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

[renzhe]

And interesting tidbit, Germans are not allowed to pick a name for their children arbitrarily, they must pick from a government-approved list. And it has to be a boy name for a boy and a girl name for a girl.

Oddly enough, foreigners living in Germany are not held to this.

I do agree that people should be able to pick a name they want, but if your name is a concept expressed by a Chinese character, then the transliteration should be a less important consideration. And I think that for me, Hong Kong will always be Hong Kong and not Xianggang, just like for my parents' generation, Beijing will always be Peking. But people do get used to these changes given enough time.

[chrix]

While renzhe's account is basically true, there's plenty of exceptions.

Also, renzhe, Beijing was already Beijing for your grandparents generation, I mean as far as China is concerned. For the Germans and for the French, it will still be Peking and Pékin, respectively, even for our generation.

Lu, for some characters there are variants, and people can choose. I think you're right though that many of the crazy transcriptions have to do with ignorance rather than free expression.

[Lu]

Renzhe: That's funny, from a list even. How about second-generation immigrants, do they get to pick a name from their ancestral country? There was big uproar last year or so when it turned out that Moroccan-Dutch are held to a Moroccan name list for their Dutch-born children, and that apparently some Dutch officials were enforcing this. In Holland, the only rules are that a name can't be an indecent word, and it can't be something that is actually a surname.

Hong Kong uses its own system, transcribing Cantonese, and as far as I know it's pretty consistent in that. All people named 張 are Cheung, for example. So no need for pinyin, it has its own consistent system.

Chrix: Isn't it the parents who pick the characters, leaving no choice for the children unless they officially change their name?

[chrix]

OK, so here's the deal: in the Standesamt, the official would consult a name dictionary, so it's not really a government-approved list, just a dictionary. If it wasn't in it, the parents would need to prove that the name in question was used in any culture around the globe.

If a name wasn't definitely male or female, you would need to choose a clear middle name. There's also an exception that the name "Maria" can be chosen as a middle name for males (usually chosen by Catholics).

Lu, now I don't understand. Changing the name your parents gave you would also be quite disrespectful... That's one of the reasons why they had all these different names in the old day, school name, courtesy name and what have you...

[Lu]

Not sure about disrespectful, but I know it's not unusual for people to change their given name, either to change their fortune or because over time language has come to assign a funny meaning to those characters, or for another reason.

My teacher in Taiwan told me that everyone in Taiwan could change their given name for free once (if they wanted to change it again later they'd have to pay), and that when she went to a highschool reunion, almost all her classmates had changed their name, and she had to write their old name on their mingpian to keep track of who was who. My teacher herself had also changed her name, when she was born it was two nice feminine characters, but now it had gotten a certain nasty meaning, so she changed it.

[chrix]

Interesting. Yeah, I've met some women whose names sounded more like milk names than real adult names, but with the old naming system lost, they were stuck with it their whole life....

[skylee]

Hong Kong uses its own system, transcribing Cantonese, and as far as I know it's pretty consistent in that. All people named 張 are Cheung, for example. So no need for pinyin, it has its own consistent system.

Yes, 張 is mostly Cheung. But I know a few Chang's (their parents probably came from Taiwan). And with more mainlanders settling here in recent years there are more Zhang's now..

[Shi Tong]

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.

I agree that this persuades a lot of people into using pinyin and simplified characters, which is fine.

I wonder if this actually makes it a better learning system still though, since if it's just an academic experiment, I wonder which one would be "better".. however, this argument again, is just based on anecdotal evidence.

I wonder when they open these Taiwanese schools worldwide to teach traditional characters, weather or not they will use zhuyin or pinyin to teach the pronunciations and spellings? That would be interesting?!

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 there is no market, more's the pity.

I do occasionally jot zhuyin on confusing pronunciations.. even better, I ask the wife!! , TBH though, I am getting a lot better at pinyin and make less spelling mistakes than in the past, so I use it quite a lot.

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.

Agree.

I think a lot of people of the newer generation are much more educated about their name spellings, and a lot of them make more sense too, my wife's name for one is a good example of a good alternative spelling: Chen Shih-chi (Chen Shi-qi), and my own Chinese name I tend to spell with another flavour which still makes sense Fung Shi Tong (Fang Xi Tong). So I think this is more about preferance than anything else in a some cases.

I call it the "big places exception syndrome".

