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

[Shi Tong]

Could you use IPA notation to indicate what sounds you actually mean by that?

No, I didn't even know what it was until I looked it up just now on Google.

Are you telling me that you think that ㄩㄥ is the same as ㄧㄥ, or that you cant tell the difference when said?

Of course, it's subtle, but that's because the sounds are almost the same.

This doesn't make any sense to me. Linguistically speaking, it either has four sounds or it has three. You can make a case for using three letters instead of four or five, but please don't confuse sounds and letters here.

Chrix, we all know you're a linguist, and your depth of knowledge on the side of linguistics far outstips my own, which is fine. Also, the reason I can confuse sounds and letters is also because of the above- I am not a linguist, I just know what I know, however, I think you're being pedantic in pretending that this doesn't make sense to you.

The zhuyin and pinyin method of seperating the sounds for zhuang consist of three seperated syllables (if this is what they're called.. since I'm not a linguist, this could be wrong), zhi, wu and ang. ㄓㄨㄤ. Zhi is (IMO) one sound, Wu is (IMO) one sound, and ang is actually THREE sounds (according to my ear), which is uu and nn and gg.

My point though, was that sticking the middle two sounds together: ㄨㄤ, might make people think that this is a single sound, or letter (or whatever you want to call it), avaliable for use, instead of two, which I think potentially confuses the listener.

I think it would confuse most newbies if you gave them half a dozen systems to choose from, it's bad enough that Sinology students have to familiarise themselves with all of them...

I've been saying for ages that IF they find one system confusing it MIGHT be constructive to introduce another option.

I'm not suggesting that they should be offered 8 or however many systems there are, and just let them choose from a menu. I know I would have struggled as a new learner with that idea.

Again, you're twisting my words, or rather quoting me out of context, I was talking about anectodal evidence, and I don't know anyone personally who's had trouble with pinyin. (I'm not talking about people I only know virtually from an internet forum).

So, because you know me on here and not in real life, you think that I dont count as a vote or a person or something? I'm just as valid as all the other people who you know who dont have trouble with pinyin, and what's more, there are more people like me who are just as valid.

Just because you dont know them, doesn't mean that we dont exist.

I feel like nobody respects my opinion here just because it's against the grain of the general learning of the people on the forum, and my views are laughed at because I dont fit in.

Look, I've repeated the argument about processing speed a couple of times now and won't do so again. Pinyin will also be acquired faster than zhuyin since it is based on the Latin script, another argument I've made several times.

In your opinion, anecdotally, and for the people you know that use pinyin. I picked up zhuyin very fast and have never really managed pinyin, even though I have had contact with it for years.

Nobody forces you to spend so much time arguing your case for zhuyin. You're welcome to spend more time on other threads....

As are you, but if you were constantly bombarded with people telling you that your opinion is wrong or invalid, you might feel like you want to fight your corner too.

On the first page you name three reasons that are debunked in a few posts after it, and after that it's just a repeat of your argument: pinyin confused me. Zhuyin works for me.

Just because someone says that I'm wrong, doesn't make it so.

Which you have been saying for about five pages now. It's still not an argument.

Well, you're not willing to read or understand my arguments for zhuyin, then that's your problem, and if you're going to tell me that my argument is just rubbish, then you will only get rubbish answers from me, since you think my other arguments are not worth reading.

If you see the letter u in pinyin, you know what it should sound like once the teacher has explained it to you.

Yeah, well, I would explain why this could be confusing, like I did already, but what's the point. You'll just think it's not worthy.

Well, it does. It gets your name in your passport. Zhuyin can't do that. It can also spell street and place names, for example.

Where did I say you can write zhuyin in a passport or that pinyin wasn't the best Romanisation system of Chinese?

My point, if it's worth saying again, was that Taiwanese people can still write their name in Roman characters, just differently than pinyin.

I've even said that I think Taiwan should use pinyin exclusively for their Romanisation system, since it's the best one compared with their current method.

But I'm forgetting, you wont actually read this.

No, I'm right

Renzhe, I cant find a Chinese character- zhuyin converter.

