How useful is zhuyin / 'bopomofo'? How to use it?

[hedwards]

@Parke, I'm sure OneEye or somebody else can come up with a better explanation. But, radicals themselves are basically just for looking things up in dictionaries. It happens that they're also functional components are are a convenient list, but memorizing a radical involves memorizing things that you'll never actually use. But, the more I think about it, the main reason to learn radicals is that they are commonly available on a chart. I don't really regret doing it, but I was doing a lot of work that doesn't really help much with the practice of learning to read or write.

 

As far as memorizing squiggles go, yes you can memorize random squiggles, however it's not an efficient process for most people and in this case there is little or no overlap with characters. You do get better with practice, but I think most people would rather skip memorizing squiggles for the sake of memorizing squiggles and skip to memorizing squiggles that are at least parts of characters.

 

Also, I'm not sure it's possible to truly brute force the characters into memory without picking up on the components naturally.

[AdamD]

hedwards:

 

@Adam, that was certainly my experience with the characters. I looked at a ton of them and then I started to notice what I now understand to be functional components. I first started to realize then when I was memorizing radicals. In retrospect probably not the most effective use of my time, but probably a better use of my time than the methods that I knew about for memorizing characters.

 

Yeah. It's funny how we all have different methods of getting to grips with characters, but ultimately it comes down to knowing the components sooner or later.

 

As far as Esperanto goes, it's one of those good ideas that failed in large part because other languages had such a massive lead. It's still useful to study for a few weeks and at some point I'll memorize the common words, but since it has such a small population that can actively use it, it just doesn't get the kind of attention necessary to be taken seriously. Languages live in part due to popularity.

 

Absolutely. Low-hanging fruit. French, English, etc. are easier to just use than getting everyone to learn Esperanto, even though a minority is negatively impacted by not knowing those principal languages. I think it's the same with pinyin v giving a leg up to high-hanging fruit like zhuyin.

 

ParkeNYU:

 

1) Yes, that's certainly true, but it doesn't conflict with my point. Preparation is preparation – the more the better.

 

This feels a bit like "if you build it, they will come", i.e. a nice idea that doesn't really work in practice. I don't believe more preparation is better; I believe more effective preparation is better. I don't believe throwing zhuyin into the character-learning process equals better preparation for learning characters. If anything, it's a distraction.

 

However, it is up to the student whether s/he will learn Zhuyin the optimum way (look, listen, pronounce), or otherwise engage in the pointless and wasteful task of learning Pinyin as a means of learning Zhuyin (unless the desire is to learn both for their own sakes).

 

There's certainly merit in look-listen-pronounce, but surely that's 1% method and 99% execution. I could hide pinyin from students until they've got all the vocalisations right, and come out of the process with similar results.

 

Ultimately it sounds like you're trying quite hard to justify your defence of zhuyin. I'm not saying that's a bad thing—passion is brilliant—but I do think the case for zhuyin is not as watertight as you'd like it to be. I really love zhuyin, and I actually do think it's more accurate than pinyin, but in much of the world this horse has bolted. Really, really bolted.

[ParkeNYU]

Ultimately it sounds like you're trying quite hard to justify your defence of zhuyin. I'm not saying that's a bad thing—passion is brilliant—but I do think the case for zhuyin is not as watertight as you'd like it to be. I really love zhuyin, and I actually do think it's more accurate than pinyin, but in much of the world this horse has bolted. Really, really bolted.

 

The argument of Zhuyin vs Pinyin can go on ad infinitum and ultimately fall into subjective obscurity. Perhaps I should pull my argument further from 'Zhuyin is better' and push it towards 'the option of Zhuyin should be available'.

 

In 2015, offering students a wide variety of learning options should no longer mean printing alternative editions of textbooks and/or squandering space on each page to accommodate multiple standards. Digital technology should allow the content to be seamlessly tailored to a given student's preferences. For example, you should be able to visit a website, select your desired preferences, export a PDF, and then read it on your desktop, laptop, tablet, phone, or what have you; it's just a glorified 'find & replace' procedure within the source material.

[AdamD]

Perhaps I should pull my argument further from 'Zhuyin is better' and push it towards 'the option of Zhuyin should be available'.

 

I agree with you, and I'd go one step further and say that it is. Not everywhere, of course, but there are zhuyin textbooks about the place, and Pleco gives you the option (and exclusively the option, if you prefer) of displaying zhuyin for dictionary entries.

 

I saw a reasonable amount of zhuyin in Taipei. Not sure if you're aware, but occasionally you'll see a shop sign that provides zhuyin next to the characters, and CDs in the big 24 hour Eslite are sorted by zhuyin.