Chrix, you should be a scientist too, they've been thinking up a unified theory of everything for a long time and this solves it!!!!:lol:

when she went to a highschool reunion, almost all her classmates had changed their name, and she had to write their old name on their mingpian to keep track of who was who. My teacher herself had also changed her name, when she was born it was two nice feminine characters, but now it had gotten a certain nasty meaning, so she changed it.

Funny how I've never known anyone who changed their name.. I'll have to watch out for that!

Interestingly, my Taiwanese teacher was called "Zhang Jin Zhu" (the last two characters being "gold" and "wish". Obviously she hated this name, but she'd never changed it.

She told me she thought it sounded like a man's name. At the time, it didn't make any difference to me, since I wasn't educated enough, but now I think about it, it's an awful name for a woman... ho hum.. can't win 'em all.

[chrix]

I wonder when they open these Taiwanese schools worldwide to teach traditional characters, weather or not they will use zhuyin or pinyin to teach the pronunciations and spellings? That would be interesting?!

As I said before, it's pretty much standard for Taiwanese CLS centres to use hanyu pinyin, and I don't think it would change. It might be different in Southeast Asia though, I wouldn't be surprised if the picture was different there.

[Daan]

If you are still learning Hànyǔ pīnyīn, I hope you won't mind my pointing out that Zhang Jin Zhu should be spelt Zhang Jinzhu instead. Of course, it would be even better if the tones were indicated: Zhāng Jīnzhù

[Lu]

my wife's name for one is a good example of a good alternative spelling: Chen Shih-chi (Chen Shi-qi), and my own Chinese name I tend to spell with another flavour which still makes sense Fung Shi Tong (Fang Xi Tong). So I think this is more about preferance than anything else in a some cases.

Your wife's name is spelled in standard botched-up Wade-Giles, used for the majority of Taiwanese names. But may I ask, what are your reasons for spelling your name the way you do?

[Shi Tong]

As I said before, it's pretty much standard for Taiwanese CLS centres to use hanyu pinyin, and I don't think it would change. It might be different in Southeast Asia though, I wouldn't be surprised if the picture was different there.

Kind of in reply to and as an asside to this, I got my shiting huayu back yesterday, and it has (as I mentioned), both zhuyin and pinyin, along with all the erhua mentioned in the erhua thread. I suppose I aught to scan a page and post it up there?

If you are still learning Hànyǔ pīnyīn, I hope you won't mind my pointing out that Zhang Jin Zhu should be spelt Zhang Jinzhu instead. Of course, it would be even better if the tones were indicated: Zhāng Jīnzhù

I know that my good man I dont have a pinyinput program on this computer, so I cant write in proper pinyin.. I also know that you should stick certain characters together, like in names and the like, but I'm not that used to it or keen on it! I tend to use it for my own reference and think about Chinese characters in the way I'm used! (which is WRONG!)

Your wife's name is spelled in standard botched-up Wade-Giles, used for the majority of Taiwanese names. But may I ask, what are your reasons for spelling your name the way you do?

One place where I think Wade Giles has it "right" is in it's description in Romanisation for the sounds Zh, Ch, Sh, Q, and X. The reason I think this is because Chi and Shi (in pinyin) look like the sounds "chi and shi" (like the che in cheese and the she as in a woman in English), and the Q and X in pinyin look like they should be pronounced like the qu in queen and an X as in XYZ.

This is where I was coming from when I said I was confused.

"Wade Giles" (botched up) offers a good alternative- Chih and Shih for Chi and Shi, and Chi and Shi for Qi and Xi.

These make more logical phonetic sense to me as an English reader, and it's why I like those particular sounds written in that particular way.

There are other examples like t's which I think is a much better description than c.

However, neither system was really built to be phonetic, but to aid the learner, so, there are more faults in Wade Giles in general.

So the reason I go for Fung Shi-tong is because I think fung is more phoetic and trips off the fingers better when I write it, shi is more phonetic for me too, and I like the look better than xi, and tong is the same anyhow. So I prefer it!

[chrix]

I might have missed it in the seven pages, but I asked you a while back to give us the exact details of your Shiting Huayu. In mine published by NTU, there is no zhuyin.

If you do it well typographically, it might also not be a problem to have both pinyin and zhuyin in a textbook.