There is always a possibility that I'm wrong!!:lol:

It does do something -- it gives Chinese the same ability to write their names using the Roman alphabet that most European languages do.

Taiwanese also have that ability.

My point is that pinyin is only a tool useful for learning Mandarin.

It's just as useful as writing in Roman characters with any other method, since it doesn't matter to the reader if they cant read pinyin.. and if they're Chinese reading, they'll read their Chinese name.

Since it's a Latin character, it would be the Latin pronunciation.

Which sounds like an "oooo".

Simple, eh?

If you say U as U, it starts with a ye sound and ends in an ooo. It's not just an ooo.

[chrix]

No, I didn't even know what it was until I looked it up just now on Google.

Are you telling me that you think that ㄩㄥ is the same as ㄧㄥ, or that you cant tell the difference when said?

Of course, it's subtle, but that's because the sounds are almost the same.

ㄩㄥ doesn't sound like a combination of ㄩ and ㄥ, and renzhe didn't say it was ㄧㄥ, he said it was iong. So using transcription systems that way to argue how they're pronounced is highly confusing, that's why I said let's use IPA.

Chrix, we all know you're a linguist, and your depth of knowledge on the side of linguistics far outstips my own, which is fine. Also, the reason I can confuse sounds and letters is also because of the above- I am not a linguist, I just know what I know, however, I think you're being pedantic in pretending that this doesn't make sense to you.

The zhuyin and pinyin method of seperating the sounds for zhuang consist of three seperated syllables (if this is what they're called.. since I'm not a linguist, this could be wrong), zhi, wu and ang. ㄓㄨㄤ. Zhi is (IMO) one sound, Wu is (IMO) one sound, and ang is actually THREE sounds (according to my ear), which is uu and nn and gg.

My point though, was that sticking the middle two sounds together: ㄨㄤ, might make people think that this is a single sound, or letter (or whatever you want to call it), avaliable for use, instead of two, which I think potentially confuses the listener.

I don't think I'm being pedantic. If we're discussing linguistic matters, we should be precise, or it will all end in confusion.

/ang/ is not composed of three sounds, /ng/ is one sound, or if I may ask, where do you hear a /g/? There is little space for personal opinions where matters of sound segmentation are concerned, you can always analyse the sound sequence in question and look at its sound spectrum. So if you hear a /g/ in /ang/, then either you're mispronouncing it, or mishearing it (or being misled by its spelling).

I've been saying for ages that IF they find one system confusing it MIGHT be constructive to introduce another option.

I'm not suggesting that they should be offered 8 or however many systems there are, and just let them choose from a menu. I know I would have struggled as a new learner with that idea.

Yes, and it's the reality in CSL around the world that hanyu pinyin is the standard.

So, because you know me on here and not in real life, you think that I dont count as a vote or a person or something? I'm just as valid as all the other people who you know who dont have trouble with pinyin, and what's more, there are more people like me who are just as valid.

Just because you dont know them, doesn't mean that we dont exist.

I feel like nobody respects my opinion here just because it's against the grain of the general learning of the people on the forum, and my views are laughed at because I dont fit in

Most of your arguments are based on anecdotal evidence, the sample size being one. This is why I brought in anectodal evidence of my own, based on the hundreds of people I have met in real life who have been studying Chinese and not one of them has been confused by pinyin. Nobody is saying it's perfect, in fact I've been on record saying zhuyin is systemically better designed, but it doesn't change the fact that due to hanyu pinyin being the standard in CSL most people have used that and most people do not find it confusing. (all based on anectodal evidence).

I mean we all respect your predilection for zhuyin, and for the rest, what Lu said.

In your opinion, anecdotally, and for the people you know that use pinyin. I picked up zhuyin very fast and have never really managed pinyin, even though I have had contact with it for years.

no, you just based your arguments on your personal experience, I brought in some psycholinguistic arguments, mainly processing speed, that's not just anecdotal. And a socio-linguistic one, namely hanyu pinyin being the international standard.

If you don't believe the processing argument, make a simple thought experiment: imagine two Western learners, one having studied with hanyu pinyin, and the other with zhuyin, for a week, as you say it only takes people one week to acquire. Now give them a dictionary and ask them to look words up. The person having learnt hanyu pinyin will be faster because they're familiar with how the Latin alphabet is sorted, while after one week of zhuyin, the zhuyin order hasn't been internalised yet. This is just a simple function of exposure to an uncommon script.

