Transcription table according to the endings (韵母） to learn characters

[Pall]

The idea is the same that I wrote about earlier. Since phonetic component is not present in all characters (and even if it is, it doesn't reflect tones), it would be very helpful to arrange characters in a table according to their transcription to learn them more effectively. Further, it would be good to memorize the most used characters in advance in order to concentrate later mainly on learning the meaning of words and grammar instead of learning the graphics. Still further, if such table was memorized, it would be easy to add new characters once the basis is created and fixed in memory. And at last, the possible number of characters,  which one may encounter after passing the milestone of the HSK 5 (2,500 words or 1,700 characters totally)  is not as great as it may seem, 20,000 most used words are based on only 4,500 characters. So, one can expect to add some 1,500-2,000 new characters even if he goes far ahead. 

 

But the problem is that the table, which I proposed to use earlier, is rather complicated to learn. What can be done to improve the situation? I can see two things to do. 

 

First, instead of the table organized according to the initial sound of syllables (a, b, c, ch, ...) one should learn the table arranged in accordance with the endings (-a, -an, -ang, ...) . Within these sections the order is according to the first sound, of course. It's much better, because -ai , -bai, -cai, -chai, etc sound very alike, and to remember their first sounds is not as difficult, as to memorise the succession of syllables in the previous table like cha, chai, chan, chang, chao, etc.  Within syllables there are also tones in both tables, of course. Even this simple reorganization will have big effect.

 

Second, it would be good to find an easier  way to remember the suquence of syllables in this table, than the diverging formulas that I proposed earlier. I came to a conlusion, that it could be done without big effort if instead of pinyin the table was in Cyryllic mupin. Because due to the utmost flexibility of Russian any suquence of syllables could be remembered basing on a not complicated formula (a phrase) , linking their first letters. And even numbers of tones could be comprised. In mupin some Russian letters are nor used, and they could be reserved for showing tones. Say, 'з' could serve to show the first tone, 'в' - second (Russian word "второй" means "second"), 'ж' for the third tone (a complicated letter alike the tone is) , and 'щ' for the fourth. There could be some adjectives in the formulars, beginning with these letters.  I belive such construction can hold in memory the whole table rather easily (compared to the former proposal). 

 

I rearranged the Pinyin vs Mupin table according to the endings of the syllables. Please, find it in the enclosure. Now there are 34 sections in the table. Cyrilic letters in the transcription correspond to latin ones rather directly: a - a, b - б, c - ц, etc. But in Russian there is no such sound as 'ŋ', therefore 'ng' is shown in mupin as the combination 'нъ'. The letter 'ъ' is never used in the end of words in modern Russian (it was the case only before 1917), and there will be no misunderstanding. Also, there is no such sound as 'w' - in mupin it is given as 'ъу' . Such combination of letters is impossible in Russian, so there will be no confusion again. In some cases in mupin more variants are used for the same symbol of pinyin, but it's very logical. 'ы', 'и' and ' ё ' mean ' i '. It may be surprising. But just listen how ' i ' sounds, for example, in "liu" and "liao", the sound is quite different. That's why in mupin they are "лёу" and "лиао" . Pinyin is just an approximation of natural sounds of Mandarin, and in some cases mupin may be even better approximation. But even if it's not so, one, who has learnt phonetics basing on pinyin, would not spoil it if he used mupin just to remember the characters in the table. 

 

In addition, in this table I showed the main vowel in diftongs, one above which the tone symbol should be, in bold. By the way, it never can be one of the letters with diacritics. There are only two of them in Russian, ё and  й. However, still there is a problem if to use tone symbols above the syllables, as it was mentioned by imron, because the thrid tone is the same as the diacritic in й. But if such soft was developed, the third tone could be shown differently, for example, with   ° .   

 

I"m going to make such mupin based table with all the formulas linking the lines. As soon as it is made I'll upload it here. 

