ㄅㄆㄇㄈ really suks

[smithsgj]

Now that Taipei has officially adopted Hanyu Pinyin for certain purposes, is there any point at all in retaining zhuyin fuhao? They're ugly, they're counter-intuitive, and they have no application in the real world.

[Ian_Lee]

But bopomofo can yield more accurate pronounciation than hanyu pinyin does.

[Quest]

But bopomofo can yield more accurate pronounciation than hanyu pinyin does.

I would doubt that.

[ala]

Actually, I find Zhuyin Fuhao much better than pinyin. If we associated each character to its Zhuyin Fuhao instead of Hanyu Pinyin, my life would have been much easier and my image of Chinese characters purer. It would be much easier to remember which character ends in -n and which with -ng, likewise which starts with an sh- and which with s-. I do not have to know that there is no jui nor is there a hue or gue.

Also, I don't have to associate incredibly ugly spellings like "ding", "dongfang", "zhongxiao lu", "zhuangxiang", "zhongshan xi lu". "xianggang", "xiao", "xuan", "xiangxia", "zhongwu", "qigong", "qiangtiao", "xiongmao", "wuxia", "gongheguo", "zhonghua", with the beautiful Chinese characters. Seeing "gongheguo" for the characters used in "Republic" just does not do those characters justice. You might say that if we used Zhuyin Fuhao, we also associate the zhuyin symbols with the Chinese characters; but at least there aren't established sense of aesthetics pertaining to the Zhuyin script like there are for the Latin script to which pinyin is based on. And yes, aesthetics does exist, and since the majority of the world do not associate the Latin script with Hanyu Pinyin, Hanyu Pinyin is going to look ugly (at best, strange) for most of the world. Everytime I see a Chinese character, I also disturbingly see the ugly pinyin in my minds eye. It is like low-quality graffiti on a national monument. At least Zhuyin Fuhao is derived from the characters (although I agree, it could be modified to look better and be more writable); with Zhuyin, my phonetic script doesn't have to compare with other languages that depend on the Latin script as their sole script. This way the Chinese can create their own sense of aesthetics out of Zhuyin. But pinyin? Most Chinese who have learned a European language will tell you Hanyu Pinyin is ugly. The aesthetic values for the Latin script are already established, and Hanyu Pinyin using the Latin script fails the pretty test. Worse, even after you know the pronounciation of the character, you will always mentally see the ugly pinyin when you read the character.

And, Zhuyin is far more logical than Hanyu Pinyin. Using Zhuyin also avoids the pitfalls of learning a European language when having Hanyu Pinyin as your first introduction to the Latin script. That pinyin b-, d-, g- never sounds quite right to the European b-, d-, g- for a good reason. It always amuses me when Mandarin announcers pronounce B-stocks as pinyin "bi gu" voiceless (in Wade Giles: pi-ku).

[markalexander100]

The aesthetic values for the Latin script are already established

What are they?

[smithsgj]

Actually, I find Zhuyin Fuhao much better than pinyin. If we associated each character to its Zhuyin Fuhao instead of Hanyu Pinyin, my life would have been much easier and my image of Chinese characters purer. It would be much easier to remember which character ends in -n and which with -ng, likewise which starts with an sh- and which with s-. I do not have to know that there is no jui nor is there a hue or gue.

Where is ㄅㄆㄇㄈ used? Taiwan. Which Chinese speakers -- even with their best, most "standard" pronunciation -- consistently get s/sh and -n/-ng "wrong"? The Taiwanese (I don't really mean wrong, I mean Taiwan Guoyu doesn't really make these distinctions. Partly that may be down to fangyan influence, but there are fangyan throughout China and I'm convinced ㄅㄆㄇㄈ is a factor).

As to jui, hue and gue: I'm not quite sure what you mean, or in what sense you would "expect" these syllable combinations to exist. There are, equally, no ㄐㄨㄟ, ㄏㄨㄝ　or ㄍㄨㄝ, the phonotactic possibilities have to be learnt: so what? If you're suggesting that pinyin rui or zhui would be better represented by jui, well, that's a suggested improvement (although not one I would support), not a searing indictment of the whole system.