 

 

[Demonic_Duck]

Is ㄏㄡˊㄏㄡˊㄇㄟˇ the Taiwanese pronunciation for “好好味”?

[AdamD]

Typically no, which I suppose is why zhuyin's on that sign. I took other photos of zhuyin use in Taipei but haven't found them yet.

 

Edit: I misread and am dumb.

[Demonic_Duck]

If it's not Taiwanese, what language is it?

[AdamD]

Edit: Whoops, I misread your post. Yes. Probably. I don't know.

[ParkeNYU]

ㄏㄡˊㄏㄡˊㄇㄟˇ (hóu hóu měi) is a Mandarin approximation of the Cantonese phrase 'hou2 hou2 mei6'.

 

This restaurant serves Hong Kong style food, so Cantonese phonetic annotation is appropriate in this context.

[Demonic_Duck]

Gotcha. Interesting usage!

[AdamD]

Fabulous! Cheers, ParkeNYU.

[oceancalligraphy]

I have some examples of 注音 on signs in a blog post. They even show up on ones teaching Korean. The 50 Japanese tones can also be represented with 注音.  It is the only phonetic system we are taught. 

 

As AdamD mentioned, CDs are listed by 注音 (link to books.com.tw), scroll down, on the left there are other ranges of 注音 to choose from.

 

There is an extended 注音 for Taiwanese. What is Taiwanese phonetic symbols? is a good explanation, and this book series uses some variant of it. Schools choose their textbooks and curriculum for mother language classes, so I don't know how widely it is taught. I suppose if one's studying to teach Taiwanese, one would need to be familiar with all phonetic representations. Signs with characters that should be pronounced in Taiwanese will probably still use regular 注音 since everyone learns that.

[calibre2001]

deleted

[AdamD]

I have lost my mind.

 

On 11/03/2014 at 9:22 PM, AdamD said:

I was going to start learning 繁体 soon anyway, so my intention is to type all 简体 using only pinyin and all 繁体 using only zhuyin.

 

Nearly four years later, I'm actually doing it.

 

For the past few weeks I've only used 注音 on my phone, having deleted the 拼音 keyboard. It's still slow going, and occasionally I'll stumble on a difficult syllable (高雄 is ㄍㄠ ㄒㄩㄥˊ !!), but it's coming along nicely.

 

Tonight I got so excited that I put masking tape all over my physical keyboard and wrote 注音 on all the keys. Apart from Mac Sierra's 注音 keyboard being 100 times worse than iOS's brilliant one — Sierra forces you to select the right tone for every single syllable — and apart from me not being able to see the English letters any more — making this post bloody hard work to type — it's fine.

 

On 11/03/2014 at 9:22 PM, AdamD said:

I expect the differences will draw my attention to finer nuances in pronunciation, which would be fantastic.

 

This definitely happened.

[Lu]

34 minutes ago, AdamD said:

Sierra forces you to select the right tone for every single syllable

Ha, to me that is one of the advantages of bopomofo. Forces you to really know the tones.

 

Smart of you to put tape on your keyboard, must be a lot easier to blind-type English than to blind-type bopomofo. (Which I have done, and occasionally still do.)

[AdamD]

48 minutes ago, Lu said:

Ha, to me that is one of the advantages of bopomofo. Forces you to really know the tones.

 

Oh you’re right. A nice bonus I hadn’t even considered. I’m not yet sure whether it speeds things up or slows things down.

[ParkeNYU]

Which iOS Zhuyin input method are you using? Dynamic?

[AdamD]

Just the standard one.

[ParkeNYU]

Then, in my opinion, you're missing out. Consider the following three options on iOS:

 

Left: Standard Zhuyin (The lack of a grid is already extremely annoying, but the leftward transposition of the bottom row is unforgivable; the keys are also too small because eleven is too many keys to span across such a compact space.)

 

Middle: Dynamic Zhuyin (A much better system with larger and fewer keys on the screen. Entering an initial shifts the keyboard to a layout of finals and tones. The drawback is learning the new key assignments.)

Right: 'Super' Zhuyin or 超注音 (Uses the standard Zhuyin keyboard layout, but with larger keys within a proper, consistent grid scheme. It takes up a little bit more space on the screen.)

 

 

The third one has to be downloaded from the app store, but it's totally worth it!

[AdamD]

Thanks for the recommendations. It's good to know someone's out there developing a better independent 注音 keyboard, although I'm hesitating on the AU$8 price (edit: its AU$4.50). There's a Mac version which installs via Google Play on an Android device (!!!), but for AU$17 I can't fathom how that even works.

 

I believe you that the dynamic keyboard is better than the standard one, but the keyboard layout is so different I worry it'll stuff me up when I bring back a proper 注音 keyboard from Taiwan.