What is the pinyin romanization for 产干

[Lu]

Oh so now there are two versions of pinyin? My Korean former roommate writes with breaks between syllables, bei jing de tian qi xian zai bu hao, does that create a third pinyin (pin yin?) system?

As far as I know there is only one correct way of using pinyin, and some people know it better than others (I thought I knew it perfectly, but I see I was wrong).

[Quest]

My Korean former roommate writes with breaks between syllables, bei jing de tian qi xian zai bu hao, does that create a third pinyin (pin yin?) system?

That's the system I learned, breaks between syllables and tones over each syllable. It wasn't our habit to combine bei3 jing1 into beijing, and therefore there was never a need to use dashes or apostrophes.

[sm_sung]

That's the system I learned, breaks between syllables and tones over each syllable. It wasn't our habit to combine bei3 jing1 into beijing.

I learnt this system too! I think natives are usually taught this system because its simpler. After all, pinyin is meant to be a pronunciation guide and teaching aid, not an actual writing system(at least for natives).

[Quest]

yes sm_sung, you knew I wanted more native speakers to back up my claim and they kept saying I learned it incorrectly all China used the same text books, if I was wrong, so was everyone in China.

[shibo77]

Hello everyone!

I think the problem here is the "system for official romanisation using Hanyu Pinyin" and the "regular usage of Hanyu Pinyin".

In regular usage, Hanyu Pinyin is designed as a romanisation and pronounciation guide for Chinese, the Chinese characters. When one writes Chinese characters. There is no spacing between words, no spacing between 顿号pauses, 逗号commas, and 句号periods. The Hanyu Pinyin system being a pronounciation guide surrounding the Chinese character, why should it have any spacings except that of between each character(syllable)?

>>Chinese characters, simplified script<<

你好! 我姓张, 您呢? 我很好, 您呢? 我居住北京, 您呢? 您是西安人吗?

>>"regular usage of Hanyu Pinyin"<<

(all minuscule)

ni hao! wo xing zhang, nin ne? wo hen hao, nin ne? wo ju zhu bei jing, nin ne? nin shi xi an ren ma?

(first word in a sentence capitalised)

Ni hao! Wo xing zhang, nin ne? Wo hen hao, nin ne? Wo ju zhu bei jing, nin ne? Nin shi xi an ren ma?

>>"system for official romanisation using Hanyu Pinyin"<<

Hello! I am surnamed Zhang, and You? I am well, and You? I live in Beijing, and You? Are you a person from Xi'an?

It is the "system for official romanisation using Hanyu Pinyin" that uses the rules for English; the need for capitalisation of proper nouns "Zhang"; the need for the combination of a place name of two characters/words (a Chinese/East Asian tradition), into a single proper word/noun (an English/European tradition). Bei Jing, Ha Noi, Pu San, To Kyo becomes Beijing, Hanoi, Pusan, Tokyo.

-Shibo

[Taibei]

they kept saying I learned it incorrectly

You wrote, "As I learned it pinyin has no apostrophes."

Pinyin does have apostrophes. If you were taught that it doesn't, you were taught incorrectly, which wouldn't surprise me in the least. This is not the same thing as saying you failed to learn correctly what you were taught. I'm not blaming you. You probably learned what you were told just fine -- but that doesn't mean what you or anyone else was told is correct.

There are not different versions of Pinyin for Westerners and for Chinese. There's just right and wrong. However common it may be, writing Pinyin without apostrophes is wrong. However common it may be, writing the syllables within words separately is wrong.

[Taibei]

In regular usage, Hanyu Pinyin is designed as a romanisation and pronounciation guide for Chinese, the Chinese characters. When one writes Chinese characters....

You're certainly right to point out that Pinyin gets used in different ways. It's often used as a means of transcribing individual characters. But it was designed to be much more than that.

Perhaps the most important point to keep in mind when thinking about how to write Pinyin is that it is a means of writing Mandarin. Far too many people confuse Chinese characters with the language itself. Chinese characters are a means of writing Mandarin. Pinyin is a means of writing Mandarin; it doesn't have to go through representing characters as an intermediate step.