Also, I don't have to associate incredibly ugly spellings with the beautiful Chinese characters.

Subjectiveness run riot. Who on earth is to say what is an attractive spelling? To my mind, Indonesian, Vietnamese and Basque don't look particularly pretty, and Finnish looks a mess. I like the Pinyin 'r', and 'x' and 'q', and I don't like 'z' and 'zh'. But I can't really explain why, I don't think it's very important, and anyway the question of what combinations of letters look nice is hardly a sensible guiding principle in matters of phoneticization policy.

Oh, by the way:

ㄅㄆㄇㄈㄉㄊㄋㄌㄍㄎㄏㄐㄑㄒㄓㄔㄕㄖㄗㄘㄙ

ㄧㄨㄩㄚㄛㄜㄝㄞㄟㄠㄡㄢㄣㄤㄥㄦ

For anyone unfamiliar with a set of symbols that's really aesthetically motivated, not. Aren't they lovely?

The 26 letters of the roman alphabet are arbitrary symbols. It is simply not possible to score the aesthetics of letters, or of combinations of letters, by any rigorous, objective or scholarly means. Is it?

And, Zhuyin is far more logical than Hanyu Pinyin.

There are a number of systemic problems with zhuyin (I'll stop calling it "ㄅㄆㄇㄈ" because it's a hassle to type or copy and paste. It wasn't really designed for the computer age, you see). How are you supposed to pronounce the symbol ㄐ? 'ji'. What about ㄐ followed by ㄧ? Also 'ji'. Logic? ㄐ followed by ㄩ? 'Ju'. What happened to the ㄧ bit of ㄐthere then?

If you know Pinyin, you know that tong and yong rhyme, right? Not in zhuyin. Tong is ㄊㄨㄥ (in Pinyin that would be t -- u -- eng). Yong is ㄩㄥ (= yu -- eng). Xiong is like this: ㄒㄩㄥ, or xi -- yu -- eng. Sorry, was that one syllable, or three?

Using Zhuyin also avoids the pitfalls of learning a European language when having Hanyu Pinyin as your first introduction to the Latin script. That pinyin b-, d-, g- never sounds quite right to the European b-, d-, g- for a good reason.

The use of the roman alphabet is hardly confined to European languages. All sorts of languages that use aspiration and voicing differently use the alphabet (not to mention clicks, bilabial trills and other exotica). In English, /p/ and /k/ are often aspirated in non-final position. So when I hear the unaspirated /p/ that they have in French (like in Paris (Paree), or the similar /k/ (like in seconde), it makes me think more of /b/ and /g/ than /p/ and /k/. If French were spelt in Pinyin, my French pronunciation might be more reliable!!

But that's just an English native speaker's stance. The great thing about Pinyin, unlike systems like Yale where 'shi' is indeed 'shr', is that it's pretty much other-language neutral. It's not specially designed for English speakers, say, or French (there *is* a French-speaker-specific romanization scheme, I kid you not), and of course millions of Chinese schoolkids are using it effectively every day.

Pinyin is also extremely parsimonious and efficient. There are 37 zhuyin symbols, and (obviously) 26 letters (are they all used... yes, they are aren't they? no.. not v.. tho that's sometimes used for yu..)

Why, in zhuyin, do we need two types of /r/, one for 兒 and one for everything else, when each of the two contexts rules the other one out. Why do we need a special symbol ㄞ (ai), when it's just a diphthong made up of ㄚ(a) and ㄧ(i)?

It always amuses me when Mandarin announcers pronounce B-stocks as pinyin "bi gu" voiceless (in Wade Giles: pi-ku).

Nice one!

[nnt]

To my mind, Indonesian, Vietnamese and Basque don't look particularly pretty, and Finnish looks a mess.