Endings structured pinyin vs mupin tabel.docx

[Tomsima]

I'm sure I've said this before, but just use bopomofo if you dont like the way pinyin uses letters to represent different sounds in different syllables. or you can use mupin, but for students whose first language is not russian, this is basically useless in the face of overwhelming amounts of study materials that use pinyin, and don't work as accurately as bopomofo taught by a Chinese teacher. if it works for you though, i guess go ahead, good luck

[Pall]

10 hours ago, Tomsima said:

I'm sure I've said this before, but just use bopomofo if you dont like the way pinyin uses letters to represent different sounds in different syllables. or you can use mupin, but for students whose first language is not russian, this is basically useless in the face of overwhelming amounts of study materials that use pinyin, and don't work as accurately as bopomofo taught by a Chinese teacher. if it works for you though, i guess go ahead, good luck

Thank you for your advice, but I'm quite happy with pinyin as transcription to learn Mandarin sounds. I've learnt them using pinyin, and satisfied with the result. But I want to remember successions of the first sounds in the table as in the example below. In pinyin it's very difficult. But if I use instead of it mupin, it'smuch seasier thanks to the flexibility of Russian. Chuan is чуан, duan - дуан, guan - гуан, huan - хуан, ... Now I can crate a formula linking all these sounds in the given order, and also accounting for the tones: чуан1, чуан2, дуан3, дуан4, гуан1, гуан3, гуан4, хуан1,хуан2, хуан3. I just a minute ago created a formula, connecting all the information. The title reflects the ending of the syllable , the part in bold (-uan, -уан).

У АНИ
Чествовали со звоном четыре воскресенья дорогую женщину, девушку щеголеватую. Главное завершили горячее и жирное глотать щепотью. Хотя звала хозяйка возобновить хруст желваков. 

 
Every second word shows the tone (without conjunctions and prepositions), underlined, other words - first letters of the syllables. The formula in translation looks like that: 

AT ANNA'S

We honored with the clinking of glasses four Sundays a dear woman, a dapper girl. The main thing is that we finished swallowing hot and greasy food with a pinch. Although the hostess called us to resume the cracking of the jaws.

It's imp[ossible to do that in English, and as I guess, in the predominant number of other languagues. This is the reason I have to resort to mupin, based on Russian Cyrillic.

[Pall]

Alphabetic order will be different, of course: гуан1, гуан3, гуан4, дуан3,  дуан4,  хуан1,хуан2, хуан3, чуан1, чуан2.  That was just a random example to show how it works.

Edited October 7, 2019 at 09:40 AM by Pall
grammar

[suMMit]

I havent read through your entire posts because they are pretty complicated. I noticed that you seem to be trying to group character by like phonemes but different tones. This for me personally, would lead to mass confusion when speaking. I like to think of these words as not having any connection.

[Pall]

On 10/8/2019 at 5:38 AM, suMMit said:

I havent read through your entire posts because they are pretty complicated. I noticed that you seem to be trying to group character by like phonemes but different tones. This for me personally, would lead to mass confusion when speaking. I like to think of these words as not having any connection.

 

Your own experience is important, of course. But I think, such grouping will accelerate learning in the future, when the number of new characters will grow significantly, and one will begin to confuse them more and more. To keep them in order in such mode in one's memory might  be helpful.

 

By the way, today I read about one more proof that this approach was reasonable. In China one of the most popular Chinese-Chinese  dictionaries (maybe even No 1)  is a dictionary of 新话。 I don't know it's exact title, but these two characters must be present in it. That dictionary includes 6,000 characters, no words. It means, I think, that even for natives learning characters apart from learning words is a very acute need. And I just try to find a way to do it with less effort.
 

[Pall]

It's interesting, that learning and remembering a number of most used characters sounding the same is easier, that learning and remembering only one of them. It's not an exaggeration really. The reason, I think, is confidence that the possibility to meet a new character with the same pinyin within a certain horizon in the way from common to specific is at minimum. I can compare it to learning irregular verbs in English. For example, you're in the very beginning of it and you meet the verb 'to go'. "O, it's fine, now I know a very useful verb". Then you see 'went' and found out that it is 'to go', but in another form. You're disappointed, learn the new form and go ahead. But soon you encounter 'gone'. "How many more times! " Further the same happens to 'to forbid', which has four variants. "O, no! I should do something with that." And you decide every time to check firstly if the verb is irregular, and if it is, to learn all forms in advance. Or even to learn a list of irregular verbs. I don't see much difference between these two cases despite the fact that one concerns phonetics and the other grammar. It's confidence in both, which makes you feel better. 

