Several input methods allow the use of Chinese characters with computers. Most allow selection of characters based either on their pronunciation or their graphical shape. Phonetic input methods are easier to learn but are less efficient, while graphical methods allow faster input, but have a steep learning curve.
Hanyu Pinyin, or simply pinyin, is the most common romanization system for Standard Chinese. In official documents, it is referred to as the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet. Hanyu literally means 'Han language'—that is, the Chinese language—while pinyin literally means 'spelled sounds'. Pinyin is the official romanisation system used in China, Singapore, Taiwan, and by the United Nations. Its use has become common when transliterating Standard Chinese mostly regardless of region, though it is less ubiquitous in Taiwan. It is used to teach Standard Chinese, normally written with Chinese characters, to students already familiar with the Latin alphabet. Pinyin is also used by various input methods on computers and to categorize entries in some Chinese dictionaries.
Cantonese is the traditional prestige variety of Yue Chinese, a Sinitic language belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family. It originated in the city of Guangzhou and its surrounding Pearl River Delta.
The Hong Kong Government uses an unpublished system of Romanisation of Cantonese for public purposes which is based on the 1888 standard described by Roy T Cowles in 1914 as Standard Romanisation. The primary need for Romanisation of Cantonese by the Hong Kong Government is in the assigning of names to new streets and places. It has not formally or publicly disclosed its method for determining the appropriate Romanisation in any given instance.
Guangdong Romanization refers to the four romanization schemes published by the Guangdong Provincial Education Department in 1960 for transliterating Cantonese, Teochew, Hakka and Hainanese. The schemes utilized similar elements with some differences in order to adapt to their respective spoken varieties.
A Chinese Syllabary Pronounced According to the Dialect of Canton (粵音韻彙) is a book written by Wong Shik-Ling (黃錫凌) within a few years before being published in Hong Kong, 1941. It is one of the most influential books on the research of Cantonese pronunciation. Many Chinese dictionaries later used Wong's Chinese character indices and system of phonetic symbols to denote the Cantonese pronunciation of Chinese characters. Because of its significance, the book has been reprinted many times after its first publishing.
Proper Cantonese pronunciation is a campaign in Hong Kong started from the 1980s and led by scholar Richard Ho (何文匯) to promote the "proper pronunciation" in the Cantonese language. The prescriptive nature of the campaign has led to controversies.
Cantonese Braille is a braille script used to write Cantonese in Hong Kong and Macau. It is locally referred to as tim chi 'dot characters' or more commonly but ambiguously tuk chi 'raised characters'. Although Cantonese is written in Chinese characters, Cantonese Braille is purely phonetic, with punctuation, digits and Latin letters from the original Braille. It can be mixed with English text.
The Institute of Language in Education Scheme also known as the List of Cantonese Pronunciation of Commonly-used Chinese Characters romanization scheme (常用字廣州話讀音表), ILE scheme, and Cantonese Pinyin, is a romanization system for Cantonese developed by Ping-Chiu Thomas Yu in 1971, and subsequently modified by the Education Department of Hong Kong and Zhan Bohui (詹伯慧) of the Chinese Dialects Research Centre of the Jinan University, Guangdong, PRC, and honorary professor of the School of Chinese, University of Hong Kong. It is the only romanization system accepted by Education and Manpower Bureau of Hong Kong and Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority.
Sidney Lau romanisation is a system of romanisation for Cantonese that was developed in the 1970s by Sidney Lau for teaching Cantonese to Hong Kong Government expatriates. It is based on the Hong Kong Government's Standard Romanisation which was the result of the work of James D. Ball and Ernst J. Eitel about a century earlier.
Wong Shik Ling published a scheme of phonetic symbols for Cantonese based on the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) in the book A Chinese Syllabary Pronounced According to the Dialect of Canton. The scheme has been widely used in Chinese dictionaries published in Hong Kong. The scheme, known as S. L. Wong system (黃錫凌式), is a broad phonemic transcription system based on IPA and its analysis of Cantonese phonemes is grounded in the theories of Y. R. Chao.
Wong Shik-Ling published a romanisation scheme accompanying a set of phonetic symbols for Cantonese based on International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) in the book A Chinese Syllabary Pronounced according to the Dialect of Canton.
Hong Kong Cantonese is a dialect of the Cantonese language (廣東話，粵語), which is in the Sino-Tibetan language family. Cantonese is lingua franca of populations living in the Guangdong Province of mainland China, in the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau, as well as in many overseas Chinese communities. Hong Kong Cantonese shares a recent and direct lineage with the Guangzhou (Canton) dialect of Cantonese (廣州話); decades of separation have led to some deviations between Hong Kong Cantonese and Guangzhou Cantonese in terms of vocabulary and other noticeable speech habits, although Hong Kong officially maintains the Guangzhou dialect and pronunciations as the official language standard. Hongkongers refer to the language as "Cantonese" (廣東話).
The Yale romanization of Cantonese was developed by Yale scholar Gerard P. Kok for his and Parker Po-fei Huang's textbook Speak Cantonese initially circulated in looseleaf form in 1952 but later published in 1958. Unlike the Yale romanization of Mandarin, it is still widely used in books and dictionaries, especially for foreign learners of Cantonese. It shares some similarities with Hanyu Pinyin in that unvoiced, unaspirated consonants are represented by letters traditionally used in English and most other European languages to represent voiced sounds. For example, is represented as b in Yale, whereas its aspirated counterpart, is represented as p. Students attending The Chinese University of Hong Kong's New-Asia Yale-in-China Chinese Language Center are taught using Yale romanization.
The Cantonese Wikipedia is the Cantonese-language edition of Wikipedia, run by the Wikimedia Foundation. It was started on 25 March 2006.
The Cantonese Romanisation system known as Barnett–Chao is based on the principles of the Gwoyeu Romatzyh system (GR) developed by Yuen Ren Chao in the 1920s, which he modified in 1947. The B-C system is a modification in 1950 by K M A Barnett from Yuen Ren Chao's romanisation system. It was adopted by the School of Oriental and African Studies, London (SOAS).
Standard Cantonese pronunciation originates from Guangzhou, also known as Canton, the capital of Guangdong Province. Hong Kong Cantonese is closely related to the Guangzhou dialect, with only minor differences. Yue dialects spoken in other parts of Guangdong and Guangxi provinces, such as Taishanese, exhibit more significant divergences.
The Macau Government Cantonese Romanization refers to the mostly consistent system for romanizing Cantonese as employed by the Government of Macau and other non-governmental organizations based in Macau. The system has been employed by the Macau Government since the Portuguese colonial period and continues to be used after the 1999 handover of the territory. Similarly to its counterpart romanization system in Hong Kong, the method is not completely standardized and thus is not taught in schools, but rather employed by government agencies to accurately display the correct pronunciation of Cantonese in public signage and official usage.
The Cantonese Transliteration Scheme, sometimes called Rao's romanization, is the romanisation for Cantonese published at part of the Guangdong Romanization by the Guangdong Education department in 1960, and further revised by Rao Bingcai in 1980. It is referred to as the Canton Romanization on the LSHK character database.
Cantonese Bopomofo, or Cantonese Phonetic Symbols is an extended set of Bopomofo characters used to transcribe Yue Chinese and, specifically, its prestige Cantonese dialect. It was first introduced in early 1930s, and then standardized in 1950. It fell into disuse along with the original Bopomofo for Mandarin Chinese in the late 1950s.