>>Chinese characters, simplified script<<

你好! 我姓张, 您呢? 我很好, 您呢? 我居住北京, 您呢? 您是西安人吗?

The way this should be written in Pinyin is:

Nihao! Wo xing Zhang, nin ne? Wo hen hao, nin ne? Wo juzhu Beijing, nin ne? Nin shi Xi'anren ma?

(Or "Ni hao" -- the usage on that one hasn't settled yet. And I'd probably say "Wo zhu zai Beijing" instead of what seems to me the more written style of "juzhu". But I'm not a native speaker of Mandarin.)

It is the "system for official romanisation using Hanyu Pinyin" that uses the rules for English; the need for capitalisation of proper nouns "Zhang"; the need for the combination of a place name of two characters/words (a Chinese/East Asian tradition), into a single proper word/noun (an English/European tradition). Bei Jing, Ha Noi, Pu San, To Kyo becomes Beijing, Hanoi, Pusan, Tokyo.

Hanyu Pinyin has its own rules, though those certainly do take after those of English.

The separation of words isn't just an English/European thing. Also, Mandarin does indeed have words, and the vast majority of them have more than one syllable.

[Quest]

There are not different versions of Pinyin for Westerners and for Chinese. There's just right and wrong. However common it may be, writing Pinyin without apostrophes is wrong. However common it may be, writing the syllables within words separately is wrong.

I totally disagree. We write character pinyins separately, and we do not need apostrophes. If you ask a Chinese to write in pinyin, and ask him/her to combine syllables of the same word and separate different words with spaces, he/she would have a very difficult time doing so. I guess I understand now what Ala meant by there's no clear distinction between zi and ci.

Pinyin as it was taught by the Chinese text book 语文书, published by 人民教育出版社 never mentioned about apostrophes, Chinese students learned the apostrophe mark from their English class. The book taught us to write pinyin separately like characters. Now you can say the book was wrong, but everyone in China used that same book, and it was distributed by the government. The government designed the pinyin system. The version we learned was certainly not wrong. It is only a western practice to combine syllables in pinyin. The book it self has a pinyin name that says "Yu3 Wen2 Shu1" not "yuwen shu".

[Quest]

Pinyin does have apostrophes. If you were taught that it doesn't, you were taught incorrectly, which wouldn't surprise me in the least. This is not the same thing as saying you failed to learn correctly what you were taught. I'm not blaming you. You probably learned what you were told just fine -- but that doesn't mean what you or anyone else was told is correct.

You know I would take that as an insult to my schools, my teachers and myself. What you implied here is that those who taught me weren't qualified enough to teach me the "correct version", and that I am not intelligent enough to realize I've learned the "incorrect version". Which basically means my education was of poor quality.

Where are you from Taibei? Are you Chinese? or did you learn Chinese as a foreigner?

[ala]

In Shanghai schools we were first taught pinyin for individual characters, and, then later on, taught how and when 詞 should be written in pinyin, including placement of the apostrophe. This was necessary to improve our typing accuracy using pinyin, and also for card catalog usage. We also found it more aesthetically pleasing and more in line with natural sandhi phrase separation in Shanghainese.

Pinyin should be written as:

Nihao! Wo xing Zhang, nin ne? Wo hen hao, nin ne? Wo juzhu Beijing, nin ne? Nin shi Xi'anren ma?

tones are optional.

And my books had Yuwen. not Yu Wen.

[Quest]

This was necessary to improve our typing accuracy using pinyin, and also for card catalog usage.

Typing accuracy..... indeed very "later on", did you have to learn how to 排版 to type?

