Talk:Pinyin

talk archive through August 2005

Can't see/get 3rd tone mark

I am trying to use Pinyin "u" with 3rd tone mark (inverted circumflex/caron) in the tofu article but this character doesn't seem to appear below in the list of many different diacritic characters. Also, whenever such characters appear in the Pinyin article I only see a box. Does anyone know if this bug will be worked out soon? It seems like an important thing, as Chinese is the most widely spoken language. Badagnani 22:50, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

I still cannot see "u" and some other letters with 3rd tone mark on my computer. Can someone help me to update my computer so that I can see these diacritics? Thank you. Badagnani 19:54, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

I cannot read the symbols within the parentheses (in large font) in the "Tones" section of the Pinyin article; they show up simply as empty boxes. I've posted a couple of times already but have so far received no answer or help. Any help that anyone could provide so that I may update my computer so that I can see these diacritics would be greatly appreciated. I think if I am having this problem with these diacritics, others around the world must as well, yet no recommendation for fonts to download is provided on the Pinyin page. Can someone please address this? Badagnani 08:03, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

I am not sure if this is it, but try to install (link removed). -- G.S.K.Lee 23:20, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for this--I will try it. I have determined that those large characters in the "Tones" section are the letter "a" without the loop at the top, with various tone marks. I was advised by another Wikipedia editor to use Netscape instead of IE and, lo and behold, I could indeed read those characters with Netscape. That doesn't seem a very good fix, though, as whatever we do here should be viewable to all, regardless of browser. An editor a week or so ago pointed out that the letter "a" in Pinyin does *not* need to be the style of "a" without loop at the top, so those parenthetical "a"s are probably unnecessary anyway. Badagnani 03:31, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Actually this was caused by somebody forcing the text to 'Arial MS Unicode' when in fact the font is called 'Arial Unicode MS'. I have changed it to use the Unicode template instead. —Moilleadóir 06:13, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for this; I have just checked and everything appears properly now. Badagnani 06:27, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Ambiguity in table

For the [i] entry in the table the description reads, "like English "ee", except when preceded by "c", "ch", "r", "s", "sh", "z" or "zh"; in these cases it should be pronounced as a natural extension of those sounds in the same position, but slightly more open to allow for a clear-sounding vowel to pass through"

OK, but which vowel? --Tydaj 01:41, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

I've been sounding these syllables out for days now, and have yet to come up with any verbal description that could describe these sounds. You just have to hear it. Maybe some Chinese textbook for beginners has a good description; does anyone have such a book, and if so, what does it say about how to pronounce these syllables? Is it possible to upload sound clips? Badagnani 03:34, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps a syllabic alveolar approximant (after z, c, s) or syllabic retroflex approximant (after zh, ch, sh, r). In the case of "ri", it's almost as if there's just one vowel: a syllabic retroflex approximant. -- ran (talk) 03:56, September 10, 2005 (UTC)

I can't find anywhere how to represent that final -i in IPA. In Li & Thompson table 1.4, transcriptions are given which are not even on the IPA chart! 219.87.12.250 09:47, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

The problem is that these two vowels are usually given as [ ɿ ] and [ ʅ ] in publications that ostensibly use IPA, but this is not official IPA usage:

Pinyin	zi	ci	si	zhi	chi	shi
IPA	tsz̩	tsʰz̩	sz̩	tʂʐ̩	tʂʰʐ̩	ʂʐ̩
non-standard "IPA"	tsz̩ɿ	tsʰɿ	sɿ	tʂʅ	tʂʰʅ	ʂʅ

These symbols are used in most publications dealing with Sino-Tibetan languages. — Babelfisch 06:40, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Now that I think about it, maybe we should keep with the tradition, and use these symbols as well. We should also start separate articles to explain what these are. -- ran (talk) 11:55, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm certainly in favour of using those symbols, in line with the sino-linguistic community, but I think a small note to explain them would be sufficient, not separate articles (unless all IPA and non-IPA phonetic symbols have their own articles). There are also non-standard-IPA symbols for the rounded versions of [ ɿ ] and [ ʅ ]. — Babelfisch 01:26, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Ah, thank you! Do you think you could place it on the following vowel chart? As you will see there is already a vowel on it that has no IPA symbol.

--Tydaj 04:39, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

=========

As this is a non-specialist environment I would strongly recommend you stick to IPA and nothing but IPA. One set of incomprehensible squiggly marks is more than enough for laymen. An entirely separate article on the subject of specialized phonetic symbols used in Sino-Tibetanology would be fascinating.

If you absolutely must, you can use IPA diacritics on the cardinal IPA vowels to get the exact representation you want in strict IPA.

But the cardinal IPA vowels are almost never exactly even the phoneme you intend in any given language, let alone the allophone. Every single basic vowel in American English needs IPA diacritics added to the cardinal vowel to represent it at all accurately -- and no one ever does that. How exact a representation do Wikipedia readers need of your Chinese sound?

Some Thoughts on Content and Usability Issues for Article Revision

1. Make GIFs of all IPA symbols (and Chinese characters) -- many users are seeing "??" everywhere.

2. Regarding zh -- is the IPA Retroflex Approximate really the same as the Voiced Retroflex Fricative, or is there some friction missing?

3. The Finals chart is cruel and inscrutible to anyone not familiar with Chinese syllable thinking. It needs explanations of the "zero" sign (which should really not be used as it looks just like an IPA symbol BTW) and schwa used in the Nucleus column, and then explanations of what is happening with those very unexpected and unpredictable phonetic and spelling changes that occur when the elements are combined.

4. In "Rules given in terms of English pronunciation", are these Aveolo-Palatals really getting "passed backwards along my tongue"? Can't I pass them with the dutchy on the lefthand side instead? Is there not something still going on in the aveolar region, and do I need a complete lexicon of Portugese at this moment? And many other complaints about inexactitude and rambling throughout. What is always lacking and always needed in phonetic "description" is specific instructions: "Raise the middle of your tongue to here. Raise the tip of your tongue to here. Do this with your jaw and lips. Do this with your breath and vocal cords." -- 66.81.221.246, 8 November 2005

ad 1. No GIFs, please. Getting a browser to display Chinese characters and IPA in Unicode is not such a big problem, and GIF's would be a nightmare: people who can input Chinese and IPA can do so fairly quickly, and people who can't won't be able to deal with the GIFs either. Besides that, GIFs take much longer to load and won't fit in with the rest of the text.

ad 3. I agree, the chart is not perfect. The problem is that the symbols used in the grey boxes are a mixture of Pinyin (ng) and IPA ([y]). That's confusing.

ad 4. I'm not a big fan of "rules given in terms of English pronunciation", because without linguistic training, monolingual English speakers won't be able to use them anyways. — Babelfisch 01:27, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

With regards to point 1, I agree that we should not replace the unicode with GIFs. GIFs are rather unwieldy to handle in this context. It's also become a very straight forward process to enable the display of East Asian character sets these days. --BenjaminTsai ^Talk 14:17, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Finding this page

The term pinying is sometimes used. Is this incorrect?