In addition, there is an opportunuty to compare the characters to one another within the group, it also helps to remember them.

[Pall]

If learning characters in advance seperately (especially together with other characters of the same pinyin), later while memorizing words it'll be much easier to remember tones of the component syllables. Usually it's very difficult to remember the tone of the first syllable and the second, if they're different (not to mention the third and the forth).

[Pall]

I should to report on my interim results achieved so far. I've learnt 570 characters, basing on the table described above.  I can not only recognize them in a text, it's difficult to check since not all of them would be present in a given text. I can write them with hand if told a transcription, i.e. I can draw all 16 shì, included in HSK5, all 14 jì, etc. I think it's enough reliable proof that I would be able to recognize them. But 570 characters and 1,709 characters comprised by HSK5 list still present a big difference. I'll let you know if I manage to memorize 1,000 characters, then 1,300, and finally the whole list. 

 

Then if successful I'll tell you how learning 1,700 characters in advance helps with further progress in mastering Mandarin, inclusive speech. Remember, in the end of September I knew only about 200-250 words, consisting of some 300 characters. And those 300 are not included in 570, totally it'll make 870. But I'm not sure that I can write with hand all those 300, which I knew before. 

[Tomsima]

Sounds good, keep up the hard work, looking forward to hearing your progress in 2020

[shuipingzi]

On 11/17/2019 at 1:14 PM, Pall said:

I should to report on my interim results achieved so far. I've learnt 570 characters, basing on the table described above.  I can not only recognize them in a text, it's difficult to check since not all of them would be present in a given text. I can write them with hand if told a transcription, i.e. I can draw all 16 shì, included in HSK5, all 14 jì, etc. I think it's enough reliable proof that I would be able to recognize them. But 570 characters and 1,709 characters comprised by HSK5 list still present a big difference. I'll let you know if I manage to memorize 1,000 characters, then 1,300, and finally the whole list. 

 

Then if successful I'll tell you how learning 1,700 characters in advance helps with further progress in mastering Mandarin, inclusive speech. Remember, in the end of September I knew only about 200-250 words, consisting of some 300 characters. And those 300 are not included in 570, totally it'll make 870. But I'm not sure that I can write with hand all those 300, which I knew before. 

 

300 character by the end of September, and 870 by now. That's quite a progress! Hope you greater achievements in the new year!

[Phil Tsien]

A simple thing I found. Do we have the syllable "rem" and "zem" in Mandarin? 

(Obviously not, I think.)

And actually what you have done is somehow similar to a tool used in Chinese Traditional Phonetics 训诂学 which is called the Siddham 韵图. Yet 韵图 is a bit complicated and it contains more information. 

[Pall]

On 12/15/2019 at 1:52 PM, Phil Tsien said:

what you have done is somehow similar to a tool used in Chinese Traditional Phonetics 训诂学 which is called the Siddham 韵图. Yet 韵图 is a bit complicated and it contains more information.

Thank you for your observation! I'm happy that the table, which I recommend, isn't just my gimmick invention and that it has some remotely resembling analogues in Mandarin phonetics books. However, I think it should be as simple as possible for foreigners, because all they need is to memorize characters, and it doesn't matter how it's achieved provided that it's effective. 

 

On 12/15/2019 at 1:52 PM, Phil Tsien said:

Do we have the syllable "rem" and "zem" in Mandarin? 

(Obviously not, I think.)

You know that better. For mupin-pinyin conversion tables I used old lists of Mandarin syllables from 19th century. Maybe they existed earlier and then became obsolete. But these tables are just for help, as reference. The main instrument to use for memorization is the the table in Excel proposed above, which is based on actual set of characters from the HSK5 word list.

[Phil Tsien]

33 minutes ago, Pall said:

I used old lists of Mandarin syllables from 19th century.

well, here's the thing. Once the Mandarin was based on the Nanjing dialect, later a mixture of Nanjing dialect and Beijing dialect. When it came to the 20th century, the Mandarin is totally based on Beijing dialect so using a table from 19th century may be misleading. 

