Native speakers and pinyin?

[Gestalt]

A random question that crossed my mind while doing some Mandarin self-study..

How "aware" of pinyin is your average, adult native speaker of Mandarin?

By that I mean, would they be able to write down any sentence correctly in pinyin if they had to? Pinyin is obviously an important tool for learners of mandarin as a foreign language, and my understanding is that it is used in China early on to teach kids to read, but does that continue throughout later education (high school, university)? Do native speakers have to "relearn" pinyin in order to become qualified mandarin teachers?

I was thinking mostly of mandarin speakers in mainland China, but if anyone can comment on the situation in mandarin-speaking populations in other countries I'd be interested in hearing about it.

[roddy]

Seems to me that most relatively young native speakers can write stuff out in pinyin, but they need to think about it - the knowledge is still there, but it takes time to access. Kind of like long division.

Roddy

[charlescpp]

yes, i think most young people can write pinyin b/c most of them use Pinyin IME.

but i have to say, i have't *write* a whole sentence in pinyin after i masterd characteres. pinyin is much harder to read/understand than characters.

that's why we dont use pinyin.

sometimes, to me, a pinyin sentence is even harder than the one in english.

[atitarev]

My penpal had problem with encoding and I couldn't send emails in Chinese. Until the problem was sorted, we communicated in pinyin.

[mr. fanglang]

What is the most popluar computer input method for chinese characters among native chinese in mainland? If its hanyu pingyin, then they should be very familar with it for that reason alone.

[ala]

Everyone who is under 30 and use Chinese Microsoft Word or MSN Messenger is VERY VERY familiar with Hanyu Pinyin, because that's what they use to type Chinese. In fact, on IM and chatrooms, character mistyping is common and tolerated, suggesting it's the phonetics that matter, everything else is just formality.

[liuzhou]

Everyone who is under 30 and use Chinese Microsoft Word or MSN Messenger is VERY VERY familiar with Hanyu Pinyin, because that's what they use to type Chinese.

That is not my experience. None of my Chinese friends, students or colleagues uses pinyin to type Chinese. When they have to, they struggle. I'm with Roddy on this one.

[ala]

Really, what do they use then if not Pinyin? Wubi? That's so hard to learn (not practical) for the casual typist.

In Shanghai, all my friends (college educated, professional) use Microsoft Pinyin 2003 IME 微软拼音输入法 or Ziguang 紫光输入法 made by Tsinghua. Both are Hanyu Pinyin inputs, they are "idiot-proof"... Using them guarantees you have an excellent command of Hanyu Pinyin, tones aside. Wubi isn't even supported by Windows XP anymore.

Even during middle school, we are still exposed to Hanyu Pinyin. In high school typing classes, Hanyu Pinyin is mandatory.

[liuzhou]

I'm not sure what they use. I will ask. Whatever it is, it is much faster than using pinyin!

[Long2John]

Most Taiwanese don't have a clue about pinyin, they use Bo Po Mo instead of pinyin in school. And when typing chinese characters they seem to use either Bo Po Mo or the radical look up meathod.

[xiaocai]

I'm in the 1st in uni, and all my friends and classmates use pinyin as their only input method. I know its much slower than wubi and many other IMEs, but we dont need to actually learn it.

However, people do make mistakes with pinyin. I myself somtimes have difficulty in differenciating between -n and -ng, which is considered more common among people from southern provinces. Since we are not going to have any question based on pinyin in Gaokao(the entrance exam of all China unis), students in senior middle school dont pay much attention to this part. So I think yes, If I want to be a Chinese teacher in school, a systemic preparation is necessary before taking the qualification exam.

Anyway, these are just my own experience.

[liuzhou]

I myself somtimes have difficulty in differenciating between -n and -ng, which is considered more common among people from southern provinces.

and s- / sh-

[atitarev]

I am sure most people who know standard Mandarin find it easier to use pinyin for input but for example in Hong Kong, they haven't been using Mandarin and not all people know it. They use non-phonetical input methods like Wubi and Cangjie (Chongkit). I found both very hard to master. These methods are also well-known in the southern provinces. In Taiwan there are multiple input methods including 2 phonetical onese - 1 - based on Hanyu Pinyin and 2 - based on Zhuyin (Bopomofo). I know some phonetical methods for inputting Cantonese traditional characters including the supplementary set for Hong Kong.