As are you, but if you were constantly bombarded with people telling you that your opinion is wrong or invalid, you might feel like you want to fight your corner too.

If you disagree with how Lu has characterised your position, then tell us in a paragraph or so, what is your position? What's your point in arguing on this thread?

[renzhe]

Delete please, double.

[renzhe]

Are you telling me that you think that ㄩㄥ is the same as ㄧㄥ

No, I'm saying that -iong and yong are both ㄩㄥ.

Once you look at that pinyin-zhuyin table I linked to, you will see this yourself.

-iong is exactly the same as yong.

Taiwanese also have that ability.

My point is that pinyin is only a tool useful for learning Mandarin.

It's just as useful as writing in Roman characters with any other method, since it doesn't matter to the reader if they cant read pinyin.. and if they're Chinese reading, they'll read their Chinese name.

But you AGREED with me that pinyin is superior to randomly invented romanisations on the spot. So transcribing names using pinyin (or some other standardised way) is superior than randomly transcribing them.

For example, during the Vancouver Olympic games, everybody knew how to spell the names of the Chinese athletes. And if they didn't know, they could ask any student of Chinese (or most native speakers) and they would be able to tell them exactly how to spell it. This is better than having every TV station invent their own, or have to try to get information on how each athlete romanised their name in a random fashion.

In other words, you need a consistent romanisation system, either pinyin or something like pinyin. So, even if you prefer using Zhuyin as a phonetic aid, you still need pinyin or something like pinyin.

And you agreed that this is preferable to a random system, so I don't understand how you can now claim that pinyin is not useful for transcription.

If you say U as U, it starts with a ye sound and ends in an ooo. It's not just an ooo.

Which part of "Latin pronunciation" did you not understand?

I didn't say "pronounce it like English", I said pronounce it like Latin. Which is exactly the same way it would be pronounced in Czech, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Slovenian, Croatian, and almost every other language which uses the Latin alphabet.

It's Chinese written with Latin characters, it's not English.

[chrix]

OK, Shi Tong, I checked how this discussion got started, by your post #14, where you said:

Zhuyin Fuhao symbols are based on Chinese characters, and in some cases they are identical. Learning Bopomofo, therefore, gives Mandarin students a head start to reading and writing Chinese.

Another important advantage to Zhuyin Fuhao is its status as an independent phonetic system. Unlike Pinyin or other Romanization systems, Bopomofo symbols cannot be confused with other pronunciations.

The main disadvantage to Romanization is that students often have preconceived ideas about the pronunciation of the Roman alphabet. For example, the Pinyin letter “q” has a “ch” sound, and it can take some effort to make this association. On the other hand, the Zhuyin symbol ㄑ is not associated with any other sound than its Mandarin pronunciation.

Most people said whatever bits might be confusing about hanyu pinyin for the non-learner or the absolute beginner, will be cleared up very quickly, and is not a big deal.

Then you started taking offence to certain comments saying that they were demeaning of bopomofoists, and later some people brought in some more arguments pro-pinyin:

- international distribution and standardisation (not just the UN, but also in the field of CSL)

- processing speed

in both of which zhuyin loses. Also, as far as "confusion" is concerned, there might be less than in hanyu pinyin, but I find the way -n and -ng finals are written quite confusing myself, beginning with ㄩㄥ, and while -an and -ang have their own graphemes, -in and -ing don't.

Instead of addressing these issues relative to zhuyin, you just kept coming back to the argument that these didn't matter so much as compared to the confusion issue, and the only evidence you had was anecdotal, based on your experience. And plenty of people here have had their own experiences, and they all disagree with you.

Nobody is trying to talk you out of using zhuyin, if that works for you, fine, but I think what leads people to speak against you here on this thread is that you seem to be overgeneralising your experience, most of us haven't found pinyin all that confusing and some of us even have studied both pinyin and zhuyin and can even compare both their pros and cons.

