What is the pinyin romanization for 产干

[林彪]

Would it be romanized Changan or Chan'gan?

[Lu]

That should be chan'gan, because if you wrote changan one might incorrectly read it as chang-an.

[hparade]

yes, and chang'an may mean 長安?

.

[nnt]

IMHO I think you mistakenly associated characters:

产干

Example: 年产干胶60公斤 should be read: 年产 (annual production) 干胶 (of dry resin) 60公斤 (60 kg)

年产 nian2 chan3 annual production

干胶 gan1 jiao1 = dry resin

[handbus]

the rules of pinyin system:

when the pinyin of a character is started with a vowel such as "aoeiu", there should be a "'" before it when it follows a character ended with "n", "g" and some vowels which can be pronounced into a single word.

there are some examples:

西安(xi1an1), xi'an

the capital of the Shanxi province

without the "'", it should be pronounced into xian(先xian1，咸xian2，显xian3，现xian4)

长安(chang2an1), chang'an

the old name of xi'an

without the "''", we pronounce it chan2 gan1 instead though there may not such a word in chinese

[Taibei]

Perhaps the easiest way to think of this is that syllables are assumed to begin with consonants (here used in the general English sense, not in terms of semivowels and the like) unless there's something to indicate otherwise (i.e. coming at the beginning of a word or being preceded by an apostrophe).

chang'an = chang + an

changan = chan + gan

su'ao = su + ao

da'an = da + an

eren = e + ren

jingan = jin + gan

Taipei's subway system has its Jing'an stop mislabeled as Jingan (jin + gan), and Qili'an mislabeled as the two-syllable Qilian.

For a quick quiz on this, see Test your knowledge of Hanyu Pinyin syllable breaks.

Only about 2 percent of Mandarin words need apostrophes in Hanyu Pinyin.

[Lu]

Now that is a stupid test. How am I to know that they mean xian and not xi'an, chan'gan and not chang'an, xia'nangua and nog xian'angua? 'Taiwan shi wo jia', and apparently they are still having some problems with Hanyu pinyin, even on that site. :-/

[smithsgj]

Yes, questions 7 8 9 and 10 are all completely silly.

[Taibei]

How am I to know that they mean xian and not xi'an, chan'gan and not chang'an....

Easy: by following the rules of Hanyu Pinyin. If you're unfamiliar with them, then not knowing where the syllable breaks are is unsurprising. The page is, after all, a quiz, not a tutorial.

One of these days I'll add a page on the rules for syllable breaks, most of which are in my previous post. Let me know what you would find useful and I'll try to incorporate this.

I'm afraid I don't understand what it is that makes questions 7-10 "completely silly." My comment on that page ("Don't worry about the meanings of the words and phrases; the only thing that matters here is checking to see if you can tell where the syllables are divided.") doesn't seem to be enough to stave off criticism. The examples are perhaps odd, but I wanted to give examples of what some people might find tricky syllable breaks. I'm certainly open to suggestions for revisions.

[林彪]

The problem is that question 7 has two possible answers, since both "Xian" and "Xi'an" are both acceptable in pinyin.

[Lu]

And the same goes for chang'an and chan'gan, xian'an and xia'nan. Maybe it's very logical if you know the words, but from the text on the site it cannot be concluded.

I think that after four years of stuying Chinese I am sufficiently familiar with Hanyu pinyin. The breaks in those words cannot be seen by just following the rules of the system.

[smithsgj]

Me and Lu and 林彪 are all wrong, Taibei is right. We didn't read his post properly, and we were not fully familiar with the rules of Pinyin.

We thought to disambiguate the segmentation of changan you need an apostrophe in either case: chan'gan or chang'an. This is not the case. The segmentation chang-an is spelt chang'an, but the segmentation chan-gan is spelt changan, without an apostrophe. As there are only two alternatives, an apostrophe here would be redundant.

[Quest]

Your answer, tai wan, is correct.

Your answer, nan jing, is correct.

Your answer, Tai wan shi wo jia, is correct.

Your answer, Nan gang, is correct.

Your answer, lian jiao ku, is correct.

Your answer, ta ren zhi kai, is correct.

Your answer, xia nan gua, is correct.

Your answer, e ren, is correct.

Your answer, xi an, is incorrect. You should have chosen xian. This was a trick question: xian is just one syllable.

Your answer, chan gan, is correct.

Your answer, Mi ke luo ni xi ya, is correct.

Your answer, qing chun bu zai, is correct.

Your answer, xin dian miao ji qi, is correct.

You answered 12 questions out of 13 correctly.

4 5 7 9 10 13 are impossible to tell for sure.

As I learned it pinyin has no apostrophes, and therefore there's no rule in pinyin that says where to put the apostrophes. If we want to say 县, we would use xian4, if we want to say 西安, we use xi1 an1. Apostrophes are for spelling Chinese in western articles, it made it easier for them to combine xi an into xi'an, but that is something I've never learned in school in China.

[sm_sung]

Interesting, my answers were exactly the same as Quest's!

[smithsgj]

Quest, did you read my post with all the in it?

Pinyin *does* have apostrophes, you just learnt it incompletely (or perhaps an earlier version, i don't know).

Like I said, I too thought some of the questions had more than one answer, but in fact that is not the case.

