, since the mere creation, promotion, or adoption of a system implies some political intent. Also, did you have a specific intent behind your reference to English in the phrase "Mandarin-English"?

Second, why not use the poling function of the board?

Third, would it be possible to use a suitably representative sentence and display it in the nine formats listed? I think it would be interesting to see the same things side by side. This might be a challenge for many browsers, however, since I have not yet figured out how to conveniently generate or view the proper accents for Pinyin.

I am unfamiliar with systems 2 and 7 and so must leave them out of consideration. Of the other systems, I would vote for Hanyu Pinyin as a system for national education, given the political, cultural, and technological realities of the world we live in. I would vote for Yale for teaching English-speaking beginners. I would vote for Zhuyin Fuhao (I hope this is the same as the Zhuyin 2 you referenced) as the most suitable means of writing Mandarin without reference to international realities.

[shibo77]

Hello Altair! Right, sorry, it was my first day accepted onto this forum, so I don't know how to use these functions properly, but I thought I could just wait for people's replies with their reasons. Anyways, I will try my best to rewrite my question, with example sentences behind them.

I wrote specifically Mandarin<--->English because there are different systems for Romanisation between different languages. Mandarin<--->French has a system called EFEO, Mandarin<--->German has a system called Lessing-Othmer. Obviously I need to specify which European language I am asking for. Mandarin<--->English systems are the best known, and pretty much has spread to other languages as well, so I chose Mandarin<--->English.

Another thing, Romanisation means rendering an original non-Latin script into Latin scripts. In simpler words, rendering a script such as Chinese, Russian, Japanese, Arabic, Thai, Korean, Farsi, Amharic... into the lettres which I am typing with, namely the Latin script, developped by the Latins in Italy a few thousand years ago.

With this regard, 注音符号 Zhuyin Fuhao (originally 注音字母 Zhuyin Zimu), which is very popular in Taiwan, isn't a form of Romanisation because it does not change Chinese script into Latin script.

Here is a short history of the different systems:

威妥玛式 Wade-Giles First devised in 1867 by British ambassador to China TF Wade when he published the first Mandarin Chinese textbook in English. It was refined by HA Giles in 1912.

FOREIGN NATIONS: In foreign countries, 威妥玛式Wade-Giles was the main romanisation used for Mandarin Chinese until 1998, when it was completely switched over to 汉语拼音Hanyu Pinyin. Of course, each nations' "switching year" varies.

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TAIWAN: In Taiwan, it is the de facto system used to romanise people's names. Although the government's standard is to use 通用拼音Tongyong Pinyin. And until 1998, for place names and street names, when it was also switched to 通用拼音Tongyong Pinyin. Most Taiwanese do not know how to use the 威妥玛式Wade-Giles system properly.

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MAINLAND ("Imperial standard"): The need for the 清Qing (Ch'ing) Imperial Government to choose a standard system to romanise Chinese came when it issued the first postage stamps and started post marking the lettres. The Imperial government devised a system, 郵局政式 Postal Office System. Before this system, 威妥玛式Wade-Giles was the standard among the English and Americans living in China. Many people today confuse this with the Wade-Giles system. Here are some examples:

Chinese/ 清郵政式Postal Office System / 威妥玛式Wade-Giles System

北京 Peking / Pei3-ching1

青岛 Tsingtao / Ch'ing1-tao3

胶州 Kiaochow / Chiao1-chou1

重庆 Chungking / Ch'ung2-ch'ing4

新疆 Sinkiang / Hsin1-chiang1

The Post Office System did not include tones, they were merely a system used for place names. The Wade-Giles system marked the tones, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, but which looked like an exponent on the top right at the end of the word.

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MAINLAND,TAIWAN ("Nationalist standard"): The Nationalist government instituted the 注音字母Zhuyin Zimu "Phonetic Alphabet" at the Conference on Unification of Pronounciation in 1913. It was renamed in 1925 with no change, 國音字母Guoyin Zimu "National Phonetic Alphabet". Renamed again in 1930 with no change, 國語注音符号Zhuyin Fuhao "Mandarin Phonetic Symbols". This is not a romanisation system. Meanwhile for romanisations, 威妥玛式Wade-Giles was the accepted standard. The Nationalist government's need to develop a romanisation system led to the 國語罗馬字Gwoyeu Romatzyh "National Language Roman Characters" in 1928, developped by a committee led by YR Chao. It did not use any accents or numbers to represent the tones, instead it changed the spelling of each word to represent tones. However, the rules were very complex. This system was carried into Taiwan by the Nationalist government. And was replaced by 國語注音符号第二式 Juyin-2 (Mandarin Phonetic Symbols-2), finalised in 1986. Juyin-2 used the same accents as 汉语拼音Hanyu Pinyin, the difference was that tone 5 was marked with a dot below the lettre, whereas 汉语拼音Hanyu Pinyin doesn't mark tone 5. This system was still cumbersome compared with the success of Hanyu Pinyin developped bythe Communist government, naturally the Cold War stance called upon them, and The Taipei government developped a new system in 1998, called 通用拼音Tongyong Pinyin. This is almost an exact copy of 汉语拼音Hanyu Pinyin, but 81 out of the 317 possible syllables are romanised differently. Same accent marks as 第二式Juyin-2. As said before, the popularity of 通用拼音Tongyong Pinyin is still quite low, most places in Taiwan still use 威妥玛式Wade-Giles, even though many are romanised incorrectly. I don't know which system would be sponsored by the Democratic Progressive Party newly in power.

