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pl:Bopomofofr:Bopomofozh-cn:注音符号zh-tw:注音符號ja:注音符号
Zhyīn Fho (注音符號), or "Symbols for Annotating Sounds", often abbreviated as Zhuyin, or known as Bopomofo (ㄅㄆㄇㄈ) for the first four syllables of these Chinese phonetic symbols, is the national phonetic system of the Republic of China (based on Taiwan) for teaching the Chinese languages, especially Mandarin to illiterate Mandarin-speaking children (See Uses). The system uses 37 special symbols to represent the Mandarin sounds: 21 consonants and 16 vowels. There is a one symbol-one sound correspondence.
History
The Commission on the Unification of Pronunciation, led by Woo Tsin-hang from 1912 to 13, created a system called Guoyin Zimu (國音字母 "National Pronunciation Letters") or Zhuyin Zimu (註音字母 or 注音字母 "Sound-annotating Letters") which is based on Zhang Binglin's shorthands. (For differences with the Zhang system, see Commission on the Unification of Pronunciation#Phonetic symbols.) A draft was released on July 11, 1913 by the Republic of China National Ministry of Education, but it was not officially proclaimed until November 23, 1918.Zhuyin Zimu was renamed to Zhuyin Fuhao in April 1930.
The ROC Education Ministry has attempted for many years to phase out
the use of Zhuyin in favor of a system based on Roman characters (see MPS II). However, this transition has been extremely slow due to the difficulty in teaching elementary school teachers a new Roman-based system.
Symbol origins
There was no official document explaining the details of the origins of the characters, but they are apperent if you understand some basic Chinese characters. The zhuyin symbols are mainly fragments of characters that contain the sound that each symbol represents. For example:
- ㄅ (b) ← 白 (bai)
- ㄆ (p) ← 波 (po)
- ㄋ (n) ← 乃 (nai)
- ㄒ (x) ← 下 (xia)
- ㄙ (s) ← 私 (si)
- ㄝ () ← 也 (ye)
- ㄦ (er) ← 兒 (er)
A few were made by adding additional strokes, for example:
- ㄉ (d) ← 刀 (dao)
- ㄌ (l) ← 力 (li)
- ㄘ (c) ← 七 (ci, now pronounced qi)
A few are virtually identical to Chinese characters still in use, for example:
- ㄧ (i) ← 一 (yi)
- ㄚ (a) ← 丫 (ya)
Many are nearly entirely identical to radicals with the same sounds, for example:
- ㄈ (f) ← 匚 (fang)
- ㄏ (h) ← 厂 (han)
- ㄗ (z) ← 卩 (jie)
- ㄕ (sh) ← 尸 (shi)
- ㄤ (ang) ← 尢 (wang)
- ㄩ () ← 凵 (yu)
- ㄡ (ou) ← 又 (you)
- ㄖ (r) ← 日 (ri)
- ㄔ (chi) ← 彳 (chi)
- ㄇ (m) ← 冂 (jiong) which does not have the same sound, but it exists in 冒 (mao) and 冪 (mi)
Other symbols, mostly vowel symbols, are based entirely or partly on obsolete variants of characters, for example:
- ㄨ (u) ← 五 (wu); likely a derivative of the seal script
.
There are still others that are totally unlike any known symbols, but were designed to look like, and be written in the same style as, Chinese chacacters. The zhuyin characters usually are represented in typographic fonts as if drawn with an ink brush (as in Regular Script).
Uses
These ruby characters are printed next to the Chinese characters in young children's books. One seldom sees these symbols used in adult publications except as a pronunciation guide (or index system) in dictionary entries. Bopomofo is also used in one method for inputting Chinese text when using the computer.
Unlike pinyin, the sole purpose for zhuyin in elementary education is to teach proper Mandarin pronunciation to children. Grade one textbooks of all subjects (including Mandarin) are entirely in Zhuyin. After that, Chinese character texts are given in annotated form. Around grade four, the Zhuyin annotation is greatly reduced, remaining only in the new character section. School children learn the symbols so that they can look up pronunciation in a Chinese dictionary properly, and also so that they can find how to write words for which they know only the sounds.
Pinyin, on the other hand, is dual-purpose. Besides being a pronunciation notation, pinyin is used widely in publications in mainland China. Some books from mainland China are published purely in pinyin with not even a single Chinese character. Those books are targeted to minority tribal groups or Westerners who know spoken Mandarin but have not yet learned written Chinese characters.
Zhuyin cannot replace Traditional Chinese as a faster means of writing. For teenagers and adults, reading a long passage entirely in Zhuyin is much more arduous than one in Traditional Chinese (even if it contains unfamiliar characters), since one Zhuyin syllable, even with the tone mark, still presents great ambiguity even in a written context. The problem is the same for Chinese written entirely in a romanization system such as pinyin.