[ala]

《汉语拼音正词法基本规则》为什么提倡分词连写？

人们学习汉语拼音的目的应该是多方面的。

　　一、为了帮助识字和阅读。用汉语拼音给不认识的汉字注音后，读出该字的字音；再联系上下字理解含有那个字的词的意义；再回过头来体味那个字的字义，捉摸那个字的字形，就算认识了那个字。很多儿童读物针对儿童识字不多的实际，就在文章中用拼音替代一些生字、繁难字，儿童通过拼音与有关词语联系上了，文章就读懂了。可见，识字和阅读都需要通过“词”这个中间环节。

　　二、帮助文化低的人提早阅读，扩大阅读面。由于汉字难写，过去文化低的中国人必须先过语文识字关，才能步入学习文化科技知识的殿堂。现在，有了汉语拼音读物（或汉字拼音对照读物），文化低的人就可以在进行识字和语文学习的同时，通过大量阅读拼音书报杂志（或书报中的难字注音）获取各种知识。这项工作在60年代山西万荣县扫盲试验工作中和80年代黑龙江省“注音识字，提前读写”实验中都做过，收到了很好的效果。阅读是以词为起始单位进行理解的。

　　三、为了帮助书面表达。人们要把口语变成书面语时，常会遇到有的汉字未学过，或一时写不出来的情况，这时就可以用拼音替代。黑龙江省“注音识字，提前读写”的教学方法使小学生的写作大大提早，能力也迅速提高。这种方法对成人文盲、半文盲也适用。表达的起始单位也是词。

　　四是为了便于电脑处理汉字。汉字拼音输入法一种是按字输入汉语拼音，再在显示出来的同音字中选定所需的汉字，另一种是以词为单位输入汉语拼音。相对于单字来说，词语同音的可能性大大减少，也就相应减少了同音选择的麻烦。以词为单位输入汉语拼音还可以减少码表的内存，简化工序，使机器翻译、情报检索、词频统计等智能化电脑内部处理的速度和准确度大大提高。

此外，汉语拼音帮助人们学习普通话语音的用途以及其他用途，都是不容忽视的。

　　正因为汉语拼音远远不限于给汉字注音，而是有着广泛的用途，分词连写问题自然而然地成为《汉语拼音正词法基本规则》的核心内容。《规则》“总原则”开宗明义地说：“拼写普通话基本上以词为书写单位”，对于“语音”、“语义”、“词形长度”等因素只作“适当考虑”。

　　其实，中国人也是有一定的词的观念的。汉字书籍虽然不显示词的界限，然而旧时代读古书重视“句读（dòu）”，也就是注意停顿（其中包含了词的因素）。句读分清了，古书才能读懂。现代人读书，标点符号成为文章的有机部分，长的句子还要分段阅读。所以，实际上，中国人阅读，心中也是在默默分词连读的。这跟拼写普通话要分词连写是同一道理。人们曾经做过多次实验，同一篇文章让不同的人去分词，划分的结果，有85%到90%是一致的。这个事实说明中国人潜在的分词能力。所以，只要心中有了“词”的观念，再加以一定的学习，人们完全可以正确掌握分词连写原则。

[Quest]

《汉语拼音正音词法基本规则》为什么提倡分词连写？

"提倡"，但我不接受 okay?

[ala]

"提倡"，但我不接受 okay?

《漢語拼音正詞法基本規則》 已使用了20多年了。 看来大陆教育确实有问题。

[smithsgj]

http://www.iso.ch/iso/en/CatalogueDetailPage.CatalogueDetail?CSNUMBER=13683

I'm not going to be shelling out all those swiss francs... but i think we can assume this one is definitive, and it probably includes apostrophes! Anyone got the text?

[smithsgj]

Hanyu Pinyin is supposed to indicate word boundaries, indeed.

But in Chinese, word boundaries are not set in stone. In computer applications, different word segmentation programs produce different results. I can see no obvious or intuitive reason why 西安人 or 台北市 should be treated as single words, for example, yet that is generally what happens.

Also how are infixes to be handled logically? If 洗澡 is considered to be one word, as it surely must be given that 澡 cannot stand alone, what are we to make of 洗個澡 or 洗好澡.

And where do 了 and 的 attach? If 我的 is one word (isn't it?) how can 我爸爸媽媽的房間 be sensibly segmented?