Edited March 2, 2010 at 04:08 PM by chrix

[Lu]

If you see the letter u in pinyin' date=' you know what it should sound like once the teacher has explained it to you.[/quote'']Yeah, well, I would explain why this could be confusing, like I did already, but what's the point. You'll just think it's not worthy.

Consider replying to my actual point, which was that pinyin and zhuyin both need to be explained in order to be pronounced right, instead of just picking out one sentence.

(Renzhe, I have to somewhat disagree with you on the Latin pronounciation. Many letters in pinyin are pronounced as in Latin, but some are picked from pronounciations in other languages (x, c, q). Also, the Latin alphabet is not pronounced the same in the languages that use it. U in Dutch sounds like either u as in pinyin yu, or u as in American 'duh'. The way pinyin sounds is more intuitive to some European speakers than to others, but needs to be explained to all.)

Where did I say you can write zhuyin in a passport or that pinyin wasn't the best Romanisation system of Chinese?

So, you agree that pinyin is the best romanisation system for Chinese? Good.

then tell us in a paragraph or so, what is your position? What's your point in arguing on this thread?

I second this request.

[renzhe]

Lu, you're right, pinyin does need to be explained, and it's not always true to the Latin pronunciation (no language using the Latin alphabet is).

Still, it takes you very far with just basic knowledge of the Latin alphabet, and that's a strong argument. The adjustments you need to make are not greater than what you need to learn to read French or German.

[Shi Tong]

Hello

what is your position? What's your point in arguing on this thread?

OK, clearly I'm not making myself clear, and I'm going to make an effort to express myself better in this post.

Firstly I'd like to note out the advantages to pinyin, then I would like to try to point out how some of these arguments, IMO are spurious. I hope this post also proves that I have read all the replies to my posts, since I think it will clearly spell out what people have been saying. Lastly I'd also like to make clear why I am arguing.

1) Pinyin. Clearly the best Romanisation scheme for Chinese. There are several advantages to using pinyin, namely those which Chrix and others have pointed out:

a) A lot of people find the familiarty with their "own" Romanised languages useful, namely that it's partly phonetic just from the look of it. Words that start with b,p,m,f,d,t,n,l are generally easy to read in pinyin because the sounds almost perfectly knit with those of the English pronunciation.

B) Processing speed on a keyboard for pinyin, especially for Western students, due to the fact that, "if you can spell it in pinyin, you already know the qwerty keyboard layout" so to speak. A very good example of this is that I dont have a zhuyin keyboard, and I often spell words on my PC in pinyin because I can spell those words in pinyin and touch type them into the board, like I think most people can!

c) Internationally recognised and used Romanisation scheme for Chinese. This is useful for the fact that pinyin is more consistant than any other roped together Romanisation scheme for Chinese. This helps especially when you're faced with Taiwanese spelling of names like Chen Chi Chen, and example I think Renzhe came up with earlier.

So, I'm not arguing at all that pinyin is a bad Romanisation system for Chinese, it's clearly the best there is, and most students of Chinese can read pinyin without trouble anecdotally.

2) Why I think some of these arguments for these advantages of pinyin are not things which I think are truly advantages.

a) Familiarity, for some people, can cause confusion, something which I made clear at the start of the thread (Pinyin letter “q” has a “ch” sound, and it can take some effort to make this association. On the other hand, the Zhuyin symbol ㄑ is not associated with any other sound than its Mandarin pronunciation.)

You can tell me that you think it's very easy to explain how pinyin works, and why people would not have much confusion for long, but I've had that confusion ever since I saw pinyin. Sure, this is a personal point of view, using only myself as evidence, but the above passage was also posted on a website for zhuyin, (here) and therefore there are more people like me who do find this assosiation hard to make.

I understand and respect those who do not have any trouble with pinyin, and I can see the advantages of it (hence why I have recently bought materials exclusively using pinyin and simplified characters), but it doesn't mean that people who do have problems with the Romanisation scheme should be mocked, since according to most of you it should be easy.

B) I dont have as much of an argument for this, appart from mispelling words. I find it hard to misspell a word in zhuyin, and much easier in pinyin. Again, this is anecdotal, and I accept that most people find it quicker to spell things in pinyin.

c) This is the hardest thing to explain.