Anyway, I put in a redirect from Pinying. Singkong2005 04:52, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes, "Pinying" is absolutely wrong. The difference between -n and -ng is crucial in most Chinese dialects, but not all of them. The source of this mistake is either complete ignorance of non-Chinese speakers, or dialect influence of Chinese speakers. — Babelfisch 05:48, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

I've added Template:R from misspelling. -- ran (talk) 07:59, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Capitalization

Should "pinyin" be written in upper case or lower case? It appears both ways in this article. Badagnani 03:02, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Pinyin does not need to be capitalized. However when spelling it out as "Hanyu Pinyin", it needs to be capitalized. --BenjaminTsai ^Talk 14:10, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

---

"Pinyin" needs to be capitalized, because it is a proper name for "Hanyu Pinyin".

Move?

To make more explicit that this article is on Hanyu Pinyin and not Tongyong Pinyin and clear any possible confusion, I propose that this page be moved to "Hanyu Pinyin". Comments? --Jiang 07:33, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

• Sounds good. --BenjaminTsai ^Talk 08:14, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
• Good idea. -- A human 08:16, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
• against. The great majority in readers will just know the name pinyin and will never have heard of either hanyu or tongyong. So its better to have a pinyin article that describes the most common version of pinyin and possibly indicate and refer to the other one. −Woodstone 10:17, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
  • If the article is moved to "Hanyu Pinyin", then "pinyin" will most likely contain/redirect to Pinyin (disambiguation). This should take care of the issue you're pointing out, but I can understand your perspective and actually look somewhat favorably on it because of my bias against Tongyong Pinyin. ;-) --BenjaminTsai ^Talk 10:37, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
• Either keep it as it is, or redirect Pinyin to Hanyu Pinyin, with a disambiguation notice to bring readers to Tongyong Pinyin and Postal System Pinyin. — Instantnood 21:56, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
• Support move and redirect from "pinyin" to "Hanyu Pinyin". --MarkSweep (call me collect) 07:09, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose move. The only pinyin most English speakers (and Chinese learners) know is Hanyu Pinyin. The Tongyong system came much later, and is partly based on the Hanyu system; give it its own article under "Tongyong pinyin" and leave Hanyu Pinyin as Pinyin. Badagnani 08:03, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Hanyu Pinyin is often referred to by its full name. The zh wikipedia has the article at 汉语拼音 with 拼音 redirecting to 汉语拼音. I propose we do the same (so Hanyu Pinyin will retain precedence): move this article to "Hanyu Pinyin", redirect "Pinyin" to "Hanyu Pinyin" and leave a dab note at the top "Pinyin redirects here. For other uses, see Tongyong Pinyin and Postal System Pinyin". Users looking for pinyin without the Hanyu will still be redirected to the article they are seeking. --Jiang 08:15, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose move. For the vast majority of people Pinyin is Hanyu pinyin. Typing Pinyin in the search box should lead directly to Pinyin article. LDHan 09:49, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
  • That's what redirects are for. Typing in "pinyin" would still redirect to Hanyu Pinyin as User:Jiang suggested. — Indi ^{[ talk ]} 14:35, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
• Support move and redirect per User:Instantnood. (I hope it's not too late to vote now) — Indi ^{[ talk ]} 14:35, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose. Tongyong and Postal pinyin are not even remotely close to the original system in terms of usage, recognition and notability. It's an issue that only concerns Chinese Wikipedia. The deference shown to non-PRC issues is exaggerated as it is. / Peter ^Isotalo 08:03, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia PinYin-ization project

I propose to make a project to standardize all Wikipedia articles with mainland-chinese terms to PinYin. Except names that originates in romanizations not in chinese characters. What do you people think?? In hundred years it will all be in Pinyin why not face it and standardize now?? A human 08:15, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

I have also thought about this issue, and I definitely agree with you. In fact, I saw a new book today, The Complete History of China, which is a big tome by J.A.G. Roberts. In this book, all Chinese names are in Pinyin, even names of such historical personalities as Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek, and Soong May-ling, are converted to Pinyin, and the three names are thus respectively, Sun Zhongshan, Jiang Jieshi, and Song Meiling.

Although history made those spelling, but there is more time in the future than in the past, and Wikipedia is a long-term project and should promote this standard, which will do a great service to all the people in the time to come. Following this standard, peole with minimal knowledge of the Chinese language and culture can uniquely convert a Chinese name into the Romanized form and find it in Wikipedia. Otherwise, they would have to try many different forms.

Technically, we can let the standard Pinyin appear in the title, and REDIRECT other non-standard forms to the standard entry.

These non-standard forms for Chinese names due to historical reasons, personal idiosyncrasies, and sometimes due to lack of proper information, cause enormous inconveniences in dealing with Chinese names either in Sinological studies or in daily life. It does not make any sense to let such unnecessary problems continue. --Roland 09:19, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

it should be always up to wikipedia:use common names. it is only when it is not clear what spelling is more common that we favor pinyin based on the importance of this romanization system. for example, Kung fu is much more common in English than Gongfu.--Jiang 08:34, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

I am about to start such a project. Please read List of proposed projects 亮HH 16:06, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

