Why not publish everything with zhuyin fuhao?

[sukitc]

I am currently reading a biography of Dr. Sun Yat Sen. The book was published in Taiwan for children, so all the Chinese characters have accompanying Zhuyin fuhao (bopomofo). Due to this help, I am getting through the book fairly quickly.

I wonder why not publish everything (newspapers, magazines, business journals) with accompanying Zhuyin fuhao (or some other phonetic systems). I am sure with the modern age of computers, this could easily be done. By doing so, this would make the language a lot more accessible, not only to non-natives but also to Chinese as well. And, because we are maintaining the characters, the beauty of the Chinese written language remains absolutely intact only now it's also a phonetic language.

Do you guys ever have similar thoughts?

[renzhe]

I assume that this is because most people neither want it nor need it. And if would double the cost of printing anything.

There are children's and learners' books with pinyin or bopomofo available, most other people don't need this.

[roddy]

Same reason the New York Times doesn't have explanations of the difficult words in the margins.

[Hofmann]

You know what happened when the Japanese put furigana on every moderately uncommon Kanji?

People ended up half-literate.

[vampire]

for native chinese, reading pingyin or zhuyin is painful

imagine reading english that is written in phonetic symbol rather than the 26 letters

[sukitc]

"I assume that this is because most people neither want it nor need it."

I sort of agree that most literate Chinese may not "need" it. But, this is different to not wanting to have it there. At worst, they can just ignore the zhuyin fuhao and just focus on the characters. At best, when they come across characters they are unfamiliar with, they can immediately grasp the pronunciation. All the while, the publications become much more accessible to non-natives. Seems like a win-win-win proposition, to me.

I understand that people get passionate about languages, but I struggle to understand how attaching phonetic symbols to the characters undermine their beauty, purity, sanctity (or whatever terms people use to describe the Chinese script).

[trevelyan]

I can add support for this in some of our software applications. Do you have a script that can convert from pinyin to zhuyin fuhao? I'll admit to being unfamiliar with the system.

[imron]

At worst, they can just ignore the zhuyin fuhao and just focus on the characters.

This is easier said than done. I find it incredibly distracting to have this sort of stuff (either pinyin or zhuyin) on top of the characters, especially pinyin as my eyes tend to reflexively look towards roman letters if they are there. Personally, I find having just plain characters much easier to read.

[roddy]

How much extra newsprint is this going to require?

Pinyin is added very occasionally when particularly obscure characters come up, but to do it as a matter of course isn't necessary.

[xiaocai]

I understand that people get passionate about languages, but I struggle to understand how attaching phonetic symbols to the characters undermine their beauty, purity, sanctity (or whatever terms people use to describe the Chinese script).

No, it won't. It's just going to cost a lot of extra on printing and template and the publishers will not pay for it if 99.9% of the consumers don't need it. Also, that is why there are dictionaries, they are not only meant for language learners but also native speakers.

[Xiao Kui]

I find it incredibly distracting to have this sort of stuff (either pinyin or zhuyin) on top of the characters, especially pinyin as my eyes tend to reflexively look towards roman letters if they are there. Personally, I find having just plain characters much easier to read.

Well said - I agree 100%. I find pinyin or zhuyin distracting and annoying. I found it helpful in kids' books when I was learning. Master those first, then you'll be ready for the grownup stuff!!

[renzhe]

At best, when they come across characters they are unfamiliar with, they can immediately grasp the pronunciation.

Unfortunately, grasping the pronunciation is not helpful at all. It's far easier to deduce the meaning from the characters, by using the semantic part of the characters (radical). Knowing that a character is pronounced "ji" does not help at all.

It would be like writing the IPA under every English book -- in case someone doesn't know the pronunciation.

[DrZero]

renzhe, actually, whether or not the pronunciation is helpful depends on your abilities at reading vs. speaking. For someone like myself, whose speaking ability far exceeds his reading ability, the pinyin or whatever would be infinitely helpful. There are so many words I know, but can't read.

However, in general, putting pinyin or bopomofo in ever text would not be worth the cost and effort, and it will never happen. It would also be annoying to native readers, who would still make up 99.99 percent of the of the audience for any given Chinese publication.

(Guess I'd better learn to read characters!)

[imron]

For someone like myself, whose speaking ability far exceeds his reading ability, the pinyin or whatever would be infinitely helpful.

Helpful to a degree yes, but it would also be a crutch that prevented you from ever needing to learn characters properly.

[renzhe]

For someone like myself, whose speaking ability far exceeds his reading ability, the pinyin or whatever would be infinitely helpful. There are so many words I know, but can't read.

OK, you're right, I agree.

But only to a point. I think that when reading complicated texts, you'll soon run into words, phrases and patterns that very rarely occur in spoken language.

[roddy]

I see the point, but I'd query how many of those words are newspaper vocabulary. I suspect the words you can say but not read are mostly spoken Chinese and won't be turning up in newspapers that much, while the ones you can read but not say (ie know the meaning, not the pinyin) are likely to be used mainly in writing.

Anyway, one good reason not to publish everything with zhuyin fuhao is because pinyin is better.

/scampers away, hides.

[shivasprogeny]

In order for literacy to really increase among Chinese not in the cities, I think China could switch to pinyin as their primary system of reading and writing. Where ambiguities occur, a character could be written above the pinyin.

It would also make the language much more accessible to foreigners.

I know this will probably never happen, but there are some advocates for it out there.

[Hofmann]

Literacy in China is higher than that of Vietnam, which uses an alphabetic writing system.

More and better education would work better, IMO.

[Lu]

Anyway, one good reason not to publish everything with zhuyin fuhao is because pinyin is better.

I'm not getting into this discussion, except to say that if one wanted to put transcription next to every character, zhuyin would be better than pinyin. For one thing, it's never longer than three signs; also, it seems one can write it smaller.

There's a Taiwanese newspaper for students, the Guoyu Ribao (or Zhoubao, I forgot) that puts zhuyin for every character, and while it looks childish and probably takes up some ink and space, it doesn't get in the way of reading, and the characters don't have to be spaced unnaturally for the zhuyin.

[DrZero]

Roddy, you're quite right, my vocabulary mostly consists of spoken vernacular. Words and patterns that are only used in writing are kind of a mystery to me. So certainly, if all newspapers suddenly had pinyin, I'd be encountering new stuff. That would be good ... those words would be accessible to me, and I could learn them. Whereas until I get it in gear and learn quite a few more characters, as things are now, I won't be learning those words and patterns any time soon. There is not a good way for me to learn them in context, currently. So personally, I wish all publications had pinyin.

Actually I wish China would go to an all-pinyin, all-the-time format. But then, men in hell want ice water. It's never going to happen, and even if it did, who knows if it would really benefit the Chinese people at large or not. The Chinese like to write pinyin without the proper word boundaries, anyway, which makes it far less useful.