Of course any Taiwanese teacher can help their students using zhuyin, but my impression always was that the education authorities had decided to push hanyu pinyin due to market reasons, and as long as we haven't seen the actual guidelines, this is as far as this discussion can get.

[Lu]

"Wade Giles" (botched up) offers a good alternative- Chih and Shih for Chi and Shi, and Chi and Shi for Qi and Xi.

Pinyin chi is in W-G ch'ih. Note the apostrophe. The name 陳 is spelled Ch'en in correct W-G, W-G chen would be pinyin zhen. In the same vein, pinyin qi is W-G ch'i, W-G chi is pinyin ji.

Pinyin xi is W-G hsi, not shi. There is no shi in Wade-Giles.

Tong is pinyin, in W-G it would be t'ung.

Botched-up Wade-Giles is never a good idea. There's a difference between ch and ch', t and t', and because there is a big difference, the ' should not be omitted. If apostrophes are a problem, then a different romanisation system should be used that doesn't need them (as much).

All in all, this makes the way you spell your name very confusing to anyone who knows any romanisation system, be it W-G, pinyin or tongyong. Fung doesn't exist in either, but reminds me of fong, which is tongyong for feng. Shi looks like pinyin, as does tong. Which would make you Feng Shitong on first sight, I would never think of Fang Xitong if I didn't see the characters. Do you really think it's a good idea to intentionally write your name so that anyone who sees it would mispronounce it?

[Shi Tong]

Do you really think it's a good idea to intentionally write your name so that anyone who sees it would mispronounce it?

I.. dont.. really.. care..

*Probably* should, but I always found Romanisation to be a pain, and I really dont get along with it.

Probably 90% of the time, I'm talking to a native Taiwanese person and I would just speak Chinese to them or write my name for them to say what it is, instead of getting worried about how it "should" be written in pinyin.

So I just went with something I thought looked better to myself.

Oh, and I'm sure you can see, my WG is pretty rubbish too!

方熙同 is the best explaination I can find!

Oh, and Chrix, I'll scan in a good page which should give you examples of everything that I was taught from my shiting huayu, but I dont know if I can find time today..

Let me try!!

[Lu]

I.. dont.. really.. care..

*Probably* should, but I always found Romanisation to be a pain, and I really dont get along with it.

I find it rather contradictory that apparently you don't... really... care... if you confuse people, after just arguing for five pages that pinyin is not so good a system because it confuses you.

By the way, it's perhaps not a good idea to say Wade-Giles "offers a good alternative" if you don't actually know Wade-Giles.

[chrix]

Oh Shi Tong, I believe you about Shiting Huayu, I just want the bibliographical details...

[Shi Tong]

I find it rather contradictory that apparently you don't... really... care... if you confuse people, after just arguing for five pages that pinyin is not so good a system because it confuses you.

Well, I'm not sure I mind if people are reading my name and assuming it's a pinyinised name.

I wrote my name for the first time in a Romanised way quite a long time ago, and I chose Romanisation which "made sense to me". It was when my pinyin was particularly rubbish too, so partly it was due to being incapable of a good pinyin translation. It was also because I dont like the letter X for an S sound in a name, I think it looks ugly.

By the way, it's perhaps not a good idea to say Wade-Giles "offers a good alternative" if you don't actually know Wade-Giles.

Well, I dont know WG that well, mainly from reading classical books with WG names like 3k and shui hu zhuan (have I spelled that right??), so all I know is that I prefer shih to shi and t's to c, mainly.

Oh, and I dont mean to confuse. I recommend to anyone that if they want to know how to pronounce my name, first look at the Chinese characters or ask my pinyin name.

Or just assume that Shi Tong is already pinyinised!!

[Lu]

all I know is that I prefer shih to shi and t's to c, mainly.

There is no t's in Wade-Giles. The famous general is Ts'ao Ts'ao.

[Shi Tong]

There is no t's in Wade-Giles. The famous general is Ts'ao Ts'ao.

I apologise for my uselessness in WG.

However I still think that Ts looks more phonetically appealing than C.

However, as stated before, I find most Romanisation systems a pain, and this is just one example of something I personally dont like.

The converse of this is the famous strategist, Zhu1ge Liang4. I think, and I may be wrong, that zhuge liang is written as something like chu'ke liang, which is much worse than the pinyin version, IMO, just as liu pei has a p instead of a pinyin b which makes more sense.

Chrix, I have some ISBN numbers etc in the back of my book.. would these suffice?