I Also disagree. I Think it should be left up to the original authors and contributors of the article, as the guideline suggests. I think that using all Hanyu pinyin would be a good idea, but for things like pronouciation, and different wording (電腦 vs 計算機), those should be left to the author to decide. You could also offer multiple wordings or pronouciations, but i think that would only be appropriate if it is relevant to the content of the article.--Keith 23:02, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Disagree, as per comment by Keith above. Keep it on an article-by-article basis, as stated in the guidelines. The Pinyin should be listed in the first paragraph of the article in any case, if the title is not in pinyin. Badagnani 02:07, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Disagree. Sun Yat-Sen's native language was Cantonese. That's how he pronounced his own name. Stop trying to shove the Mandarin pronunciation of people's name down everyone's throat. "...due to historical reasons, personal idiosyncrasies," ... personal idiosyncrasies? So being born Hakka or Cantonese or Min and pronouncing your own name in your native language is a personal idiosyncrasy? When Chinese names become used in English, it must be transliterated into Mandarin? Sorry I don't buy it. 66.171.76.176 04:03, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Disagree. I'm a native Chinese/Mandarin speaker.You may wonder it,that personally I DEFY even DETEST Pinyin.Because we all know PRC/CCP cannot present China-mainland.Pinyan is more like a political product rather than a intellectual work, so-called collaboration is only a blurb. I do not oppose romanization, 'cause such a thing is absolutely indispensable. But Pinyin has too many defects and too much weakness,which maybe inherent or intrinsic. E.G. tone marks are generally missed,hence considerably unreadable even by chinese people; though Mandarin is a standard,it's also regard as some sort of linguistic imperialism by a lot of mainlander. Actually only few people in China can speak mandarin fluently and correctly with a STANDARDIZED accent.More people use mandarin only as a communiction-tool, and the pronouncing accuracy NEVER be crucial. I can even say, the Standard of vernacular Chinese never exist(it's still too young). Chinese people do not write what they say commonly. So, due to the shortage of syllables of mandarin(especially without tone-marks),Pinyin can never be a functional writing system in a real world. So, my suggestion is, use the existed translation and traditional transcription if possible,the pinyin thing for Chinese is as queer as Chinese characters for Western.Blankego 03:56, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Agree to a certain extent - I think proper pīnyīn with tone marks should be used on any original Mandarin (place)name/word, in articles where this is found - and not be used wherever a different romanization has become customary, as with Chiang Kai-Shek 222.75.24.43 (talk) 05:19, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Pinyin reasoning

Why do it the way Pinyin is? Why not just accept the Internation Phonetic Alphabet? That way even more people would be able to understand it. Does anyone how they came up with/created Pinyin? 70.111.224.85 01:22, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Could you give us some examples? For instance, how will you spell the names of Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek), Mao Zedong, or Zhang Ziyi in Internation Phonetic Alphabet in the English context? --Roland 09:23, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Special characters--where are they?

Does anyone know what happened to the selection of "Special characters" below the edit screen, for use to insert into articles while editing (including vowels with pinyin tone marks)? They are mostly not there any more, and nobody responds on the various "help" pages where I have asked about this. Maybe if more people start to ask, whoever removed these will replace them so we can get back to work. Badagnani 08:24, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

The pinyin characters can now be found in the drop down menu just below the edit screen. Drop down to "Pinyin" to get the tone marks. Badagnani 09:43, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

say jingle bells, not ajar

For the j example, say "as in jingle bells" or just jingle, instead of ajar. I recall this is closer theoretically.210.200.105.227 21:06, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Shanxi vs Shaanxi spelling

How about including a short reference to this special case under miscellanea? Maybe something like "A special case exists regarding the spelling of two neighboring provinces (山西 Shānxī; 陕西 Shǎnxī) whose pronunciation are almost identical except for the tone of the first syllable. The common practice of omitting tone marks therefore renders the two names identical, so to address this ambiguity, the names are spelt Shanxi and Shaanxi respectively, unless if written with tone marks." Infohunter 17:40, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Found some reference about this. Chinese government seems to follow this rule:

• http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/43602.htm
• http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/43599.htm

There's a short remark on the Shaanxi page. Talamus 14:30, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

The article needs a history of pinyin section

It doesn't say where pinyin came from, who was the guiding light behind it, who decided it needed to be invented, political considerations behind its adoption, and so on. For instance, the Russian influence on pinyin via Latinxua Sinwenz might also help explain the non-standard use of Roman letters referred to in the text. ProhibitOnions 11:55, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

[aʊ]

Why is [aʊ] written as ao instead of au? — Instantnood 20:23, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

I guess this is because [ʊ] and [o] are very similar sounds. For example, the German diphthong /au/ is analyzed as [aʊ] by some, but as [ao] by others (and this implies no distinction of varieties of any kind). 84.73.159.74 08:51, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

As it was explained in some book, in hand writing, letter U and N are quite hard to discern, they think O is better.Blankego (talk) 04:29, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

That's the same reason <u> was changed to <o> near <n, m, v> etc. (love, son, some) in English. kwami (talk) 06:03, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

final -r

Is final -r retroflex? I've heard that its sound is clearly distinct from initial r-, but on this page, the same IPA transcription is used for both sounds. 84.73.159.74 08:51, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

---

I've copied this in from the Standard Mandarin article for the chart footnote:

/ɻ/ is often transcribed as [ʐ] (a voiced retroflex fricative). This represents a variation in pronunciation among different speakers, rather than two different phonemes.

The distinction in sound between these two is very subtle. I've never seen a mention of a distinct final R sound, but I think (and I'm such the non-expert in these matters I warn you) that in Beijing dialect the final R does alter something in pronunciation of the word, but it's not the R itself that changes... (?)

For that matter, this page simply states as a fact that final -r is written in pinyin, but http://www.pinyin.info/romanization/compare/hanyu.html does not show any sign of this, and the Microsoft Pinyin IME knows nothing of it. Perhaps the page needs to discuss?

Question

Hi, we need Chinese language help at Chinese wine. There's a wine which isn't yet discussed that is sold as "hung-lu" wine. It is reddish in color, a sharp smell, and a chemically, diesel-like taste, and is sold by the Oriental Mascot brand (which also makes mijiu and formerly also made Shaoxing jiu). The largest photo of this wine is here, but the characters aren't easily readable. I think "hung-lu" isn't Hanyu pinyin. Can someone provide information about this wine, the characters, etc.? Thank you! http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/B0000DJZ0F/ref=dp_primary-product-display_0/102-4042702-9901704?%5Fencoding=UTF8&n=3370831&s=gourmet-food Badagnani 19:31, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Pinyin for transcribing minority languages

I have failed to locate information on wikipedia on the modified version of pinyin that is in general use to transcribe or write (in the absence of other scripts) the various minority languages of China. These officially designated scripts are based on the sounds included in Hanyu pinyin, but have certain more or less standardized extensions to accomodate for the often more complex phonological systems of these langugages (such as doubling the letters representing the voiced stops and affricates, since the simple letters in Hanyu pinyin represent voiceless unaspirates not voiced phonemes, etc.)

