Zhuyin saved my life, but...

[iMeng@Meng]

I am learning zhuyin now to help me in my character pronunciations, but do and can chinese people read or use it?

And do you use it? Does it help you also?

EDIT: Btw I am studying Simp Chinese and I know pinyin very well but I have studied japanese and found the hiragana made it easier to remember some kanji, that is why I am curious about Zhuyin even though its used in taiwanese only.

[Takeshi]

It seems to be used in Taiwan obviously? Most mainlanders don't know it. I remember one time when I was at karaoke with some mainlander friends and the song started having parts in zhuyin they had to ask me how to read it.

As for whether it is helpful or not, this is subjective. There is nothing wrong with pinyin at all; it is a perfectly fine system that if you learn it properly, you will know how to pronounce everything. The problem is that not everyone learns it properly and just reads the syllables with influence from their native language's pronunciation. The fact that pinyin has some "shortcuts" and reuses the same letter for different sounds depending on their position adds to the confusion. (for ex: xue is pronounced xüeㄒㄩㄝ, not ㄒㄨㄝ and 餓 is pronounced ㄜ, not ㄝ) If you learn pinyin properly though, these should not confuse you at all.

Personally, I do think learning Zhuyin helped me organize the rimes in my head, because then you know exactly how things are pronounced. I didn't learn Zhuyin for this reason, but simple interest only though.

I don't think it is necessary to learn Zhuyin to learn the rimes properly; you can do that with pinyin too; just get a full Chinese rime table in pinyin and get your friend to read it out for you. I mean, Zhuyin is cool, but if you don't have a focus on TW and don't care about Zhuyin itself, there is no need to put yourself through the trouble to learn it just to learn the rimes.

Zhuyin won't help you lean hanzi though. I'm not sure how hiragana helped you learn kanji either though.

[iMeng@Meng]

It was just a good break away from the english to delve into japanese, and so far the zhuyin is really helpful

[skylee]

Please also note that the pronunciation standard in Taiwan is not exactly the same as that in the mainland. Sometimes the tone is different, sometimes more. So you need to decide which standard you want to use. And if you want to use the mainland standard then studying it and expressing it in zhuyin might be confusing. There is a thread on the diffrent pronunciations used in Mainland and Taiwan. You might want to take a look.

[OneEye]

even though its used in taiwanese only

You mean "Taiwan." Some people do use it to write certain words in Taiwanese, but it's mainly used for Mandarin.

I don't see how it could possibly help you learn characters, nor how hiragana could have possibly helped you learn kanji. That doesn't make any sense.

That said, I do believe it's worth learning. It doesn't take much time to learn. But you should also learn pinyin, because that's what the vast majority of Chinese speakers and learners know. Just don't expect Taiwanese people to know it.

[skylee]

Here is the thread -> Characters with different pronunciations on Mainland / Taiwan

[Pegasus]

My opinion on this topic is that zhuyin is good to learn of you are or will be in Taiwan, or if you are just curious and want to learn it for fun.

Practically everyone from Taiwan knows zhuyin. I doubt many people from Mainland China know how to read zhuyin.

In regard to helping you pronounce Mandarin.... I agree with Takeshi. I also feel that it is subjective.

Because I first started learning Mandarin in a university in the U.S., I am accustomed to pinyin. Later, in preparation for going to Taiwan, I taught myself zhuyin from a chart. I think both systems are good systems if you learn them properly and practice them.

I admit though, that since I don't use zhuyin that much, I've forgotten it. If I had to read zhuyin right now, I would probably need to refer to a chart for reference.

[Chief123]

For those saying that Zhuyin won't help learn characters, I agree to an extent. However I think it helps better than Pinyin or other romanization systems simply because the character is right beside the zhuyin symbol instead of totally separate. It seems that while children in Taiwan obviously learn each character, that they learn many characters initially by "osmosis" because they start out reading zhuyin and quickly add the character beside it.

Agree or disagree?

For me I started with the Yale system and then taught myself zhuyin. Many moons later I learned Pinyin. Zhuyin is better for me in some ways and Pinyin is better in others. I am perfectly comfortable reading a children's book with zhuyin/characters but do get hung up on some of the Pinyin oddities. With both systems I sometimes get hung up when reading out loud (still in the early character learning process). My opinion is that for those in Taiwan, learning both will be helpful.

Mark

[Lu]

because the character is right beside the zhuyin symbol instead of totally separate.

Mainland children's books often place the pinyin right below the character. Hardly 'totally separate'. But if zhuyin works well for you/the OP/Taiwanese kids, by all means use it. Yale to me appears to have the worst of both worlds (it's so close to English pronounciation that I can imagine people being very tempted to just pronouncing it as if it were English, while at the same time it's not exactly a mainstream system so in most cases it won't be useful for anything but learning), but still, if it works for you, great.

Imo whichever system you start out with, it's useful to learn pinyin at some point, since it's pretty much the global standard for romanizing Chinese. But it doesn't have to be right at the beginning.

[li3wei1]

I stared on that weird system (gwoyeu romatzyh) where the tone is conveyed through spelling, then learned zhuyin in Taiwan, and now I'm on pinyin. They've all got their advantages. GR helped me learn tones, and for some characters I still remember the tone because of the GR spelling. zhuyin is good because a) there is one symbol for each sound, and vice versa, none of the confusion that people have with pinyin, and b) when the two are side by side, you don't have that distraction of your eyes choosing to read the roman alphabet because they're more familiar. Pinyin is good because, um, let me think, oh yeah, because it's used by 2 billion people and most big publishers of learning materials.

[fanglu]

For me I started with the Yale system

Out of curiosity, was this a long time ago? I haven't seen any books published less than 30 years ago that used Yale.

[Chief123]

I first started learning Mandarin in 1987 so that probably counts as a long time ago.