pronunciation in taiwan

[rezaf]

If there is no pinyin over there, then how do the foreigners learn the correct pronunciation? I just saw a Taiwanese show where there were a few foreign students and their pronunciation was very unclear.

[Stefani]

There is Bopomofo / Zhuyin Fuhao, which is Taiwanese pinyin (but using symbols).

[jbradfor]

There is also Wades-Giles, another system of Romanization.

[rezaf]

but are these systems as accurate as pinyin?

[skylee]

but are these systems as accurate as pinyin?

Some might argue bopomofo is more accurate than pinyin.

[atitarev]

Any system is OK, if it's understood and used consistently.

Taiwan has too many romanisation systems, including Hanyu Pinyin and that's a problem.

Wade-Giles is often used in different varieties, for example with or without apostrophes, making zh-ch, j-q, z-c (pinyin), etc. sound the same.

Zhuyin Fuhao is at least single and doesn't have variations but is not often used by foreigners, foreigners prefer Hanyu Pinyin or sometimes Tongyong Pinyin but Taiwanese teachers are not always familiar with them.

Comparison of Chinese romanisation systems

[misheast]

I just spent a few months studying in Taiwan. My textbook had bopomofo, hanyu pinyin, and tongyong pinyin. At the beginning of the class my teacher asked us which system we were familiar with and if we had a preference, and we settled on using regular hanyu pinyin in our class. I suspect the bad accents of the foreigners in your film were just bad foreign accents, not because of the romanization.

Within Taipei all the signs are standardized to Hanyu Pinyin. In other parts of the country, and someone else said, the romanization system is not consistent at all. It's quite frustrating, actually, not being able to tell if "Ci-san" should be pronounced as the "qi" or "ci" in pinyin. Hopefully the new government, led by the former mayor of Taipei, will rectify this.

[rezaf]

I think those foreign students that I saw probably used Wade-Giles. Wade-Giles seems to have a lot of mistakes. I have a few Taiwanese frinds and I know that Taiwanese Mandarin is a little bit different because sometimes I just guess what they say:mrgreen: but it is not like Wade-Giles. jiong = chiung qiong=ch'iung

In some Taiwanese shows I see people speaking with mainland's putonghua accent. Does Taiwan consider mainland's putonghua accent as Standard Mandarin?

[Lu]

I think those foreigners in that tv show just had bad Mandarin. I don't think many people still use Wade-Giles when learning Chinese. In Taiwan, Taiwanese kids learn bopomofo, foreigners studying Chinese in Taiwan usually use either bopomofo or Hanyu pinyin. I haven't heard of classes using W-G.

W-G is a system different from pinyin, but if it is used correctly it's really not so bad. Unfortunately, it's often used incorrectly, for example by leaving out all ', and that's when things go wrong.

Bopomofo is at least as good a system as pinyin. Some say it results in better pronounciation, but I don't believe that.

Textbooks are usually consistent in using a system, and get it correct most of the time. In the street however it's a romanization mess, and the best thing to do is look at the characters.

You can read some other threads on the differences between Guoyu and Putonghua.

[atitarev]

Some of the arguments pro-introduction of Hanyu Pinyin are that it is better understood by foreign learners and it is the only current standard in mainland China, making it wide-spread. Tongyong Pinyin is the current standard of the government in Taipei (Táiběi) but what's the use of it? Most Taiwanese insist on spelling their names in bastardised Wade-Giles with no apostrophes and tone marks, some cities (Keelung = Jilong) are written in an old fashion. Kids at school don't use any romanisation but Zhuyin Fuhao (Bopomofo). In Taipei, Hanyu Pinyin is used more than other methods. It's not a complete list of romanisations.

I think the best bet in Taiwan while learning is to master and use Zhuyin Fuhao (Bopomofo) because there are books available in both Hanzi and Bopomofo, the same way you can get books in Hanzi and Pinyin in mainland China.

[jbradfor]

rezaf, what do you define as a "mistake" in Wade-Giles?

Pinyin and Wade-Giles are systems of Romanization, not transliteration in English. Their intent is not to provide a "best try" guess at the pronunciation.

If "accuracy" is your criterion, then pinyin seems to have it's share of "mistakes". For example, take the 'c' (as in 参). Ask a typical native English speaker to pronounce "can" and I don't think they'll be even close to Mandarin. Wade-Giles spells this as "ts'an", which, except for the confusing ', is "more accurate". 'x' in pinyin is another one. Before I learned pinyin, if you asked me how to pronounce 'xin' (e.g. 心), I would have no idea. For Wade-Giles' hsin I would have a chance.

However, all this is irrelevant. No one should try to pronounce Mandarin based on a guess from any Romanization, pinyin or Wade-Giles. It will just lead to a bad accent.

[chaxiu]

I think the point is that if you come to Taiwan to learn Chinese you can generally choose Zhuyin or Hanyu pinyin. The university course i took used pretty much only Zhuyin. But I know at other schools like TLI and TLC you can choose.

I use both but for different things. I especially like Zhuyin because it gets my/your brain away from thinking with English sounds. But I use Hanyu for typing because it's just easier (i don't have to learn a new layout on the keyboard)

Chaxiu

Tai-oan si po-to!