Is this failure one of my poor search skills, or is this info simply missing? If missing, is it material for an article of its own, or better treated as a section in this article? --Sannab 12:58, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

There are two different issues involved, I guess. One is full writing systems for minority languages such as Zhuang, Bai, Miao and Yao (Mien); the other is the transcription of words (e.g. personal and place names) from minority languages that have their own non-Latin scripts, such as Tibetan, Uyghur and Mongolian. There are some articles on Wikipedia that describe the former types, and there is an article for the official Tibetan transcription.

Uyghur used to be written in a modified Latin alphabet, but has reverted to Persian-Arabic script. Ostensibly there is a system for Uyghur personal and place names, but it is not really used, e.g. Kashgar (Uyghur: قەشقەر/K̢ǝxk̢ǝr) according to the transcription scheme should be spelled "Käxkär" or "Kaxkar", but the official spelling is in fact "Kaxgar". The same is true for Mongolian.

One problem is that the rules are not very clear. When Chinese texts are transcribed in Pinyin, foreign names should officially be converted to the original spelling (e.g. "Washington", not "Huáshèngdùn"), but it has not been defined how names from languages not written with the Latin alphabet are supposed to be transcribed or transliterated (e.g. "Khrushchev", "Hruščev", etc.; definitely neither "Hèlǔxiǎofū" nor "Хрущев"). —Babelfisch 05:38, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, I was primarily thinking of full writing systems; where it is clearly so that a set of principles based on pinyin, but with a set of extensions added to cover more complicated phonological systems than that of Chinese, is used. I will admit that my knowledge of this derives almost solely from studying Tibetoburman languages, and that my understanding that it is applicable to other language groups is based of unverified hearsay.

If you have learnt the system for one language, you have a pretty good shot of understanding that of another. I think this set of extensions should be documented. It includes the treatment of voiced/voiceless unaspirated/voiceless aspirate (f ex bb/b/p respectively), where Chinese only has the latter two, but many minority languages (a least within the Tibetoburman branch) has three, or even four (a prenasalised fourth series , commonly "pinyinized" to 'mb'; it includes the treatment of tone, where the accentual principles of Chinese pinyin have been set aside, and replaced with final consonants (since the combination of syllabic tone with a wide range of final consonants afaik is pretty rare, tonal languages mostly are restricted to final nasals), often with a visual cue in choice of consonant (f ex -t (which rises above the line) for high tone, and -p for low) These are the things that rose to the top of my mind, and they are admittedly very biased towards the Tibetoburman languages.

This is imo a separate issue from the transcription of Chinese into pinyin or the transcription of loans from minority languages within a Chinese language context. I am primarily wondering if this should be documented within the article on pinyin (then presumable under Other languages, or if it better treated as a separate article.--Sannab 08:24, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Internet Explorer Crashing

Something between Traditional Characters and Numbers in place of Tone Marks in the Tones section of this article makes my Internet Explorer crash every single time. Does this happen to anybody else? Anybody know of a possible reason for this?

I remember looking at the different kinds of "ma"'s before, which I see in the source code is present in the section that makes my Internet Explorer crash, so either the article changed to make it crash, or the program itself changed. I'm going to guess the first option. BirdValiant 01:10, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

I just checked the Pinyin page and the very same thing happened to me. I scrolled down to where the big "a"s with tone marks are and my Internet Explorer crashed -- for the first time ever, in all my time using Wikipedia. Let's get this fixed, please. Badagnani 03:27, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't have that problem, but I have to go through a proxy because of Chinese government censorship, and I use the Chinese version of IE 6.0. —Babelfisch 05:38, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

All fine using Firefox... -- G.S.K.Lee 15:10, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

yup, happening to me too. every time i try to scroll past "tones" section

Let's please fix this! I proposed this on 18 May 2006 and there has been no response. The person who introduced the new code (whatever that is) that is making this happen is the person who needs to fix it. Please chime in if you are that person and make the repair. Thanks. Badagnani 21:16, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

01/13/2007: Internet Explorer 6.0 is still crashing, but not always. As far as I can see, that crash happens when it's about to display the {{Ruby-big}} templates, which tries to load a truckload of Chinese fonts. Someone more versed in Chinese must fix the template. --Edokter (Talk) 23:59, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Lead section

It is perfectly fine to begin the lead section with the more specific, technical, or official term, like how United States begins with "United States of America" and Bill Clinton begins with "William Jefferson Clinton". I don't see why the article needs to begin with "Pinyin". --Jiang 17:13, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Simply because a great majority of the readers will be suprised to see the well known transcription method suddenly have an unfamiliar name. −Woodstone 17:39, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't see the validity in your point, that readers will be "suprised". I'm fine with the current text as it is neither misleading nor inaccurate, but I don't see the precedent in Wikipedia for this funnel-shaped lead section approach. The standard is to start with the definition in bold face and let any disambiguation headers do their job. "Pinyin" can be a stand alone term in all appearances in the article after the first, except the part on comparison with other systems- this should make it obvious enough. Just because most people do not know about Madonna (entertainer)'s three other names, Louise Veronica Ciccone, does not mean we should purge it from the bolded text. --Jiang 21:10, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Appropriateness of Pinyin for Standard Written Chinese

Under Controversey section, it says:

"The phonotactics of spoken Mandarin dictate a relatively small set of possible syllables resulting in many homophones. Because of this, pinyin can be ambiguous, especially when transcribing Standard Written Chinese, which uses formal constructions not often found in speech."

However, in the article on Vernacular Chinese to which Standard Written Chinese is redirected to, it says that Standard Written Chinese now often refers to Vernacular Chinese which by definition should NOT contain "formal constructions not often found in speech."

Can someone clarify this and/or make the appropriate changes to this section? The way it is stated now, it suggests that pinyin is particularly ambiguous when used for standard Chinese writing. I don't believe this is the case, and it cannot be the case if standard Chinese writing is close to the spoken form, otherwise spoken Chinese would also be highly ambiguous.

Gary 16:51, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

That actually is the case. Up to 30 characters (approximation off of the top of my head; don't quote me on it), each with a different meaning, can share the exact same pronunciation and therefore share the same pinyin form. This is generally not a problem in speech because of context. The best analogy I can come up with is, say, you separate all English words into their individual syllables, and wrote each syllable separately and spelled the way that syllable is pronounced (e.g. "syllable" could be written as "si lah bo"). We have no trouble understanding it when said out loud, but it would be impossible to understand in written form, and that's the way pinyin is. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 129.116.47.194 (talk • contribs) 03:10, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

There seems to be some confusion between spoken and written language, and aslo between Chinese words and characters. Pinyin does not represent Chinese characters, it merely transcribes spoken Chinese sounds. Basically, if something in Chinese can be understood when spoken aloud it can be can be understood when written in pinyin. That is why Classical Chinese (a written language) cannot be written in pinyin and it is the reason why certain formal constructions in modern written Chinese, which are leftovers from Classical Chinese, can be ambiguous. LDHan 11:57, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Books and websites in pinyin?