Just to remind that Vietnamese can be calligraphied in Chinese-like characters too (chữ Nôm), and the latest Unicode standard include several thousands of these (although few Vietnamese could actually read them...)

[smithsgj]

nnt: when i was in vietnam i noticed ppl reading chinese newspapers. were they viet newspapers, or just foreign language ones for hua qiao?

the real problem with vietnamese is all those diacritics. are they really necessary, or can viet be read satisfactorily without them, like french?

[niubi]

then it would be like reading pinyin without designations of the tones

[nnt]

nnt: when i was in vietnam i noticed ppl reading chinese newspapers. were they viet newspapers' date=' or just foreign language ones for hua qiao?

the real problem with vietnamese is all those diacritics. are they really necessary, or can viet be read satisfactorily without them, like french?[/quote']

These newspapers were certainly written in Chinese (either imported Chinese newspapers, or Vietnamese publications for Chinese tourists/huaqiao) because the "chữ Nôm" is no longer used except in calligraphy. Most Vietnamese people would confuse Nôm characters with Chinese characters!

Here is an example of 13th century "chữ Nôm" book with its transcription in current Vietnamese:

http://hanosoft.com/document/cutran.pdf

from http://hanosoft.com/

The diacritics are necessary for two reasons: there are 12 vowels and 6 tones, so without them it would be like using Pinyin without tones to transcribe Cantonese!

Romanized transcription was invented in the 17th century by Jesuits (Alexandre de Rhodes) for evangelization purposes, as a mean for them to study Vietnamese without all these unofficial Chinese-like characters, and the romanization process has continued later.

It was first officially imposed by the French at the end of the 19th century and adopted by Vietnamese revolutionaries as the quickest way to eradicate illiteracy and promote new ideas...

[ala]

Where is ㄅㄆㄇㄈ used? Taiwan. Which Chinese speakers -- even with their best' date=' most "standard" pronunciation -- consistently get s/sh and -n/-ng "wrong"? The Taiwanese (I don't really mean wrong, I mean Taiwan Guoyu doesn't really make these distinctions. Partly that may be down to fangyan influence, but there are fangyan throughout China and I'm convinced ㄅㄆㄇㄈ is a factor).[/quote']

It's mainly Fangyan influence. I along with a lot of Shanghainese, consistently get "zh" and "z", "ch" and "c", "sh" and "s" confused when growing up. Nor could I ever decipher an -n from an -ng. I mean, we were all taught that the "-ng" has a nasal quality, but was never explained what that really was, and how it was different to -n (which we felt also had a nasal quality). Even hearing the two side by side repeatedly made little progress. Having a spelling of s similar to sh only makes it harder to mentally separate the two when memorizing. Also, we continuously asked the question "does it end in n or ng?"when we looked for words in the dictionary. And it was easy to forget.

As to jui, hue and gue: I'm not quite sure what you mean, or in what sense you would "expect" these syllable combinations to exist. There are, equally, no ㄐㄨㄟ, ㄏㄨㄝ　or ㄍㄨㄝ, the phonotactic possibilities have to be learnt: so what?

No, I meant instead that from orthography alone, it made no sense to allow "hui" but ban "jui". Instead the jui is spelled jue in pinyin. Can you tell me how the final rhyme (-e) is different at all between tui1 and xue1??? The real difference is in tu and xu, not in pinyin's -i and -e. Clearly, zhuyin here is more accurate. In zhuyin, tui is [t][e] and xue is [x][yu][e]; the -u in tu and xu are different vowels.

There are a number of systemic problems with zhuyin (I'll stop calling it "ㄅㄆㄇㄈ" because it's a hassle to type or copy and paste. It wasn't really designed for the computer age, you see).

Zhuyin is just as easy for the computers as Japanese katakana/hiragana input. Each key is assigned a zhuyin character designed for maximum typing efficiency. This efficiency adaptation doesn't exist for pinyin, because the English keyboard is designed for English and not pinyin. Although pinyin advantages include better mastery of the English keyboard; but this is secondary.

pinyin has far more systematic errors than zhuyin. What pinyin has succeeded in doing is making you unaware of these systematic errors; you end up comparing every other system (zhuyin, yale, et al) with pinyin and finding erroneous "illogic" in the more logical. Haha, I don't know.. maybe that is a postive for pinyin.

