Jump to content
Chinese-Forums
  • Sign Up

PinYin and capital (upper case) letters


Shelley

Recommended Posts

When using pinyin some of my text books use capital letters as you would expect when writing English, some use them just for names and others don't use capitals at all.

 

Is there a correct way or are there no rules about it when using Pinyin?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have a question about pinyin.info. It's extremely useful and it's my 参考 of choice for things pinyin, but as I understand it, it's in no way an official thing. So where does the maker of the site get the rules from?

Asking because a while ago I was editing something and tried to get the author, a respected Western academic, to change things like 'Rier' and 'Longe' to 'Ri'er' and 'Long'e', and 'Ji'nan' to 'Jinan'. He of course thought his own system was the correct one and asked me what my source was for those rules. I felt I could hardly tell a scholar like him that I got it from a website, and without any other source to point to, either academic or from the Chinese government, I didn't really have an argument.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The left column of the above page links to two sources, both books:

 

http://pinyin.info/readings/orthography.html

http://pinyin.info/readings/zyg.html

 

With the first one containing a quote from John DeFrancis - "This book is an indispensible tool for understanding the officially approved rules of Pinyin orthography."

 

As far as respected Western academics go, it's hard to get more respected than John DeFrancis.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ji'nan makes me stumble over a roadblock in the word. Jin'an just alerts me that I'm stepping into a new syllable here.

(Yes it's all conditioning and just happening to know what is correct. Had I instead been educated in the system of the scholar I mentioned I probably wouldn't stumble, but I haven't, so I do.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and select your username and password later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Click here to reply. Select text to quote.

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...