Are there any books and magazines printed in pinyin? If so, why not provide information about how to get them in this article?

What about websites? I know it is relatively easy to convert characters to pinyin using the software mentioned in the article, but it would be nice to find some websites that were already in pinyin. Do these not exist?

Gary 17:03, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

http://www.wordproject.org/multi/bi_en_cn_py.htm —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.104.49.157 (talk) 02:44, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

this section does not apply to mandarin..?

"For example, the sounds indicated in pinyin by b and g correspond more closely to the sounds indicated by p and k in Western use of the Latin script. Other letters, like j, q, x or zh indicate sounds that do not correspond to any exact sound in English. Some of the transcriptions in pinyin, such as the ang ending, do not correspond to English pronunciations, either."

While in china, i have never confused b with p, or g with k. J and zh sound like the english j, q is like ch, and x is like sh. Does this section apply to non-Mandarin dialects, or is it just incorrect?

68.197.167.243 23:40, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Sure it applies to Mandarin. Pinyin is designed for standard Mandarin, but my Chinese teacher said that it is really intended for the Beijing accent. I agree with you about b/p and g/k, so perhaps that is a matter of opinion, or just a way of expressing that although 'b' is similar to an English 'b' it is not the same. However, the way I say the 'j' 'q' 'x' 'zh', was always either causing words to be misunderstood or just pointed out as being a very poor Chinese accent. She is right in that the tapes (nor her own native accent) don't sound much like my attempts either. She also said that Mandarin speakers from some other parts of China don't distinguish those consonants the way northern speakers do. I am a native English speaker, and I have not travelled to China myself, I am afraid. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 14:54, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Pinyin is expressly for Mandarin. The "Beijing dialect" that you speak of is simply Mandarin. Mandarin is the official language of China, thus, pinyin is a romanized pronunciation for Mandarin.

b & g compared to Western p & k

The previous version read "For example, the sounds indicated in pinyin by b and g correspond more closely to the sounds indicated by p and k in Western use of the Latin script". Now I fully understand that this is true for the unaspirated p and k, but those are not the representative forms of p and k pronunciation in English. It is also true if "more closely" means 'at an intermediate value' (e.g., between b and p), but this is clear as mud. The description is therefore misleading, as it will cause the uninitiated to think that the b and g in pinyin are pronounced like an aspirated p and k in English. I have therefore reworded it to 'not as heavily voiced'. Dragonbones 15:29, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Pinyin b and g are both unvoiced and unaspirated, the mistake is to assume "(pinyin) b and g correspond more closely to the sounds indicated by p and k in Western use of the Latin script" is talking about English. Pinyin "b" is similar to French "p" eg "Paris". So I have changed it to "For example, the sounds indicated in pinyin by b and g correspond more closely to the sounds indicated by p and k in some Western uses of the Latin script eg French." LDHan 21:04, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

external resource missing

There is an excellent non-profit website which specializes in educating the public about Hanyu Pinyin, and it should definitely be in the external links list here, but I don't know how to add it because I don't understand the code for the external links. Here is the info: http://www.pinyin.info/

I am very well versed in pinyin, so I can vouch for its quality and the fact that it is not spam. Could someone please help add it? Thanks, Dragonbones 15:41, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Done. −Woodstone 19:14, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Mysterious /ɰ/ Phoneme in Standard Mandarin Article

Would someone please take a look at my Talk question "This Phoneme /ɰ/ is Misclassified, and Does it Really Exist?" in the Standard Mandarin article.

They have a mystery phoneme in their chart there that is not present in the Romanization charts in the Pinyin article here: /ɰ/ —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 75.7.2.131 (talk) 13:26, 7 December 2006 (UTC).

Good Article Review

A Good Article review has opened concerning this article concerning these issues at WP:GA/R, please address them in 7 days or the article will be delisted: maintenance of the article has fallen, there are 3 citation needed tags, only one reference, only one note and one spam notice. Rlevse 00:25, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

delisted as a GA, no action taken on above.Rlevse 23:14, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Rules for placing the tone mark

I had always believed that for the spellings -iu and -ui, the tone mark appears over the first vowel because they are contracted spellings of -i-ou and -u-ei. Furthermore, putting the tone mark over the first vowel makes it that much more clear that -iu is not yu/-ü. Do the rules clearly state that the tone mark in these cases must be on the second vowel? - Gilgamesh 18:45, 19 December 2006 (UTC) Illustrative case in point: It is more intuitive to do distinctions like hū/huā/huō/huāi/hūi/huān/hūn/huāng/hōng that correspond with zero-initial wū/wā/wō/wāi/wēi/wān/wēn/wāng/wēng, where there is a vowel like e that collapses out of writing when an initial consonant is present. Though non-initial components of hōng and wēng are pronounced differently from one another, the other pairs are not, and the principle is still sound as these syllables are all ordered this way in rime tables by their constituent components. But if it turns out that a -iū/-uī (and not -īu/-ūi) positioning is mandated specifically in black and white by the standard, then obviously that's that. But is it? - Gilgamesh 20:33, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

There are some phonetic reasons for reducing iou and uei to iu and ui when they are with initials. I-o-u and u-e-i are examples with all the three elements of Chinese finals(韻母): medial(韻頭), nucleus(韻腹) and coda(韻尾). Although nucleus must exist in any syllable (perhaps except standalone consonant syllables - I'm not sure), in these 2 combinations, both medials tend to get weakened (technically, that is reduced). In particular, the o in iou is just lost in some combinations (like liu), while the e in uei still exists in some combinations. Perhaps for the sake of simplicity, the pinyin scheme states clearly that both medials not be written when combined with initials.

When medials exist, there must at least be a nucleus. And the tone is marked on the "louder" vowel, which must be the nucleus. So, in iu and ui, the tone happens to and must be on the second vowel. For more details, you may read my message below.--Fitzwilliam 04:53, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Merge with Pinyin_method

This is the start of the discussion to merge Pinyin_method into Pinyin (this article).