How are you supposed to pronounce the symbol ㄐ? 'ji'. What about ㄐ followed by ㄧ? Also 'ji'. Logic? ㄐ followed by ㄩ? 'Ju'. What happened to the ㄧ bit of ㄐthere then?

ju and tu are DIFFERENT phonetically. Hence it made perfect sense in zhuyin to have them with ㄩ (yu) and ㄨ (u), respectively. Otherwise, seeing "ju" I might pronounce a sound similar to pinyin zhu if I didn't know better. ㄧㄩ is unnecessary since ㄩ is yu and not pinyin -u (ㄨ). ㄧ in zhuyin is i/yi which are phonetically equivalent in Mandarin.

Pinyin had many compromises in terms of rules, zhuyin was designed specifically for Mandarin. Only problem I find in zhuyin is u+eng construct (not that pinyin -ong/-ung is logical either). They should have just created a new symbol for -ong.

[Jive Turkey]

Yaaaawn. Another HYPY vs. zhuyinfuhao debate. I do wish the mainlanders would just hurry up and liberate the Taiwanese from their zhuyinfuhao.

[smithsgj]

> It's mainly Fangyan influence

well, since you've given up on the "aesthetics" of roman script, I'll let you have that.

> Can you tell me how the final rhyme (-e) is different at all between tui1 and xue1???

I would have thought that tui was a triphthong. Or a semivowel, not a real /u/, followed by a diphthong. The zhuyin equivalents are ㄊㄨㄟ and ㄒㄩㄝ, so the vowels are discriminated there too. But yeah probably they often rhyme in fluent speech.

> Zhuyin is just as easy for the computers as Japanese katakana/hiragana input. Each key is assigned a zhuyin character designed for maximum typing efficiency.

Taiwanese ppl use zhuyin to key characters (though they'd be a lot quicker if they learnt how to use pinyin). Typing the zhuyin symbols themselves is a pain: they may be etched on to the keys, but I still have to use the IME and select the symbol from amongst the Chinese characters with the same sound, if there are any. Typing Pinyin just involves using the keyboard directly. From your reply, it looks as if you too find it easier to type Pinyin than zhuyin.

＞　ju and tu are DIFFERENT phonetically. Hence it made perfect sense in zhuyin to have them with ㄩ (yu) and ㄨ (u), respectively. Otherwise, seeing "ju" I might pronounce a sound similar to pinyin zhu if I didn't know better. ㄧㄩ is unnecessary since ㄩ is yu and not pinyin -u (ㄨ). ㄧ in zhuyin is i/yi which are phonetically equivalent in Mandarin.

Yes, but what is ㄐ? Unpronounceable (sp?) that's what it is. Its standard label is the same as the label plus something else.

One advantage of zhuyin is that, like hiragana, it can be conveniently written vertically next to characters -- in children's/learners' texts, or next to a particularly difficult character. Unfortunately, even this minor benefit is not available on a standard WP platform.

[smithsgj]

Sorry JT the thread title was a little deceptive. You were lured in here in expectation of something more meaty?

Seriously: if you know of links then please post them. The topic hasn't come up here before, as far as I know. None of us wants to reinvent the wheel!

[cometrue]

ㄅㄆㄇㄈㄉㄊㄋㄌㄍㄎㄏㄐㄑㄒㄓㄔㄕㄖㄗㄘㄙ

ㄧㄨㄩㄚㄛㄜㄝㄞㄠㄡㄢㄤㄥㄦ

ugly freaks! especially these ones: ㄟㄛㄜㄣ dont you think they are not writable?

it made me feeling that when i wrote them down there still something didnt finish, how sad it is. by stroke order, we always write the left part first, how come the ㄟ is the letter's first and only stroke?