Of course, pinyin is useful for foreign places, having everyone's name spelled out in pinyin is definately better in pinyin than in Wade Giles or, of course, zhuyin, for obvious reasons stated above.

So this is where the argument on this point splits.

Is the fact that you can spell someone's name in pinyin TRULY an advantage to anything?

What/ why does it matter if someone cant pronounce a name in a foreign country? They will say it wrong in pinyin, and whatever system you use. Pinyin will not make this easier, it will only make it unified (which I already accept is useful for Chinese students and learners).

The point is that it ONLY relates to people who have learned Chinese before, in terms that, people reading pinyin will be able to explain a pronunciation, or possibly guess the "words" written. The same thing relates exactly to zhuyin.

So the question is truly this: How useful are pinyin and zhuyin for learners of Chinese?, which was the OP's question.

The answer, which I think is valid, is that, both systems are very useful for learners of Chinese. Mostly people will go with what they're taught first, which in most cases is pinyin. For people who struggle with pinyin, and I'm sure there are those people, because I am one of those people, then another system would be advantagious, and I think it's got to be zhuyin.

The arguments as to which is better, IMO, are a bit like nitpicking, because zhuyin has it's advantages, as does pinyin, but why would anyone disagree with the idea that, if someone is struggling with one system, why not try another one, which could result in better learning for a student?

My point about children learning phonetic systems in schools because they find Romanisation a difficult hurdle to straddle has been ignored on many occasions, and I personally think it's evidence as to why some students could benefit from other ideas and inventions, namely phonetic systems like zhuyin.

3) My point of arguing on this thread is that I think that, I worry that some people might struggle with systems of learning across the board (not just Mandarin learning with pinyin), and these people should be offered other systems or possibilities if they struggle.

I am so thankful that I learned zhuyin first, because I think I would still be struggling with pronunciation and hearing if I'd (personally) been taught pinyin.

I understand that there are a large quantity of people who have no trouble with pinyin, and that's fine, I respect that, and I also see why some people would think that zhuyin is pointless, but my arguement stems from the fact that some people would fail without it, one of those people would have been me, so I'm lucky that I didn't stumble on a pinyin block to start with.

This also means that there are other people out there who have failed to learn Chinese, or who struggle with pinyin, who might get some advantages from zhuyin, so I think it's important that they know those advantages without them being ignored or laughed at.

Finally, I'd like to say that, not all of the people on this forum have learned 10 languages, like it seems a lot of people on here have. I have a GCSE in French and I hated the subject because of it's complicated grammar and difficult pronunciation and spelling methods with about as many silent words as spoken ones. I was lucky that I have a natural talent for learning Mandarin, so this has allowed me to learn this language, and I doubt that I will have the ability to learn anything other than Chinese based languages, which is very hard for a lot of people to understand. This means that I dont know how to pronounce U in latin, and I was assuming that it meant latin script, or that this would be like an English pronunciation.

People are ignorant in nauture, it's willingness to listen and learn which is important, and I am willing to do both. If they're treated as less valid or less respected in their views because they have a different point of view, then I think that's a very unfortunate thing. I am a very sucessful person in many ways, and I would be able to advise you on things that you dont know as well, so please dont think it's strange when someone doesn't know what a Latin U is.

That's not to say that I feel victimised, just that I dont think that views should be so easily pooh poohed, and then ignored.

-an and -ang have their own graphemes, -in and -ing don't.

Annoying aint it?! You have to stick yi and en or yi and ong together to get those sounds.. but they seems like they should have their own graphemes, I agree! :lol:

[chrix]

Shi Tong, two quick things:

- by "processing" I don't just mean typing on a keyboard, I mean processing in general, like the dictionary example I gave you. It will take much longer for a Westerner to get their processing speed up to par with zhuyin compared to the Latin alphabet.

- of course there's nothing wrong with offering alternatives, but you seem to ignore my socio-linguistic argument here: the vast majority of learning materials is in hanyu pinyin. Let's take a learner who wants to learn simplified characters, but wants to use zhuyin for that, for whatever reason. There's no practicable way for this person to use zhuyin.