Discussion

Merge - They have the same content. If we were to separate these, other forms of typing very similar to pinyin such as Zhuyin should also have their own "name_method" article, (Zhuyin_method). Also, Cangjie is a typing method, but Cangjie_method is the actual page describing it, while Cangjie is supposedly a historical character. Instead, wouldn't it be better if they were all consistent, and had only one article? There might be reasons that these articles should be separate, but they should technically just be the same thing. 207.81.184.128 01:42, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree. --Nlu (talk) 04:48, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Object Pinyin method is about the computer input method. The two articles do not cover the same content. Another section could be made on the Pinyin article about Pinyin on computers, but I think Pinyin method should have its own article because there is enough to say about it. Leon math 21:29, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Rules given in terms of English pronunciation

Is this section needed at all in an article on Pinyin? IMO it would be more appropriate in an article on Chinese phonology or pronunciation. There's far too much detail here, for example:

"To get this sound, first take the sound halfway between joke and check, and then slowly pass it backwards along the tongue ..."

Pinyin is just a romanization method. There should be links to other articles for anyone wanting details on pronunciation. Ndsg | Talk 11:10, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

The section below (on the pronunciation of Beijing) seems to be completely off-topic. This article is supposed to be about Pinyin—not the intricacies of Chinese pronunciation. Of course Wikipedia should have something about that too, but not in an article on Pinyin! NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 10:38, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

PJTraill 10:54, 19 January 2007 (UTC) I take your point that pronunciation is rather off-topic, but it is in the article: if the article contains such an example it should be correct and hence consistent, which it does not seem to be (but maybe I've misunderstood something). Incidentally, I always did want to know about the pronunciation of Peking/Beijing (can you answer my question), so I'm glad I found it wherever it was! I'd also prefer to see details and techniques of pronunciation moved out, but I think that at least the IPA chart should stay.

Pronunciation of Beijing

The article says (in the pronunciation of 'j') that '"Beijing" is pronounced like "bay-jing", not like "beige-ing"', yet both IPA and the english pronunciation give 'b' as [p]. So should it not be "pay-jing" (with unaspirated 'p', of course)? PJTraill 00:45, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Glad you agree with my general point about excessive pronunciation in this article.

As for Beijing, you're right -- but you can imagine how most anglophones would pronounce it if you told them to say "Peijing"! Maybe "sPeijing" without the "s" would be closer -- though the "j" is of course different from the English "j". NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 12:25, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

The "j" should unvoiced, so perhaps a closer English approximation would be "(s)Paytsying" (without the s)). −Woodstone 20:29, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

It seem that we're slowly homing in on a truly revolutionary spelling ... something like ... could it be? ... Peking? NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 11:54, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Lead section too long

There's too much detail in the LS at present: this makes it much too long. IMO it needs to be crisper & more to the point. NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 18:04, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Maybe you're right. I moved the historical section to a new section just below the lead; does this help? Badagnani 18:14, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that's certainly an improvement!

I don't want to get involved personally in editing this article (too busy doing another one!); but here in any case are a couple of suggestions for the lead section:

1. Para 2: shorten (drop some detail) & merge with para 1. Drop repeated links to Simplif & Trad Chinese.
2. Para 3
   1. No need to repeat that it's a romanization. Why mention anglicization? Who would have thought that it was one?
   2. Generally verbose; & has a couple of clumsy sentences. Ending a para with ", either." isn't very elegant style!
   3. Try moving the whole of this para below the TOC, if it's needed at all.

To summarize, the LS could consist of just 2 paras: (merged 1 + 2) and 4. Try it out: I think you'll find it's snappier & more like the "executive summary" that I believe a LS should be. If you want to keep all the details, move them further down.

The above are, I repeat, just suggestions. Hope they help! NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 20:59, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Propose move

The article covers about Hanyu Pinyin and I am surprised that it is located at Pinyin. Although "Pinyin" is a common term when referring to Hanyu Pinyin, the correct term is still Hanyu Pinyin. "Pinyin" can refer to Hanyu Pinyin, Tongyong Pinyin, or even Wade-Giles. A previous discussion ended with no consensus. I suggest that this page should be:

1. Move to Hanyu Pinyin and Pinyin (disambiguation) should be move here per WP:DAB, or,
2. Move to Hanyu Pinyin and Pinyin will redirect here. For this case, a message will guide users to the disambiguation page.

In either case, we'll need an admin to perform the work because the target page exists. Any comments? --Joshua Chiew 02:22, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Rules for placing the tone mark

In Chinese, there is a mnemonic for memorizing the rules:

有a不放過，沒a找o、e，i、u並列標在後，i上標調去掉頭。

(Translation: If a is here, mark it; if not, find o (or) e. When i and u are together, mark the second one. When marking i, remove the dot of i.)

In fact, the must-remember rule is the order of seven single vowels: a, o, e, ê, i, u and ü. They are in descending order of "mouth openness".

If a is here, mark it; if not, find o or e (there is no "oe"). If they all are not here, there must be i, u or ü. There are combinations iu and ui, and the tone is marked on the second letter. Because of the order above, when you see nüe, the tone mark is on the e, not ü.

Note that there are only two combinations in pinyin where ü comes with another vowel, which must be e. Even in other "ü+another vowel" combinations where ü is written as "u", only the vowel that accompany "u" is marked. On the other hand, ê always appear independently and is written as "e" in other situations, i.e. the other two combinations, ie and üe. So, you won't get confused with the two pairs e, ê, u and ü.

For citation, all we need is the mnemonic above. And, of course, clean up the statements as well.--Fitzwilliam 09:35, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

These rules are probably necessary only for non-Mandarin speakers, aren't they? If you wrote *zhōnggúohùa instead of the correct zhōngguóhuà that would imply that you were saying something like /'kuo/ and /'xua/, both of them with 2 syllables, with stress on the first.