EDIT: trouble is for Cantonese there are a few different romanisations. The ones I know are based on jyutping (read: yutping), e.g. Red Dragonfly

This just answers the question that you don't have to know Mandarin pronunciation and pinyn to type in Chinese, although these other methods are less popular,especially among Chinese learners. Pinyin input is much user-friendlier, IMHO.

In my opinion, most educated mainlanders know pinyin, especially if they live in cities and even more so if they know English or any other European language - Hanyu Pinyin is the official transliteration of Chinese names (without the tone marks).

[skylee]

I agree with atitarev. Most HK people I know either cannot type in Chinese or use Cangjie, or use a writing pad, or use a secretary (secretaries use Cangjie). So most of the time we just write in English.

I myself use hanyu pinyin input. I can also use stroke input method (not Cangjie) if I must.

[trevelyan]

What I find interesting is that some older Chinese can't actually differentiate between pinyin and foreign languages. I've had more than one tell me they don't understand English on my writing the pinyin for something down for them.

[Quest]

Yes English means anything in alphabets. So Yukki, Yumi, Toro are English names...

[Lugubert]

Liuzhou

I myself somtimes have difficulty in differenciating between -n and -ng, which is considered more common among people from southern provinces.

and s- / sh-

Did you try the Fuzzy pinyin? From whatever it is in English, go to the Win XP IME keyboard Properties and check that box. Then you can for example, depending on your choice of fuzzy pairs, enter Hanzou and will still get 杭州 for a suggestion. Please note that if you in MS Pinyin 2003 choose (one or more of) the options Prompt Candidate and Word Forecast, you can't enter tones but suggestions appear already upon syllable completion. Some more instructions at for example http://library.princeton.edu/projects/eacc/IMETalk.pdf.

[ala]

It's not very hard remembering the -n, -ng endings for the characters, especially if you type Chinese everyday (the hard part is in differentiating them aurally). The other thing is that if you type in the pinyin, you get a whole candidate list of Chinese characters, and this list of characters always appear, so you are constantly reminded of which characters are spelled what as you scroll through the list.

And also, characters with component 青 are all -ng, so that immediately knocks out 清、请、情、晴、氰、箐、静、精、靖、睛、腈 etc etc. Now do the same for 京, 生, 丁, 竞, 成 etc and you realize you've knocked out a large portion of -ng characters.

[xiaocai]

and s- / sh-

Surprisingly, I don't have any problem with this.

Did you try the Fuzzy pinyin? From whatever it is in English, go to the Win XP IME keyboard Properties and check that box. Then you can for example, depending on your choice of fuzzy pairs, enter Hanzou and will still get 杭州 for a suggestion. Please note that if you in MS Pinyin 2003 choose (one or more of) the options Prompt Candidate and Word Forecast, you can't enter tones but suggestions appear already upon syllable completion.

I've heard of this, but it seems that none of them is compatible with mac. Thank you all the same anyway.

It's not very hard remembering the -n, -ng endings for the characters

Yes, most of time it's not very hard according to your method. However I still find that some exceptions like "劲" which would be quite tricky. Maybe I really need a revision of my primary textbooks.

[ala]

Yes, most of time it's not very hard according to your method. However I still find that some exceptions like "劲" which would be quite tricky. Maybe I really need a revision of my primary textbooks.

Yeah, 劲 has two readings, jin and jing. 劲力=jinli, 劲烈=jinglie

Another exception is the "pin" in 拼音 Pinyin, which traditionally should be pronounced "ping" (in fact, it still is with "-ng" in Cantonese and Korean), but somehow got mixed up in Beijing Mandarin as "pin". See: 并bing, 饼bing, 屏ping, 瓶ping, 栟bing etc.