[renzhe]

why would anyone disagree with the idea that, if someone is struggling with one system, why not try another one, which could result in better learning for a student?

Nobody is disagreeing with this.

They will say it wrong in pinyin, and whatever system you use. Pinyin will not make this easier, it will only make it unified

But this unified way of writing (it could be Wade-Giles, or Gwoyeu Romatzyh or something else, not only pinyin) is a huge win, not only for the learners of Chinese, but also for journalists, book authors, historians, scholars, businessmen, and anybody else who has to regularly deal with Chinese names, names of Chinese cities, names of Chinese mountains, etc.

It makes it much easier to look them up in encyclopedias (always have the same spelling), to recognise the same name in two different books, etc. It is extremely useful to have a standard way to romanise. And, for better or worse, pinyin is this standard. So I disagree that using pinyin for transcribing names has no advantage to using something else. The fact that it is standardised IS the advantage, even if it doesn't always help a foreigner pronounce it correctly without further knowledge.

Otherwise you have the situation like Korean, where the exact same last name is sometimes written Rhee and sometimes Yi, or sometimes Seo and sometimes Suh.

[chrix]

Well, personal names are a bad example. In all CJK languages, people cling to traditional or old ways of spelling, or just use other romanisation schemes for whatever reason. I think it's only because of the political system in the PRC that people there now consistently use one system.

You might be aware of this, but Korean does have an official way of spelling names as sanctioned by the government (or at least in South Korea)....

[renzhe]

I wasn't aware of such a standard for Korean. I just know that it took me 10 years to figure out that several people I knew had exactly the same last name.

I don't know how much the political system plays a role. If people learn one standard romanisation scheme in school, they will tend to use that to transcribe their names, regardless of the political system. In other words, if you changed the political system today, I don't think that people would start spelling their names differently.

I think the romanisation confusion stems from the fact that for a long time there was no clear winner in terms of a standard romanisation scheme (and you could argue that there still isn't one in Taiwan despite the recent inroads made by Hanyu Pinyin).

[chrix]

No, even Mr. Hanyu Pinyin, the President of Taiwan, uses a nonstandard spelling for his name: Ma Ying-jeou. (And in Taiwan, romanisation is up to the municipalities, so you won't get unification on that issue, and the pinyin debate is largely unimportant to the locals, as they use zhuyin)

I still think people are averse to changing the way of how their name is spelt, because it wouldn't be respectful towards their parents and grandparents who chose that romanisation in question.

Even in Japan, where everything has been settled, some people use nonstandard spellings, like "Ohno" and the like.

EDIT: This is the one the South Korean government uses, they changed all the signs, and asked all citizens to comply: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revised_Romanization_of_Korean

But as the article already mentions, in Southern Korean, l/r at the beginning of a word gets dropped, so 李 becomes 이, whereas in the North it would still be 리. So one would then accordingly have to write the name as it's pronounced, I, and many Koreans with that family name don't like that and stay with Lee/Rhee and what have you...

[jbradfor]

I still think people are averse to changing the way of how their name is spelt, because it wouldn't be respectful towards their parents and grandparents who chose that romanisation in question.

This is true. I have a friend who's transliterated name did not follow any standard convention. For his kids, he decided to use pinyin for their family name, meaning his kids had a slightly different spelling than he did. I understand his family was against this.

OTOH, "parents and grandparents who chose that romanisation in question" is often not true for overseas Chinese, when often the romanization was decided by a bored immigration officer....

[Lu]

Shi Tong, thanks for the clarification. It makes the discussion a whole lot clearer.

On the advantages of pinyin, we all agree. The confusion through familiarity issue I've heard before, and while I think it shouldn't be a problem once pinyin has been explained and practiced for a bit, clearly it is a problem for you, so good for you that you found pinyin. Nobody is disagreeing that zhuyin can be a useful tool for learners of Chinese. And from your post I understand that continuing to argue on this thread was basically to spread the word, in a way, that other failed learners may want to try zhuyin before giving up.

That leaves the name issue.