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MAINLAND ("Communist standard"): Before the establishment of the People's Republic, the "Chinese Soviet Government" with headquarters in Yanan, Shaanxi, used a system devised by Qu Qiubai in 1929, which was finalised by a committee in 1931, called 拉丁話新文字 Latinhua Sin Wenz (aka Beila). This replaced 威妥玛式Wade-Giles in the "Soviet government". And was itself replaced by 汉语拼音Hanyu Pinyin in 1958. It continues unchanged until this day in the People's Republic, and Singapore. It is also replacing 威妥玛式Wade-Giles in foreign nations.

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I think that there might be more systems in the past, especially from the 晚清 late Qing Dynasty. Any more information concerning this, I would greatly appreciate!!

My question again:

Which Romanisation system do you think is the best for Mandarin<--->English, and why do you think so? Mostly from the view of English-speaking students learning Mandarin Chinese, or simply from the viewpoint of a native Mandarin speaker, such as myself.

1 Wade-Giles / Pei³-ching¹

2 Post Office System / Peking

3 Gwoyeu Romatzyh / Beeijing

4 Juyin-2 / Beĭjīng

5 Latinhua Sin Wenz / Pei³jing¹

6 Yale / Bei³jying¹

7 Hanyu Pinyin / Beĭjīng

8 Tongyong Pinyin / Beĭjīng

9 Why not just use IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet)?

/ (definitely will not show up correctly, so I have omitted it here)

10 Your own system, please describe it!

Hopefully, the exponents and accents will show up correctly here. Sorry for choosing a stupid example, it is the only word that I have examples for all 9 systems. Thanks for your opinions!

I hope this helped!

- Shibo

[ax]

where is the poll now

I'm a hanyupinyin evangelist, but since I live here in taipei, I still give way to Zhuyinfuhao, but nay to tongyongpinyin.

Why I chose hanyupinyin?

1. More and more text book are geared towards hanyupinyin.

2. I can use any windows OS and have pinyin available as IME.

3. Since I'm wellversed with Qwerty keyboard, typing in pinyin is faster than having to memorize new keyboard such as zhuyinfuhao.

ax

[hparade]

wow, the above post is quite imformative about the history of "romanization" of Chinese

[eric]

i think pinyin (hanyu?) is the most common form of romanization, so it's probably also the best choice. (you could use IPA or your own set, but remember, it's just representative anyway)

[smithsgj]

http://www.ca.taipei.gov.tw/civil/english/p052.htm

The only reasons for not adopting Hanyu Pinyin are political. All the other systems are rubbish. The system is recognized by the ISO and even the Taipei city government.

The only systemic problem with HP is that initial consonants like 'b' and 'g' appear to English native speakers to be voiced, when in fact they are merely unaspirated. That's why WG writes Beijing as Peiching. But then you need messy diacritics to distinguish Peiching from P'eich'ing (which would be Peiqing in HP).

Hanyu Pinyin *does* now indicate tone 5, and the tone marks are officially represented as numbers following the segmental transcription, and not as diacritics (accents) any more.

If you want a system that mimics English orthography, along the lines of the French- and German-speaker oriented systems you mention, then Yale is probably the best choice. But why not go for a system that's language neutral? It's a representation of Chinese, not of English, that's wanted! (To be honest, I think your choice of title for this thread betrays a lack of understanding of the issue -- even though you obviously know a lot about the various systems.)

IPA? IPA is capable of showing a far greater degree of detail than necessary: like the different 'r' in initial and final position, to name only one. Therefore, you have to adopt the broad phonemic type of IPA transcription, and that means you have to decide what the phonemes are in Mandarin and what IPA symbols to use for them. This is non-trivial: there's no pre-packaged IPA system waiting there for you to use!

[ax]

for indonesian, it's easier to read 北京 as peicing

and 判斷 as phantuan.