[rezaf]

I would probably agree with you if z was dz and c was ts but other things are all irrelevant. At least pinyin just has one letter for each of the sounds. There are clearly less marks and letters in pinyin and it's easier for the eyes.

duan=tuan tuan=t'uan why does it have to be this silly way when we already have "t" and "d" in English? The same story about many other letters. and also this one: zi=tzu ci=tz'u the sound of "u" in pinyin is very clear and it's different from "o" and "i" but I think "u" in Wade-Giles isn't like the more familiar sound of "u". As far as I know the "c" in "cong" and in "ci" are the same but I don't understand why it should be "ts'ung" and "tz'u". Also the "h" in "yeh" is unnecessary. "suo"(pinyin)="so"(Wade-Giles) seems to be another mistake. They seem to share a few mistakes for example in "Shui" and "liu". The only place that Wade-Giles is better than pinyin is in "ian"(pinyin)="ien"(Wade-Giles)

I don't see any important reasons for using the strange symbols of Zhuyin when we already have the Roman letters and how exactly can Zhuyin help us with studying the Chinese Characters?

[rezaf]

one more mistake: zhai=chai and ji=chi whay should ch represent two different sounds? the way that ch is used in WG is very tricky and will cause a lot of mistakes specially for a beginner.

[renzhe]

If "accuracy" is your criterion, then pinyin seems to have it's share of "mistakes". For example, take the 'c' (as in 参). Ask a typical native English speaker to pronounce "can" and I don't think they'll be even close to Mandarin.

Yeah, but people speaking countless other languages will pronounce it perfectly.

The last thing anyone designing a romanisation system should consider is how an English speaker would pronounce it, because English has the dumbest, most illogical spelling of any language on the planet English is unique in that the English native speakers cannot pronounce anything written in ANY language.

Hanyu Pinyin was strongly influenced by Russian, and this is why Slavic language speakers will pronounce most of it quite well.

I do completely agree with you regarding Romanisation vs. Transliteration, BTW.

[atitarev]

Hanyu Pinyin was strongly influenced by Russian, and this is why Slavic language speakers will pronounce most of it quite well.

Not so sure this is true. Besides, Russian is based on Cyrillic, not Latin.

The only thing, which seems common with Slavic languages (Latin based but not Russian) is the usage of letter "c". In Polish (can have other readings), Czech, Slovak, Croatian, Slovenian + romanised Macedonian, Bulgarian and Serbian, the letter stands for "ts" in native words. Romanised Russian sometimes uses "c" but most commonly it's "ts".

Q and X were perhaps chosen at random but the usage of Q is a bit similar to Albanian, X can have the same sound in Portuguese and Maltese.

I don't think there are flaws worth fixing in Hanyu Pinyin. A few other languages use several letters, not matching English or Latin, just need to understand the system.

[renzhe]

The Russian connection comes from one of the textbooks I've used but despite heavy searching I can't seem to find the citation. It mentioned that the linguist developing the Hanyu Pinyin in the 1950s were influenced by Russian linguists much more than Western ones.

This could explain the use of "x", which is read as "h" in Cyrillic, and is the closest approximation that Slavic languages have for this sound.

I do, however, think that q and x were chosen because they don't correspond to any Chinese initial, and at the same time there were initials which needed letters.

As a Croatian speaker, I'd read the vast majority of Hanyu Pinyin quite close to how they sound, with the exception of characters like 'q' and 'x' and 'y', which don't exist in Croatian, and which I'd probably read like I would in English, and the silent 'i' and the 'e' sound when it's alone.

So a Croatian does this mapping:

"x" - soft "š" (doesn't exist in the language, but is easy to approximate given this clue)

"q" - "ć"

"ch" - "č"

"zh" - "dž"

"j" - "đ"

"z" - "dz" (is not a letter, but the sound appears in words where these two sounds are adjacent)

And voila, you can pronounce pinyin rather well.

An English speaker has far more trouble, I'd imagine. Would they read "bian" as "brian", or "can" as "I can", or "pie" as an apple "pie"? I'd read them very close to what they actually sound like, so the Slavic connection makes sense.

Naturally, most initials have subtle differences compared to Slavic languages, and you have to learn them through listening and a good teacher.

Hrm... Off topic much...?

[atitarev]

What you are saying makes sense, I only disagree:

This could explain the use of "x", which is read as "h" in Cyrillic, and is the closest approximation that Slavic languages have for this sound.

Russian Х (Cyrillic letter) is the same as Chinese H but it can be palatlised and used in any position - initial, final, middle, whatever.

An English speaker has far more trouble, I'd imagine. Would they read "bian" as "brian", or "can" as "I can", or "pie" as an apple "pie"? I'd read them very close to what they actually sound like, so the Slavic connection makes sense.

For an English speaker any Roman-based language would be trouble, LOL

[tooironic]

Hanyu pinyin is quite fine for most purposes, although there are some words I would have romanised a bit differently (take luan and quan - they both have the 'an' suffix, yet one is pronunced loo-ARN and the other is pronunced choo-EN, talk about inconsistency... then add in chun, qun, chuan and chuang and it just gets more confusing for the average learner )

[yonglin]

There was a romanization system called Latinxua Sin Wenz (拉丁化新文字) developed by the Soviet Union in the 1920s. Some features are quite similar to pinyin. For instance, they introduced the zh-, ch-, z-, c-, and x- representations of initials. There is some quite interesting info on it here, including some samples. The idea of this system seems to have been abolishing characters altogether, though. It can't have been splendid for learning purposes, given that it doesn't indicate tones at all!

Of course, hanyu pinyin probably borrowed the best things from many different systems, e.g., some spellings from Wade Giles, some from the Soviets, tone marks from zhuyin, etc.