I started getting interested in China in high school. I read books about it and more books, with people in it with Chinese names, usually in pinyin transcription. Some books had a short explanation on the stranger letters of pinyin (q, x), and the great thing was, this meant that when I read a book without explanation I still kinda knew how to pronounce a name like Xiao Dong. This without knowing any Chinese.

Or consider Chiang Kai-shek. In English, his name is pretty standardized, in Dutch, it is not. This would make it difficult to for example find books about the man, if you want to know more about him: is he Tjang, Tsjiang, Tsjang or maybe Jiang? Pinyin solves this issue: it's always Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin, no matter where or what you read about them.

Combined with the first advantage I mentioned, this also means that when you read someone's name, you have the tools to guess how it's pronounced. When a bunch of Chinese athletes compete, you don't have to learn the pronounciation of each of their names, you can just learn a few key letters and get very far with that. If you write about them, you don't have to do a long search to figure out if they spell their surname Huang, Hwang or Hawang (not making this up), you can be sure how they are spelled. If you read Chen Qizhen has a new cd out, you can go to the store and ask for it without looking up the characters first.

For these reasons, consistent romanisation is very important. In my opinion, consistency is more important than the relative merits of the system. Tongyong, Hanyu pinyin, Wade-Giles, I don't care, as long as it's used correctly and consistently, it is far superior to the on-the-spot no-idea-what-I'm-doing romanisation going on in Taiwan now.

[chrix]

I agree that from the learner's point of view, consistency is very important, but it's still up to the person in question how they want to romanise their name, and I think that should be respected.

Place names might be an interesting intermediate case, but for me spellings like Taibei, Gaoxiong and Taizhong, just are plain irritating.

[Shi Tong]

I feel a little relieved by the replies, thanks!!

- by "processing" I don't just mean typing on a keyboard, I mean processing in general, like the dictionary example I gave you. It will take much longer for a Westerner to get their processing speed up to par with zhuyin compared to the Latin alphabet.

Good point. I have a good Far East dictionary of 3000 most common characters, and it's ordered by pinyin. I can use it because I'm much more used to pinyin than I used to be, but what I found really useful was the zhuyin entry for pronunciation- this cleared up any ambiguity for my in terms of that front.

Zhuyin is a nice suppliment for me. Looking up the words using the pinyin Romanised lettering is easy too.

- of course there's nothing wrong with offering alternatives, but you seem to ignore my socio-linguistic argument here: the vast majority of learning materials is in hanyu pinyin. Let's take a learner who wants to learn simplified characters, but wants to use zhuyin for that, for whatever reason. There's no practicable way for this person to use zhuyin.

I agree that the majority of learning materials in pinyin is a pretty good reason to use pinyin for a lot of things. As I mentioned before, I've started on simplified with pinyin for book learning, simply because there's "more of it", and simplified is, though ugly, much easier to learn.

There is always the problem with simplified where I think it's not always as logical in the way it looks, which confuses me (again....)

Shame that there is no way of using zhuyin with simplified either. I think that it should be included somewhere possibly, since most of my materials (my shiting huayu and my sanqian zidian) have both methods, which I think is really handy.. but I suppose nobody (*cough* Chinese *cough*) wants to put zhuyin into a simplified character pinyin text book.

Ho hum.

But this unified way of writing (it could be Wade-Giles, or Gwoyeu Romatzyh or something else, not only pinyin) is a huge win, not only for the learners of Chinese, but also for journalists, book authors, historians, scholars, businessmen, and anybody else who has to regularly deal with Chinese names, names of Chinese cities, names of Chinese mountains, etc.

It makes it much easier to look them up in encyclopedias (always have the same spelling), to recognise the same name in two different books, etc. It is extremely useful to have a standard way to romanise. And, for better or worse, pinyin is this standard. So I disagree that using pinyin for transcribing names has no advantage to using something else. The fact that it is standardised IS the advantage, even if it doesn't always help a foreigner pronounce it correctly without further knowledge.

Otherwise you have the situation like Korean, where the exact same last name is sometimes written Rhee and sometimes Yi, or sometimes Seo and sometimes Suh.

Couldn't agree more, and I hate the Taiwanese habit of spelling things in a stupid way.