I checked you table just now and find several syllables that is not used in Mandarin now but is still used in Nanjing dialect now (as I use a dialect that is quite similar to the Nanjing one. Yet nowadays we don't have the ending em now in Nanjing dialect. It merged with en and eng. And en and ang merged in Nanjing dialect as well). 

[Phil Tsien]

And two more things. Tones are important in Chinese. Don't omit them. My personal experience is that, I cannot figure out what someone say if he or she is not using the right tone, regardless of the dialect he or she uses. 

And it is important to remember, the pronunciation of Russian and Chinese, they are different (For example, Russian have voiced consonants and voiceless consonants, while Chinese only have voiceless consonants. We mainly see the difference between aspirated and inaspirated consonants.). You can use any way you like to remember the pronunciation of each character, but plz keep one thing in mind, that is, learning Chinese means you must say something as the Chinese do. 

After all, hope you can be better with you Chinese soon.

[Pall]

1 hour ago, Phil Tsien said:

I checked you table just now and find several syllables that is not used in Mandarin now but is still used in Nanjing dialect now

Thank you! I'll make changes in the mupin-pinyin conversion tables, but I stress again they're just for reference. I'm going to upload the Excel 'HSK5 characters by 韵母“ table once it's finished. It contains only actual syllables. A sample part of it is in the picture above (but syllables will be in mupin instead of pinyin).

 

1 hour ago, Phil Tsien said:

Tones are important in Chinese.

No doubt. In the Excel table there will be special lines for each tone used. In the picture above it can be seen (in the mupin version tones will be shown with numbers).

 

1 hour ago, Phil Tsien said:

And it is important to remember, the pronunciation of Russian and Chinese, they are different

Of course. It's just Cyrillic letters in mupin, it's not Russian language. It's similar to using Latin letters in pinyin, and no one expects that, for example, 'j' should be pronounced as it sounds in English, French or Spanish. Moreover, such letter combinations in mupin as "уъ", "-нъ" (in the end) or "ъю" for 'w', '-ng' and 'ü', respectively, are never used in Russian. 

 

 

Edited December 16, 2019 at 04:31 PM by Pall
additional information

[Pall]

And yet tone marks can be perfectly used in mupin, the only alteration should be replacing ˇ for the third tone with °

 

[Pall]

The reason I again resort to mupin is the need to organize the Table by endings better. As to phonetic side, pinyin is a very good transcription system, mupin isn't much better. However, since pinyin is based on Latin letters it's not possible to create 'memorization formulas' , because I don't know a Latin based language with free word order. At the same time using Russian, which admits almost any word order without losing sense, allows to create such formulas for any given succession of initial lettes of words.

 

So far I've learnt some 850 characters present in HSK5 word list according to their syllables. If I'm told a syllable and a tone, I can write all the characters from the HSK5 with that sounding. First of all I learnt characters for syllables with bigger number of characters: for shì - 16 characters, jì - 14, yù - 10, etc. Then I learnt those syllables accounting for tones, which represent frequently used characters. I learnt all characters for gē because of 哥哥，uncluding 胳，鸽，and 歌, all characters for hé because of 和， the list also includes 合，何，核，河，and 盒. But now I'm faced with the fact that remaining characters in the HSK5 represent those syllables for which there are a few characters. As I counted that earlier, some 400 syllables are represented by only two characters and the same number by just one. It's difficult to learn them by the way I used before, and tehre is a need for a comprehensive system. The Table of characters by syllable endings based on mupin can serve as one. 

 

Syllables in it are organized in sections by endings, 韵母。 Sections and syllables in each of them are arranged by the Russian alphabet. But in addition horizontal formulas for each syllable with a certain tone, linking one of the meanings of the syllables with a phrase suited to remember, are also linked with one another by the vertical formula. The latter connects not meanings but the initial letters (or their combinations like ch, sh and zh in pinyin) of the horizontal lines. And for better linkage each horizontal formula begins not with the meaning of the first character in the line, but with the word from the vertical formula.