[smithsgj]

There's no system to the graphs. Some of them are like bits of characters (they look like radicals, in some cases: although note that ㄆ , the second one, is two strokes not the expected three). Some of them are apparently intended to call to mind letters of the roman alphabet (ㄅ=b,ㄇ=m,ㄈ=f,ㄊ=t,ㄘ=ts (pinyin c),ㄩ=yu). Others look like such letters, but misleadingly so (ㄒ=x,ㄚ=a,ㄨ=u). The rest of them, as you say, are ugly freaks.

[cometrue]

got it!

[ala]

There's no system to the graphs. Some of them are like bits of characters (they look like radicals, in some cases: although note that ㄆ , the second one, is two strokes not the expected three). Some of them are apparently intended to call to mind letters of the roman alphabet (ㄅ=b,ㄇ=m,ㄈ=f,ㄊ=t,ㄘ=ts (pinyin c),ㄩ=yu). Others look like such letters, but misleadingly so (ㄒ=x,ㄚ=a,ㄨ=u). The rest of them, as you say, are ugly freaks.

FYI, many Chinese radicals are also standalone characters.

Parts from characters, like in katakana:

ㄅ (B) ← 包 (bao)

ㄆ (p) ← 波 (po)

ㄋ (n) ← 乃 (nai)

ㄙ (s) ← 私 (si)

ㄝ (ie, ye) ← 也 (ye)

Derived from characters by adding an extra mark:

ㄉ (d) ← 刀 (dao)

ㄌ (l) ← 力 (li)

Most nearly identical to the original characters (and their pronounciation elements):

ㄧ/一 (i) ← 一 (yi)

ㄚ (a) ← 丫 (ya, a)

ㄈ (f) ← 匚 (fang)

ㄏ (h) ← 厂 (han) , simplified Chinese uses it as 廠

ㄗ (z) ← 卩 (jie)

ㄓ (zhi) ←ㄓ (archaic), modern: 之 (zhi)

ㄕ (shi) ← 尸 (shi)

ㄤ (ang) ← 尢 (wang)

ㄩ (ü) ← 凵 (yu)

ㄡ (ou) ← 又 (you)

ㄖ ® ← ㄖ (archaic), modern:日 (ri)

ㄒ (x) ← ㄒ (archaic, ha), modern: 下 (xia)

ㄇ (m) ← ㄇ (archaic), modern: 冪 (mi)

ㄔ (chi) ← 彳 (chi)

ㄍ (k) ← ㄍ (archaic, ku?)

ㄑ (q) ← ㄑ (archaic, qi?)

ㄐ (j) ← ㄐ (archaic), modern: 叫 (jiao)

ㄞ (ai) ← ㄞ (archaic), modern: 亥 (hai)

ㄢ (an) ← ㄢ (archaic), modern: 菡 (han)

ㄦ (er) ← 儿 (archaic), modern: 兒 (er), although now used in Simplified Chinese 儿.

ㄟ (ei) ← ㄟ (archaic, ei). Similar to hiragana/katakana へ (he/e)

ㄘ © ← 七 (the ㄘ is an ancient version of 七 and pronounced in Mandarin as ci; it also happens to look like hiragana ち chi)

ㄨ (u) ← 五 (ㄨ is the old Chinese numeral for five).

The bulk of what you call "ugly freaks" for zhuyin are Chinese characters, though some rarely used or archaic.

[Guest cavebear]

Personally I would like to see that Taiwanese keep their own BOPOMOFO system, although a lot politics is unnecesarily attached to it.

[skylee]

Personally I think the bopomofo system creates unnecessary obstacles for learners (you have to first learn the symbols, which are as difficult as, if not harder than, the kanas to untrained eyes). Hanyu Pinyin makes things much easier.

But I think Taiwan can retain the system if the people there want to (although this would put them in a less advantageous position as the rest of the world is using pinyin). Just please standardise the romanisation (I was lost in the centre of Taipei because of the confusing street names, well I shouldn't have used an English map in the first place).