BTW- their metro around the city is always now in pinyin, though my dad was amused by seeing "zhongxiao fuxing" station.. reading the last "word" came up with a rather unfortunate pronunciation!!:lol:

So the argument was never that pinyin shouldn't be used everywhere for Romanisation purposes, but that zhuyin may offer a better/ clearer learning tool.

I still think people are averse to changing the way of how their name is spelt, because it wouldn't be respectful towards their parents and grandparents who chose that romanisation in question

This could possibly be more of an issue where more Romanisation is used... like in places like Hong Kong.. would I be right?

Speaking of which, there really are some weird ways that the Taiwanese spell their names.. sounds like "er" becoming "erh" xui become "hsui", and in one case "lun" (I think I've spelled the pinyin right???) as "lurn" (?! WT??!).

For these reasons, consistent romanisation is very important.

Totally agreed. The argument was never that pinyin shouldn't be used everywhere for Romanisation purposes, but that zhuyin may offer a better/ clearer learning tool (for some people).

Shi Tong, thanks for the clarification.

A pleasure.. probably required about 5 pages ago.:lol:

I think that should be respected. Place names might be an interesting intermediate case, but for me spellings like Taibei, Gaoxiong and Taizhong, just are plain irritating.

I agree.. TBH, I think these names should just remain the same regardless. Not because of it's in/ practicality, but because people are just used to it.

Maybe they should Romanise Taiwanese and use that? Daiba anyone??!(sh)

[imron]

So the question is truly this: How useful are pinyin and zhuyin for learners of Chinese?

This makes the answer far simpler. If we are only concerned with learners of Chinese, and how useful a system is to those learners, then the amount and quality of teaching materials available with a given system plays an important role in how useful that system will be.

Draw from that whatever conclusions you will.

[Lu]

Shame that there is no way of using zhuyin with simplified either. I think that it should be included somewhere possibly, since most of my materials (my shiting huayu and my sanqian zidian) have both methods, which I think is really handy.. but I suppose nobody (*cough* Chinese *cough*) wants to put zhuyin into a simplified character pinyin text book.

Yah, I guess it would be nice if that would exist, but there isn't really much of a market for it. Zhuyin is only used in Taiwan, and Taiwan only uses traditional characters. There is no place or society that uses both zhuyin and simplified, and so there is no significant group of learners who would use textbooks that are set up that way.

You could consider just writing in the zhuyin everywhere, that would also be good in remembering pronunciation.

I agree that from the learner's point of view, consistency is very important, but it's still up to the person in question how they want to romanise their name, and I think that should be respected.

Place names might be an interesting intermediate case, but for me spellings like Taibei, Gaoxiong and Taizhong, just are plain irritating.

As to things like Gaoxiong and Taizhong, if the Taiwanese government ever started to spell them that way, you would get used to it over time.

As to names, you do have a good point that people should be free to spell their names however they want. Someone mentioned this to me before, and it did go a long way in me making peace with crazy spellings.

On the other hand, hardly anyone is ever free to make up their own spelling for their name, in any country. People in Taiwan don't get to decide on how to write the characters for their surname, and people in countries using the Roman alphabet usually can't change the spelling of their name without a lot of official hassle and money.

Also, it appears to me that most Taiwanese people don't spell their names in weird ways because they want to express their individuality, or their preferred romanisation system. (Some people clearly do put thought into it, but many don't, at least so it appears.) They just never learned about romanisation, and so they don't really have a choice: they either go with an official who has some idea of what the name should look like on the passport, or they are forced to come up with something on the spot. (I once knew a guy A-Xue spelled as Ashae.)

Perhaps the best way would be to suggest pinyin spelling for everyone, but give them the opportunity to change it into something else if they want.

[chrix]

I call it the "big places exception syndrome". People are just used to a certain way, and if the Beijing government hadn't insisted, we would still call it the Peking government. In fact, in German, while most Chinese cities are now rendered in Hanyu Pinyin, the big ones are still in Postal, like Peking, Nanking, Kanton (not too sure about this one, and about Tsientsin). Similarly, the big cities in Taiwan would retain their traditional spelling, while smaller cities would just be spelt in Hanyu Pinyin...