Nevertheless, I agree that it's probably useful to spell these rules out. NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 12:16, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

This mnemonic is what appeared on ordinary primary school textbooks for Chinese children.--Fitzwilliam 13:10, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I always learned and thought it was on the last vowel if i, u, and ü appear together? http://www.pinyin.info/rules/where.html http://www.chineselearner.com/pinyin/pinyin-tones.htm —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bobo Bonnie (talk • contribs) 20:44, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Pidgin

• Pidgin

1. an auxiliary language that has come into existence through the attempts by the speakers of two different languages to communicate and that is primarily a simplified form of one of the languages, with a reduced vocabulary and grammatical structure and considerable variation in pronunciation. 2. (loosely) any simplified or broken form of a language, esp. when used for communication between speakers of different languages.Dictionary.com Pidgin

This is the definition provided by Dictionary.com. My contributions here and here were reverted. Once by a bot as it was thought to be vandalism. The second for the reason of "If you believe this so strongly it can be discussed elsewhere in the article, not in the lead. Present your case as to what exactly you mean in "Discussion" first, thnaks User:Badagnani"

If you can find a reason why pinyin is not the textbook definition of pidgin, then please make your case. I would also like to take this opportunity to remind everyone about WP:NOT and WP:OWN and that wikipedia is greatly contributed to by unregistered IP's. Blocking my edits is in direct violation of those two policies and what wikipedia is. Not every change needs to be discussed and a vast majority are not. I cannot revert this change per WP:3RR but I strongly urge someone with some sort of insite to take the step and undo. 142.35.144.2 06:52, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

The Chinese language may be written either with hanzi or with Hanyu pinyin, among other systems. The language does not change, and it is not simplified in any way, thus is not any form or variety of pidgin. In fact, the tones (due to the presence of tone marks) are even more clear in Hanyu pinyin than in the original hanzi writing system. Badagnani 07:03, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

For the provided definition, I have to say that if someone doesn't understand Mandarin, he/she cannot understand Hanyu Pinyin at all. Pinyin is just a way to write Mandarin in the Latin alphabet and to indicate the pronunciation of hanzi. "Considerable variation in pronunciation" doesn't occur.--Joshua Chiew 16:03, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

In any case, pinyin is not an auriliary language, nor is it a conglomeration of multiple languages. --Nlu (talk) 00:18, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Are "y" and "w" consonants in Hanyu Pinyin?

Consonant Table:

b p m f

d t n l

g k h

j q x

z c s r

zh ch sh

y w

For consonants, we also put all these into English words with the same sound for you to learn and remember in an easier way.

• Note: We pronounce these consonants followed by some vowels that can help deliver the sound more clearly. Letters in the following explanation in "..." are pronounced as in English, and those in '... ' are pronounced in Pinyin.

  b - as the "b" in "book"

  p - as the "p" in "pool"

  m - as the "m" in "moon"

  f - as the "f" in "food"

  d - as the "d" in "door"

t - as the "t" in "tom"

  n - as the "n" in "no"

  l - as the "l" in "love"

  g - as the "g" in good"

  k - as the "k" in "kill"

  h- as the "h" in "high"

  j- as the "j" in "jeep"

  q- as the "ch" in "cheese"

  x- as the "sh" in "sharp"

  z- as the "z" in "zero"

  c- as the "ts" in "tsunami"

  s- as the "s" in "sun"

  r- as the "r" in "red"

  zh- start with 'j' in "jeep", but then end smoothly with "r" sound.  The first 2 sounds in the sample voice show such move.

  ch- start with 'q' in "cheese", but then end smoothly with "r" sound.   The first 2 sounds in the sample voice show such move.

  sh - start with 'x' in "sharp", but then end smoothly with "r" sound.   The first 2 sounds in the sample voice show such move.

( 'zh, ch, sh' are similar to, but strictly different from 'j, q, x' respectively. However, mixing them is not a too big problem for you to be understood in China.)

  y- as the "y" in "yes"

  w- as the "w" in "wood"

From: http://www.zapchinese.com/Chinese-lessons/Lesson04/Lesson04.htm —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 62.136.178.122 (talk • contribs) 22:26, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

"y" and "w" are generally not considered as initials in Pinyin. Each of the initials in Pinyin has its own sound; "y" and "w" have none. They are just spelling conventions. They serve to disambiguate syllables beginning with "i", "u" and "ü". --Joshua Chiew 08:03, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

How come a consonant has not its own sound?

con·so·nant [kónssənənt]

noun (plural con·so·nants)

1. linguistics speech sound other than vowel: a speech sound produced by partly or totally blocking the path of air through the mouth. See also vowel

2. letter representing consonant: a letter of the alphabet that represents a consonant

Microsoft® Encarta® 2007. © 1993-2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

So "Wang" and "Yang," then, are both pronounced "ang"? Badagnani 08:11, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

• "W" and "Y" are pronounced [w] and [j] (IPA) respectively.

Of course not. "Wang" is actually "uang" and "Yang" is actually "iang". Like the "uenian" example in the article. --Joshua Chiew 08:41, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

• Encarta shows that "yang" is pronounced [yang], "y" is a consonant pronounced [y].

yang [yang]

or Yang [yang]

noun

masculine element: in Chinese philosophy, the principle of light, heat, motivation, and masculinity that is the counterpart of yin and is thought to exist along with yin in all things. See also yin

[Late 17th century. < Chinese yáng "sun, positive"]

Microsoft® Encarta® 2007. © 1993-2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.70.4.83 (talk) 10:36, 28 February 2007 (UTC).

Interesting! So "yi" has no "y" sound whatsoever, but is pronounced "ee" (like Korean 李)? Badagnani 08:47, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Yi [yee]

noun

long-ruling Korean dynasty: a Korean dynasty that ruled Korea from 1392, following a period of Mongol invasions, until 1910, and that restored aristocratic dominance and Chinese influence

Microsoft® Encarta® 2007. © 1993-2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

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The Consonants

Pinyin – Wade-Giles

• b - p
• p - p’
• m - m
• f - f
• d - t
• t - t’
• n - n
• l - l
• g - k
• k - k’
• h - h
• j - ch
• q - ch’
• x - hs
• z - ts / tz
• c - ts’
• s - ss
• zh - ch
• ch - ch’
• sh - sh
• r - j
• y - y
• w - w

See: http://kongming.net/novel/wade-giles/

---

So, "y" and "w" are consonants actually, this article said that they are vowels is not true.

---

Strictly speaking, according to pinyin orthography, "w" and "y" are spelling conventions used to mark syllable boundaries. Eg "uang" becomes "wang", "iang" is "yang", "ü" is "yu", "üe" is "yue" etc. "W" IPA:[w] and "y" IPA:[j] in English are sometimes called semi-vowels, and with the exception of "yi" I think, in practice you can get away with reading pinyin "w" and "y" as [w] and [j]. I don’t think Encarta is a rigorous or reliable enough source, and they don't seem to use IPA. Also, consonant letters and consonant sounds need to be distinguished. LDHan 01:03, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

---

Strictly speaking, "y" [j] 'w" [w] are consonants, "i" [i] 'u" [u] are vowels, they are different sounds. It seems no evidence to prove that Encarta is unreliable. Though Encarta don't use IPA, but it shows that "y" and "w" are consonants.

