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. It is the official system used in China,Singapore,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. The system makes use of diacritics to indicate the four tones found in Standard Chinese,though these are often omitted in various contexts,such as when spelling Chinese names in non-Chinese texts,or when writing non-Chinese words in Chinese-language texts. Pinyin is also used by various input methods on computers and to categorize entries in some Chinese dictionaries. The word Hànyǔ literally means 'Han language'—meaning,the Chinese language—while pīnyīn (拼音) literally means 'spelled sounds'.
Wade–Giles is a romanization system for Mandarin Chinese. It developed from a system produced by Thomas Francis Wade,during the mid-19th century,and was given completed form with Herbert A. Giles's Chinese–English Dictionary of 1892.
Tongyong Pinyin was the official romanization of Mandarin in Taiwan between 2002 and 2008. The system was unofficially used between 2000 and 2002,when a new romanization system for Taiwan was being evaluated for adoption. Taiwan's Ministry of Education approved the system in 2002,but its use was optional.
Gwoyeu Romatzyh,abbreviated GR,is a system for writing Standard Chinese in the Latin alphabet. It was conceived by Yuen Ren Chao,who led a group of linguists to develop the system from 1925 to 1926. From 1942 to 2000,a small number of reference works published in Hong Kong and overseas made use of the system,and Chao would use it throughout his later linguistics work,including in his most influential publications. However,Gwoyeu Romatzyh never achieved widespread use among the Chinese public. In places where it had been used,it was eventually replaced—largely by Hanyu Pinyin,which became the international standard romanization during the second half of the 20th century. Pinyin itself made use of principles originally introduced by Gwoyeu Romatzyh,whose influence is often reflected in the design of later systems.
General Chinese is a diaphonemic orthography invented by Yuen Ren Chao to represent the pronunciations of all major varieties of Chinese simultaneously. It is "the most complete genuine Chinese diasystem yet published". It can also be used for the Korean,Japanese,and Vietnamese pronunciations of Chinese characters,and challenges the claim that Chinese characters are required for interdialectal communication in written Chinese.
The Mandarin Daily News is a traditional Chinese children's newspaper published daily in Taiwan. The main text of the articles is accompanied by Zhuyin (Bopomofo) phonetic script to aid identification of difficult characters. The project was founded on 25 October 1948.
Tone numbers are numerical digits used like letters to mark the tones of a language. The number is usually placed after a romanized syllable. Tone numbers are defined for a particular language,so they have little meaning between languages.
Romanization of Chinese is the use of the Latin alphabet to transliterate Chinese. Chinese uses a logographic script and its characters do not represent phonemes directly. There have been many systems using Roman characters to represent Chinese throughout history. Linguist Daniel Kane wrote,"It used to be said that sinologists had to be like musicians,who might compose in one key and readily transcribe into other keys." The dominant international standard for Standard Mandarin since about 1982 has been Hanyu Pinyin,invented by a group of Chinese linguists,including Zhou Youguang,in the 1950s. Other well-known systems include Wade–Giles and Yale romanization.
There are many romanization systems used in Taiwan. The first Chinese language romanization system in Taiwan,Pe̍h-ōe-jī,was developed for Taiwanese by Presbyterian missionaries and promoted by the indigenous Presbyterian Churches since the 19th century. Pe̍h-ōe-jīis also the first written system of Taiwanese Hokkien;a similar system for Hakka was also developed at that time. During the period of Japanese rule,the promotion of roman writing systems was suppressed under the Dōka and Kōminka policy. After World War II,Taiwan was handed over from Japan to the Republic of China in 1945. The romanization of Mandarin Chinese was also introduced to Taiwan as official or semi-official standard.
The spelling of Gwoyeu Romatzyh (GR) can be divided into its treatment of initials,finals and tones. GR uses contrasting unvoiced/voiced pairs of consonants to represent aspirated and unaspirated initials in Chinese:for example b and p represent IPA [p] and [pʰ]. The letters j,ch and sh represent two different series of initials:the alveolo-palatal and the retroflex sounds. Although these spellings create no ambiguity in practice,readers more familiar with Pinyin should pay particular attention to them:GR ju,for example,corresponds to Pinyin zhu,not ju.