Let me make a simple map for confusable letters in indonesian.

pinyin indonesian

==============

b p

p ph

g k

k kh

d t

t th

j c

q chi

x sh

zh

ch these thre consonants doesn't exist in indonesian, there's

sh enough confusion on how to spell it.

ri j

z I don't know how this three map to indonesian either

c

s

ax

[roddy]

he only systemic problem with HP is that initial consonants like 'b' and 'g' appear to English native speakers to be voiced

Sounds like a systemic problem with English native speakers rather than with Hanyu pinyu to me . .

Hanyu Pinyin *does* now indicate tone 5, and the tone marks are officially represented as numbers

I've only ever seen this done on the internet and assumed it was due to problems with fonts. Please tell me it isnt' happening in print, it looks ugly. And surely the '5' for neutral tone is unnecessary - even us unimaginative native English speakers can surely figure out that if there's no tone mark, there's no tone.

Roddy

[skylee]

Quote:

Hanyu Pinyin *does* now indicate tone 5, and the tone marks are officially represented as numbers

I've only ever seen this done on the internet and assumed it was due to problems with fonts. Please tell me it isnt' happening in print, it looks ugly. And surely the '5' for neutral tone is unnecessary - even us unimaginative native English speakers can surely figure out that if there's no tone mark, there's no tone.

Hear hear!!

[BFC_Peter]

A very interesting point, Shibo.

As an English speaker who is learning to speak Chinese then I'm not particularly knowledgeable about the differences between the various systems but I do know that some aspects of Hanyu pinyin make it more difficult for me to learn - I see an letter e but I have to pronounce it as I would a letter u, etc. etc.

From a simple comparison in one of my books, the WG system seems to be easier for me to read and understand the sound I need to make.

No doubt, those who are not afflicted by the English language may well have a different perspective to me!

[shibo77]

Thanks for the replies! Here is a good link to compare some of the different systems:

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/mandarin_pts.htm

Go around in that site, there are lots of great information.

I thought IPA was quite ideal, but I have never tried to devise it seriously, I just thought that I could look up the IPA for each Pinyin and form a word. But, of course it is muc more complicated as smithsgj had reminded me. But I still hold the opinion that IPA should be used to represent sound at some point in the future. My ideal is a dictionary that lists simplified script /traditional script /hanyu pinyin /zhuyin fuhao /IPA in brackets.

Are there any Chinese dictionaries that lists IPA presently?

- Shibo

[hparade]

yes, I also think that writing tones in numbers instead of diacritics is very ugly, look like it is not a script at all..... but it's going official?.....

[smithsgj]

Sounds like a systemic problem with English native speakers rather than with Hanyu pinyu to me . .

Yes, that was what I expected people to infer!

On the overt marking of tone 5, and the numerical vs diacritic tone notation

http://www.chinese-forums.com/viewtopic.php?t=136&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=20

[shibo77]

In the People's Republic, the 5th tone is not marked in Hanyu Pinyin. The other tones are still marked with diacritics, perhaps by foreign Sinologists may use numbers now, but I only see diacritics in Beijing, Chinese or foreigners.

- Shibo

[smithsgj]

Did you read the linked thread?

The digit 5 was used to represent the so-called "neutral tone" in accordance of the "Standard for the Scheme of Chinese Phonetic Alphabet Input with Universal Keyboard." The national standard was released on Feb. 23, 2001 and implemented starting from Jun. 1, 2001.

I don't know if this is true but it's what Haizi wrote. Can't seem to find any detail on the web.

The numbers are ugly I agree. And it's true that this sort of transcription doesn't read like a script. But most writing these days is done on computers, and those diacritics just aren't readily available, especially the macron used for 1st tone.

[ala]

The only systemic problem with HP is that initial consonants like 'b' and 'g' appear to English native speakers to be voiced, when in fact they are merely unaspirated. That's why WG writes Beijing as Peiching. But then you need messy diacritics to distinguish Peiching from P'eich'ing (which would be Peiqing in HP).

It's also problematic when Chinese speakers try to learn a language where b,g,d actually refer to voiced consonants. It is a major factor in the "Chinese accent" of Chinese natives when speaking English. Even in regions of China where there are voiced consonants (Wu area), if students get a bad teacher who does not teach them clearly about voiced consonants, they will automatically associate pinyin b with English b and wonder why they can't get it to sound like the English (when actually they pronounce it everyday in their dialect! and wouldn't have a problem if they learned English by ear). For native Wu dialect speakers, the dialect where beneficial should be used when explaining French (French vowels/nasal vowels, and consonants are extremely close to Shanghainese), Japanese (voicing, go-on, kan-on, pitch accent, rhythm) and English (voicing). There are too many English and Japanese textbooks in China that erroneously say: "English/Japanese d is like putonghua d with tone 2."

[smithsgj]

That makes sense Ala. Although I'm not sure how that would affect Taiwanese people's pronunciation of English. Do you think it differs a lot from that of those influenced by Pinyin on the mainland?

Oh and a question -- what is it about d with tone 2? Why tone 2?