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

[chrix]

Actually, Chuke Liang makes more sense than Zhuge Liang and Liu Pei makes more sense than Liu Bei, since Mandarin doesn't have voiced obstruents, and writing them that way would lead an English speaker into believing they were.

Shi Tong, the best thing would be: Exact title, Publisher and if any, affiliated university, and year.

[renzhe]

I don't know if it makes more sense, as it is not the correct sound either.

[chrix]

I'll refer you to the discussion I had with imron about WG earlier in this thread

EDIT: starting around post #43...

[Shi Tong]

Actually, Chuke Liang makes more sense than Zhuge Liang and Liu Pei makes more sense than Liu Bei, since Mandarin doesn't have voiced obstruents, and writing them that way would lead an English speaker into believing they were.

Hahaha..

See.. this is the problem.. I dont even know what this means!!:lol:

Chrix.. for Shiting huayu.. the easiest way is to scan and attach.. here it is!!

You can see what I mean by how nice it is to have both the zhuyin, chinese character and pinyin all on one page.. also the explaination is very clear IMO.

How does yours differ?

BTW- Cant find a year published.. I did get this book about 9 years ago.. probably different now.

[Daan]

Ha! That's nothing. The latest edition of 實用視聽華語 uses both 漢語拼音 and 通用拼音 in addition to 注音符號!

Bibliographic information for the second volume of the newest series, which I happen to have lying next to me, is as follows:

Wáng Shūměi 王淑美 et al, eds. Shíyòng shìtīng Huáyǔ 實用視聽華語. vol. 2. 2nd ed. Guólì Táiwān shīfàn dàxué 國立臺灣師范大學. Táiběi 臺北: Zhèngzhōng shūjú 正中書局, 2008.

[Shi Tong]

Ha! That's nothing. The latest edition of 實用視聽華語 uses both 漢語拼音 and 通用拼音 in addition to 注音符號!

cool.

[chrix]

I can't find my copy right now, because I think mine was published by NTU, and not NTNU, and I'm not sure if there are differences between the two versions, but now that I saw Shi Tong's scan, I do remember there was indeed zhuyin in the vocabulary lists So, there was zhuyin in it. Not sure about the index though...

[imron]

I'll refer you to the discussion I had with imron about WG earlier in this thread

I still maintain that to me an aspirated P sounds more incorrect than a voiced B for things like Bei/Pei.

[chrix]

yes, but don't forget about the "p" in "sp", like "spa"

[imron]

Liu Spei would sound even worse

[chrix]

Nah, what I mean, in English, voiceless plosives are unaspirated after fricatives. So you'd say the "p" like the "p" in "sp", but without the "s", naturally...

[imron]

Yeah, I get that, my point was that when a native English speaker sees Liu Pei, they are unlikely to read the 'P' like the 'p' in spa, and instead will read it like the 'p' in 'pen'. It would be a stretch to imagine that they would pronounce it like the 'p' in spa unless it also had the 's' in front of it.

So, even though they are able to make the correct sound after educating themselves on the matter, the same is true with B, except that (to me) incorrect B sounds more correct than incorrect P, which is why it gets my support

[chrix]

OK, as I said before, you have to take into account that back in the day educated Englishmen knew French, and also that in Wade-Giles, you have a contrast between

- p and p'

so it would be clear that the apostrophe stands for aspiration (as was convention generally in philology back in the day). What I mean to say is that the "p" isn't just there in some isolated way, it's part of a system.

Also since aspiration in Chinese tends to be stronger than in English, indicating it with an apostrophe serves to emphasise it, and that's why I find p/p' more useful for an English speaker than b/p. Let alone the absence of x, q and zh, and the disambiguation of empty rime (hsi vs. tzu vs. shih)...

But I'm really not that much into WG, so I don't know why I keep defending it here

[Shi Tong]

I know why Chrix, it's because WG does have some things in it which are useful to some people learning Chinese, which includes yourself, as does pinyin. I remember seeing ts' and thinking "oooooooh.. so that's how you pronounce it", just as I saw c and thought "eh??". But then I saw Liu Bei and thought "that makes more sense", and Liu Pei and (uneducated as I am), thought "but a P is like a P in pea, not a P in Spa"...

[Lu]

Yeah, I get that, my point was that when a native English speaker sees Liu Pei, they are unlikely to read the 'P' like the 'p' in spa, and instead will read it like the 'p' in 'pen'. It would be a stretch to imagine that they would pronounce it like the 'p' in spa unless it also had the 's' in front of it.

But people who don't know any(thing about) Chinese won't be able to pronounce things correctly, even if it's written in Wade-Giles, which is catered to English speakers. Expecting any romanization system to do that is just asking too much. No letter is going to tell English speakers exactly how to pronounce Liu Bei.

[Shi Tong]

Which is why I prefer zhuyin, but we wont go down that road again.

[renzhe]

You prefer a system which doesn't tell you absolutely anything at all

[Shi Tong]

You prefer a system which doesn't tell you absolutely anything at all

:lol::lol:That's fighting talk!!

I prefer a system which has less phonetic ambiguity once learned?

[renzhe]

There is zero phonetic ambiguity in pinyin, once learned.

I don't want to start a pointless discussion again, but this much must be said. There is no ambiguity in pinyin -- you always know exactly how something is pronounced.

[chrix]

And we were talking about a hypothetical situation where English speakers would want transcriptions of Chinese names like 劉備. All pinyin methods have their drawbacks in this regard, but zhuyin wouldn't work for this at all... (maybe IPA would work for newscasters)

EDIT: so we were discussing problems that should be remedied once the person becomes familiar with the transcription system in question. But regarding the voiceless obstruents, zhuyin will have the same problems: I bet many Western learners using zhuyin simply equate b from English with ㄅ, and thus would be bound to make the same pronunciation mistake as learners who start out with pinyin.

Edited March 10, 2010 at 02:02 PM by chrix