Simplified Wade,abbreviated SW,is a modification of the Wade–Giles romanization system for writing Standard Mandarin Chinese. It was devised by the Swedish linguist Olov Bertil Anderson (1920–1993),who first published the system in 1969. Simplified Wade uses tonal spelling:in other words it modifies the letters in a syllable in order to indicate tone differences. It is one of only two Mandarin romanization systems that indicate tones in such a way. All other systems use diacritics or numbers to indicate tone.
Bopomofo (ㄅㄆㄇㄈ),also called Zhuyin,occasionally Mandarin Phonetic Symbols,is a Chinese transliteration and writing system for Mandarin Chinese and other related languages and dialects. More commonly used in Taiwanese Mandarin,it may also be used to transcribe other varieties of Chinese,particularly other varieties of Mandarin Chinese dialects,as well as Taiwanese Hokkien. Consisting of 37 characters and five tone marks,it transcribes all possible sounds in Mandarin.
The different varieties of Chinese have been transcribed into many other writing systems.
Daī-ghîtōng-iōng pīng-im is an orthography in the Latin alphabet for Taiwanese Hokkien based upon Tongyong Pinyin. It is able to use the Latin alphabet to indicate the proper variation of pitch with nine diacritic symbols.
A Chinese vowel diagram or Chinese vowel chart is a schematic arrangement of the vowels of the Chinese language,which usually refers to Standard Chinese. The earliest known Chinese vowel diagrams were made public in 1920 by Chinese linguist Yi Tso-lin with the publication of his Lectures on Chinese Phonetics,three years after Daniel Jones published the famous "cardinal vowel diagram" in 1917. Yi Tso-lin refers to those diagrams as "(simple/compound) rhyme composition charts [單/複韻構成圖]",which are diagrams depicting Chinese monophthongs and diphthongs.
The official romanization system for Taiwanese Hokkien in Taiwan is locally referred to as Tâi-uân Bân-lâm-gíLô-má-jīPhing-im Hong-àn or Taiwan Minnanyu Luomazi Pinyin Fang'an,often shortened to Tâi-lô. It is derived from Pe̍h-ōe-jīand since 2006 has been one of the phonetic notation systems officially promoted by Taiwan's Ministry of Education. The system is used in the MoE's Dictionary of Frequently-Used Taiwan Minnan. It is nearly identical to Pe̍h-ōe-jī,apart from:using ts tsh instead of ch chh,using u instead of o in vowel combinations such as oa and oe,using i instead of e in eng and ek,using oo instead of o͘,and using nn instead of ⁿ.
The Yale romanization of Mandarin is a system for transcribing the sounds of Standard Chinese,based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. It was devised in 1943 by the Yale sinologist George Kennedy for a course teaching Chinese to American soldiers,and was popularized by continued development of that course at Yale. The system approximated Chinese sounds using English spelling conventions,in order to accelerate acquisition of correct pronunciation by English speakers.
Taiwanese Phonetic Symbols constitute a system of phonetic notation for the transcription of Taiwanese languages,especially Taiwanese Hokkien. The system was designed by Professor Chu Chao-hsiang,a member of the National Languages Committee in Taiwan,in 1946. The system is derived from Mandarin Phonetic Symbols by creating additional symbols for the sounds that do not appear in Mandarin phonology. It is one of the phonetic notation systems officially promoted by Taiwan's Ministry of Education.
Lin Yutang's Chinese-English Dictionary of Modern Usage,compiled by the linguist and author Lin Yutang,contains over 8,100 character head entries and 110,000 words and phrases,including many neologisms. Lin's dictionary made two lexicographical innovations,neither of which became widely used. Collation is based on his graphical "Instant Index System" that assigns numbers to Chinese characters based on 33 basic calligraphic stroke patterns. Romanization of Chinese is by Lin's "Simplified National Romanization System",which he developed as a prototype for the Gwoyeu Romatzyh or "National Romanization" system adopted by the Chinese government in 1928. Lin's bilingual dictionary continues to be used in the present day,particularly the free online version that the Chinese University of Hong Kong established in 1999.
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.
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