 

In the first picture below you can see an example of a vertical formula for the section with ending '-ай', corresponding to '-ai' in pinyin. The section is called "Месяц мАЙ", meaning 'May month", where 'АЙ' reminds of the ending '-ай'. If pointing with cursor at the yellow cell the formula appears: "Месяц МАЙ. Антон Без Глаши Дышать не может. ДруЖить Захотел, Какой Ласковый Мальчик! Но Папа Сказал: Ты Учитывай Характер Цацки - Чай не Шелковый".  This can be expressed in English as: Anton cannot breath without Glasha. He wants to be her friend. So gentle boy! But Dad said: Take into account the girl's character. It doesn't seem silk like". Here the capital letters represent the initial letters or their combinations for the syllables going vertically by the aplphabetic order: Антон - А, Без . Б, Глаши - Г, Дышать - Д, ДруЖить - ДЖ, etc. (for ДЖ words beginning with Ж also can be used, for Ж doesn't occur as the inital sound of Mandarin syllables). In the second picture there is an example of a horizontal formula. It's for the line containing 爱 and 碍，only two charaters for 'ài', corresponding to 'ай4' in mupin. However the formula uncludes 3 target words, the first of which, given in capitals, is АНТОН from the vertical formula. The words representing the meaning of syllables are shown in Italic. It is: АНТОН любит, как дорогу блокирует, meaning "Anton loves like blocking the road".

 

In total in the '-ай' ( -ai) section there are 64 characters, it's an average number. Now it's not too difficult to memorize them basing on the table. Memorizing is fulfiled by repeated writing of the characters in the given order. But horizontal formulas for different tones of the same syllable begin with the same word, and it's necessary to remember where there are all 4 (5) tones and where only two or one, and which they are. It's the only real difficulty. Memorization will go more smoothly if one knows a number of the most used characters already, which will serve as key stones helping to remember the other characters. So, it's best suited for those of the HSK2-3 level. 

 

In the mupin based table there are 37 sections according to the beggining letters or letter combinations. It's better at some stage to learn by whole sections. Then it'll be easier to keep the material in mind and also to add new characters. It's the easest when new characters represent the same syllables with the same tone. If tone is additional, it's not complicated to add a new line. It's a bit more complicated when a completely new syllable must be added, for it requires to add a new corresponding word in the vertical formula, too. But in Russian it can be always done. 

 

One can use a part of this approach basing on the pinyin, of course. But he will have to rely only on the alphabet without the vertical formula, what will make memorizing more difficult. And I'm not sure that he will manage to create good horizontal formulas in English or other Latin based language to remember characters representing the same syllable.

 

I inclose an Excel sheet with all HSK5 characters by syllable endings in mupin with the completed  '-ай' (-ai) section, and also corrected Mupin-Pinyin conversion table, without 'rem' and 'zem' syllables that became obsolete. 

 

 

 

Mupin_by_endings.xlsx Mupin-pinyin conversion list_Russian.pdf

[Pall]

Why learning characters seperately is important? Because in times of Confucius each word was represented in writing by a certain character. As new phenomena and notions appeared, the need arose for combining characters to express new meanings, because the potential of creating new characters was limited due to the complexity of them and difficulty to remember. The characters were combined in a certain logic, which often cannot be detected precisely, but it can be felt anyway, a kind of association comes to one's mind. 

 

And learning characters in a spreadsheet like one above allows to compare them across a reasonable range, it makes memorizing a way easier.

 

[Pall]

It's not just stupid memorization of a wide range of items, I hate that myself. Moreover, when I do that my breathing sufferes. The idea is quite different. It's about creating a basic system in one's mind, keeping information about characters in their relation to the transcription. As soon as a complete section is learnt, for example the "-ai" section, every time when encountering a character that I've couldn't recognize and which happened to be for a syllable with "-ai" ending, I know that it  must either sit in the table in that section already or not. If it does, I memorize it again, with more effort. If not, it is just added to the corresponding line and linked with the others by a formula. I decided that all formulas for the section as soon as it is learnt, must be considered closed, i.e. if any additional characters appear, a new formula should be created, linking the last character of the initial set with newcomers. And all additional characters should be marked to be clearly seen that they are on the top of. 

 

After the table is learnt in full all memorized characters will be cross-connected with each other by reading texts meant for HSK5. The reading is expected to be rather fast, and characters will be soon packed in mind in real words and expressions.