[Quest]

《漢語拼音正詞法基本規則》 已使用了20多年了。 看来大陆教育确实有问题。

非常有问题。

__________________________________________________________

《汉语拼音正词法基本规则》

中华人民共和国国家标准GB/T 16159—1996

__________________________________________________________

汉语拼音正词法基本规则

Basic rules for Hanyu Pinyin

Orthography

1996-01-22发布 1996-07-01实施

___________________________________________________________

国家技术监督局发布

Now where were you in 1996? elementary school?

A rule change explanation is quite acceptabe, like what smithsgj said in his previous posts. It's probably something I wasn't aware of since I left school. but don't tell me my education has problems, or any one who taught me was told incorrectly.

[ala]

汉语拼音正词法基本规则

First publication: 1984. That was 20 years ago. Revised 1988, 1996. Where were you in 1984?

[Quest]

于1984年10月公布了《汉语拼音正词法基本规则（试用稿）》。这个试用稿经过几年的实践，又作了适当的修改，于1988年7月制定了《汉语拼音正词法基本规则》，由国家教育委员会和国家语言文字工作委员会联合公布施行。

First publication was in 1988, the 1984 version was limited 试用稿. By the time the new guidelines were incorporated into elementary textbooks (if they ever were), I was long out of there. Most people my age or over would have no idea what 汉语拼音正词法基本规则 is. Its rules are little known and not strictly practiced.

as'>www.hubce.edu.cn/jwc/jwc5/messages/2004.html+%E5%AD%A6%E8%80%85%E6%96%B0%E8%AE%BA%EF%BC%9A%E4%B8%AD%E6%96%87%E4%BF%A1%E6%81%AF%E6%8A%80%E6%9C%AF%E6%A0%87%E5%87%86%EF%BC%9A%E6%B1%89%E5%AD%97%E6%B3%A8%E9%9F%B3%EF%BC%9F%E6%8B%BC%E9%9F%B3%E6%AD%A3%E8%AF%8D%E6%B3%95%EF%BC%9F&hl=en]as discussed here

1989年，“汉字优越”论和“汉字文化”论开始泛滥，鼓吹者的目标之一，是否认中文有“词”和“词界”、进而否定现代汉语拼音正词法，恢复半个世纪以前逐渐淘汰的“汉字注音”法。在报刊媒体的鼓动宣传和某些部门人士的支持下，“汉字优越”论终于成了气候，现代汉语拼音正词法和相关的规范标准的建设受到极大干扰和破坏，而被淘汰的汉字注音法大有回笼之势。

汉字注音是一个个汉字连成一片的方法；现代汉语拼音正词法是确定词界的方法。恢复汉字注音、还是坚持现代汉语拼音正词法？这不但是全国基础教育和文献管理的大事，而且是中文信息技术标准依据的大事，也是中国政府提交给联合国的国家标准和国际标准是否有效的大事。

任何拼音文字都应该有自己的正词法。英语、法语、德语等采用拉丁字母作为拼音文字的语言，在长期的历史过程中，发展出适合于本语言特点的正词法。汉语拼音虽然不是拼音文字，但是，在它的实际使用中，特别是在与语言信息处理有关的应用中，也有正词法的问题。为了深入地研究汉语拼音正词法问题，有必要对英语、法语和德语的正词法发展情况进行研究，以便作为我们的借鉴。

As I said, it is a western practice. They can keep 提倡'ing the new rules and bastardizing the way Chinese is written, but I will still write them based on zi units.

I agree that we can tell where the word boundaries are, but to write Chinese in pinyin based on word units would be a pain.

What is apostrphe called in Chinese?

[Quest]

The only reason for 连拼 is to better adapt to computing and database access.

但 如果 要 我 改成 这样 写 中文 的话， 我 是 绝对 接受 不了。

we can however, adjust the way Chinese is processed by computers. e.g. add a few bits to each character to represent its stroke # or its pinyin etc.

We can then sort by stroke # and pinyin etc.

For search engines, I do not see a need to separate words with spaces.

For computer translations, lets just forget about it for now. Most machine translations are lousy anyways.

Again, if computers can't handle the Chinese language well, we will improve the way computers work, we do not change our language to suit computers.