If Chinese were written in Pinyin instead of characters (I know that's a different debate, but *if* it was) it would be necessary to mark the word boundaries, otherwise there would be too many ambiguous syllables. Then within the words, you might want to show the syllable boundaries. Sometimes this is obvious, other times you need the apostrophe.

Although come to think of it, Taibei, WHY do we need the syllable boundaries within the word? Do other languages do this?

[Quest]

smithsgj, that is if you combine the characters, but usually we write each character separately. e.g. xi1 an1 hen3 mei3

but really we stopped using pinyin after 3rd grade, so you might have learned an over-complete version. I always thought combining the characters was a for-Westerners-thing. You know, they used to write Fu Ming Xia, then they changed it to Fu Mingxia.

[Taibei]

4 5 7 9 10 13 are impossible to tell for sure

I've added the following to the explanation on the quiz page: "Assume that all words are spelled correctly and are not missing any apostrophes." I hope that helps clear up any misunderstandings.

But there is no need to change the examples themselves because there are no ambiguities there.

As smithsgj noted, the rules of Hanyu Pinyin do call for apostrophes in some cases. This is not new or part of an "over-complete version." They are necessary to avoid some potential ambiguities, such as chang + an vs. chan + gan.

I'll quote from the rules:

When a syllable beginning with a, o, or e appears in the middle of a polysyllabic word, it is preceded by an apostrophe. Thus:

• ke'ai (lovable) is two syllables, ke-ai
  
• dang'an (files) is two syllables, dang-an
  
• hai'ou (seagull) is two syllables, hai-ou
  
• mu'er (tree fungus) is two syllables, mu-er

Since very few syllables begin with a, o, or e, the apostrophe need only rarely be used.

If there weren't this rule, the spelling of a large number of Mandarin's 420 or so syllables would be ambiguous (bian, biao, bie, chua, chuai, chuan, chuang, cuan, etc.). But because there is the rule, it's easy to clear up all possible ambiguities and, perhaps more importantly, very seldom necessary to do so. (As I mentioned before, fewer than 2 percent of polysyllabic Mandarin words require apostrophes.) The scholars who designed Hanyu Pinyin did a wonderful job in making it as easy and efficient as possible for users.

Taibei, WHY do we need the syllable boundaries within the word? Do other languages do this?

Pinyin was designed to write words as words, not as separate syllables. Note, for example, that if everything were written as separate syllables (which would make it unnecessarily hard to read), there would be no need for initial y's and w's. They would simply have been left as i's and u's.

It isn't necessary for people to have a conscious awareness of syllable breaks. Indeed, making too much of the boundaries can be a real problem. As you're in Taipei, you've undoubtedly noticed the InTerCaPiTaLiZaTion on street signs. This practice is, alas, another in a line of incredibly stupid ideas by the city government to "help" foreigners -- in a way that makes things harder.

It's actually extremely easy to tell syllable boundaries in Mandarin as written in Hanyu Pinyin -- much, much easier than spotting them in English. So there is even less need to do special things to mark them all in Pinyin than there would be in English or any other language -- which is to say that it's not necessary to mark them at all (as opposed to word boundaries, which are necessary).

InTerCaPiTaLiZaTion is an example of what might be called character-based thinking. (Another example would be Quest's use of phrases such as "combing the characters.") Although Pinyin can be used as a means of transcribing Chinese characters, it is better understood as a way of writing Mandarin. Chinese characters are not the same thing as the Mandarin language; they are a way of representing the language. It's important to keep in mind this basic linguistic fact.

Quest, your being taught pinyin incorrectly may go quite a ways toward explaining your misunderstanding of and hostility toward it. Once you learn it properly, you may have a different opinion. So there could be hope for you yet.

[ala]

Hanyu Pinyin was designed with maximum parsimony in mind. It tried to avoid the apostrophe curse, so rules were created as to when an apostrophe is necessary, and when it WASN'T.

changan is "chan-gan", period. It cannot be "chang-an."

chang'an is "chang-an."

xian is "xian."

xi'an is "xi-an."

xianan is "xia-nan"

xian'an is "xian-an"

If you knew the rules to pinyin, you would've scored a 100% on Taibei's quiz. Unfortunately, due to the perception of unimportance from the educators, many Chinese forgot them, and think that pinyin is still ambiguous on this matter, when it is clearly not. Perhaps Taibei should add more prompt at the beginning of the quiz. Maybe say something like: "There is only one correct choice."

[Taibei]

Good idea, ala. So added:

http://pinyin.info/quiz/syllable_breaks.html

[Quest]

If there weren't this rule, the spelling of a large number of Mandarin's 420 or so syllables would be ambiguous (bian, biao, bie, chua, chuai, chuan, chuang, cuan, etc.). But because there is the rule, it's easy to clear up all possible ambiguities and, perhaps more importantly, very seldom necessary to do so.

no, they can be distinguished by the placement of tone marks. You seem to be ignoring those important marks.

Quest, your being taught pinyin incorrectly may go quite a ways toward explaining your misunderstanding of and hostility toward it. Once you learn it properly, you may have a different opinion. So there could be hope for you yet.

Incorrectly?

I don't think so. I am sure you've been learning the version for westerners though, and I learned the one for native speakers.