Writing
Zhuyin symbols are written like Chinese characters, including the general order of strokes and positioning. They are always placed to the right of the Chinese characters, whether the characters are arranged vertically or horizontally. Technically, these are Ruby characters. Very rarely do they appear on top of Chinese characters when written horizontally as furigana would be written above kanji in a Japanese text. Because a syllable block contains usually two or three Zhuyin symbols (which themselves fit in a square format) stacked on top of each other, the blocks are rectangular.
The tone marks are similar to the later developed Pinyin tone symbols, except that the first tone has no symbolization at all, and the neutral tone appears as a black dot. The neutral dot is the only mark to be placed on top of the vertical Zhuyin syllable block, the remaining three are in a vertical strip to the right of the character.
The tone marks are sometimes given in Regular Script style, matching the associated Chinese characters, and have the same basic shape as do those of the pinyin tone symbols. However, they vary in detail. The thickened end of Zhuyin's second (rising) tone is always at the lower left, whereas the second tone mark in the pinyin system is a straight line of uniform width. The third tone mark displays the greatest variation.
Zhuyin's tone symbolization was used in the ROC-sponsored romanizations created by the Mandarin Promotion Council. The tone symbols in that system were identical with the zhuyin tone symbols, except that they were not in Regular Style calligraphy, but in a Western font face and so resemble the tone symbols used in pinyin.
Zhuyin vs. Hanyu Pinyin
Zhuyin and Pinyin are based on the same Mandarin pronunciations, hence there is a mostly 1-to-1 mapping between the two systems.
Bopomofo/zhuyin (the 'zhuyin' and 'pinyin' columns shows equivalency)
| zhuyin | pinyin | | zhuyin | pinyin | | zhuyin | pinyin | | zhuyin | pinyin |
|---|
| Consonants |
| ㄅ | B | | ㄆ | P | | ㄇ | M | | ㄈ | F |
| ㄉ | D | | ㄊ | T | | ㄋ | N | | ㄌ | L |
| ㄍ | G | | ㄎ | K | | ㄏ | H | | | |
| ㄐ | J | | ㄑ | Q | | ㄒ | X | | | |
| ㄓ | Zh | | ㄔ | Ch | | ㄕ | Sh | | ㄖ | R |
| ㄗ | Z | | ㄘ | C | | ㄙ | S | | | |
| Vowels |
| ㄚ | A | | ㄛ | O | | ㄜ | E | | ㄝ | Ê |
| ㄞ | Ai | | ㄟ | Ei | | ㄠ | Ao | | ㄡ | Ou |
| ㄢ | An | | ㄣ | En | | ㄤ | Ang | | ㄥ | Eng |
| ㄦ | Er | | ㄧ | I | | ㄨ | U | | ㄩ | Ü |
Dialect (non-Mandarin) letters (not many web browsers can display these glyphs, see #External links for PDF pictures.)
| Char | Name | | Char | Name | | Char | Name |
|---|
| ㄪ | V | | ㄫ | Ng | | ㄬ | Gn |
Extended Bopomofo for Min-nan and Hakka
| Char | Name | | Char | Name | | Char | Name | | Char | Name |
|---|
| ㆠ | Bu | | ㆦ | Oo | | ㆬ | Im | | ㆲ | Ong |
| ㆡ | Zi | | ㆧ | Onn | | ㆭ | Ngg | | ㆳ | Innn |
| ㆢ | Ji | | ㆨ | Ir | | ㆮ | Ainn | | ㆴ | Final P |
| ㆣ | Gu | | ㆩ | Ann | | ㆯ | Aunn | | ㆵ | Final T |
| ㆤ | Ee | | ㆪ | Inn | | ㆰ | Am | | ㆶ | Final K |
| ㆥ | Enn | | ㆫ | Unn | | ㆱ | Om | | ㆷ | Final H |
See also
External links
- Unicode reference glyphs for bopomofo (http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U3100.pdf) & extended bopomofo (http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U31A0.pdf) (in PDF format)
- Mandarin Dictionary (http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/Lindict/) and syllabary (http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/Lindict/syllabary/) (need Chinese font for Big5 encoding)
- NPA->IPA (http://www.wfu.edu/~moran/Cathay_Cafe/IPA_NPA_4.htm) National Phonetic Alphabet (zhu yin fu-hao) spellings of words transliterated into the International Phonetic Alphabet (The vowel values have been verified against the official IPA site. See [1] (http://www.sil.org/computing/speechtools/softdev2/IPAhelp2/ipavowel2.htm) )
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