---

The "Consonants and vowels of the Chinese phonetic alphabet and their corresponding international phonetic symbols" in the appendices of the Concise English-Chinese Chinese-English Dictionary (The Commercial Press, Oxford University Press), shows that "y" "w" "i" "u" are pronounced [j] [w] [i] [u] respectively. --—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.70.4.83 (talk • contribs).

According to a Chinese government website [1] (in Chinese), "y" and "w" are not included in the initial table (声母表) or the final table (韵母表) of the Hanyu Pinyin Fang'an. "y" and "w" are mentioned in the notes of the final table that when there is no initial, the "i" row finals are written as yi, ya, ye etc.; "u" row finals are written as wu, wa, wo etc.; "ü" row finals are written as yu, yue yuan, yun, and the two dots above ü are not written. Since this is a Chinese government website, I'm sure that it is reliable. In addition, I think it is more suitable to use "initial" and "final" rather than "consonant" and "vowel". --Joshua Chiew 11:02, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

This topic is talking about 'Are "y" and "w" consonants in Hanyu Pinyin?', it is not about "initials" and "finals". It is suitable and accurate to use consonants and vowels for analyze sounds in phonetics. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.70.4.83 (talk) 12:39, 2 March 2007 (UTC).

---

Hanyu Pinyin alphabet for Mandarin Chinese, with IPA If you have trouble viewing the IPA here, see the alternate version.

letter name pronunciation A

a
a
a

B

b
pɛ
p

C

c
ts`ɛ
ts`

D

d
tɛ
t

E

e
ɤ
ɤ

F

f
ɛf
f

G

g
kɛ
k

H

h
xa
x

I

i
i
i

J

j
tɕ iɛ
tɕ

K

k
k`ɛ
k`

L

l
ɛl
l

M

m
ɛm
m

N

n
nɛ
n

O

o
o
o

P

p
p`ɛ
p`

Q

q
tɕ `iu
tɕ`

R

r
ar
ʑ

S

s
ɛs
s

T

t
t`ɛ
t`

U

u
u
u

V

v
vɛ
v

W

w
wa
w

X

x
ɕi
ɕ

Y

y
ja
j

Z

z
tsɛ
ts

Source: Chinese Romanization: Pronunciation & Orthography, from: http://pinyin.info/romanization/hanyu/chinese_alphabet.html

The above is merely the pronunciation of the Latin alphabet in Chinese, not the sound values of pinyin letters, eg "v" is not used in pinyin and it does not include "ü". The English equivalent would be ei, bi:, si:, di, i: ... eks yai, zed/zi:. LDHan 13:04, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

---

According to my book in Chinese, which is called Putonghua Shuiping Ceshi Shishi Gangyao, the phonology section explains clearly why j and w are not normal shengmu (聲母). They occur in "zero-shengmu" syllables. The book claims "zero-shengmu" is still a shengmu. Putonghua has 22 shengmu and the zero shengmu is one of them. I take four examples, a as in 阿, ia as in 呀, ua as in 蛙 and üe as in 約. They belong to the four groups of yunmu (韻母) of traditional Chinese phonology respectively, namely kaikouhu (開口呼), qichihu (齊齒呼), hekouhu (合口呼) and cuokouhu (撮口呼). The names roughly describe the features of the vowels a, i, u and ü.

In the 開口呼 group, all yunmu start with vowels other than i, u and ü. This group, along with their combinations with other shengmu, constitute the most syllables in Mandarin. They seem to start with vowels, but there may be some consonants that actually exist, but are not apparent in normal speech, i.e. the glottal stop or the voiced velar fricative. The book says people can reveal them only with certain specialized (linguistic) training. I'm not a student of linguistics, but I can think of the glottal stop in German words that don't start with consonants, like der Abend. Since this kind of consonant do not, according to the book, affect the distinction between these syllables and others, they are not considered. IMO, perhaps, that's why there is no pinyin for both consonants.

Semivowels occur only in the other three groups. Special attention should be given to these 3 groups:

In the 齊齒呼 group, all yunmu start with vowel i. The pinyin scheme has ruled that when no consonant precedes any syllable of this group, we write the letter y to replace i, thus 呀 is written as ya, not ia. When we try to combine a consonant and ia to form other syllables (拼讀), like jia, qia, xia and so on, the IPA for the yunmu is roughly /ia/. But for syllables like ya, the y itself serves as a semivowel (thus the zero shengmu) and the IPA is roughly /j/. The book said that "since there is no consonant, the actual pronunciation will show slight friction." The semivowel Y still belongs to the consonant category.

In the 合口呼 group, all yunmu start with vowel u. Like the second group, when syllables are not preceded by a consonant, we write the letter w to replace u, thus 蛙 is written as wa, not ua. The semivowel W itself is roughly /w/, or a /ʋ/.

In the 撮口呼 group, all yunmu start with vowel ü. Like the second group, when syllables are not preceded by a consonant, we write the letter y to replace ü, thus 約 is written as yue, not üe, and the umlaut is not written. The semivowel Y(yu) itself is roughly /ɥ/.

As I can read, it seems that this article hasn't explained the things I typed here. Here are just my two cents. I hope the information may help.

Cheers. --61.92.239.192 17:46, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

---

^* "wu" is pronounced as [wu].

^** "yi" is pronounced as [ji], but "yu" is pronounced as [ɥy].

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yes, "y" and 'w" are "shengmu" indeed.

IMO, the book that 61.92.239.192 owns is more towards the phonetics of Mandarin (Putonghua) rather than pinyin orthography. Pinyin is just a way of representing Mandarin sounds in the Latin alphabet (romanization), not an alphabet to replace Chinese characters, nor to represents Mandarin sounds in the way the Latin alphabet represents English sounds or any other languages. I had wrote here before about a Chinese government website concerning the regulation of the Chinese language; here is the Hanyu Pinyin fang'an page: [2] (in Chinese). It is clear that "y" and "w" are not included in the initial table or the final table, and the Hanyu Pinyin fang'an is defined using Zhuyin and Chinese characters (and Zhuyin doesn't has symbols representing the sound [w] and [j]). Some persons may confuse the first chart, the alphabet chart (字母表), with the other two charts. The alphabet chart defined the name of the alphabets in pinyin using Zhuyin (just like we call the letter "i" in English as "eye"), not the sound it represents in Mandarin (just like the letter "i" may represent the sounds "eye", "ee" or even the "i" in "pencil" in English). The same tables and notes are included as an appendix to most, if not all, major Chinese dictionary published in mainland China, Malaysia and Singapore.--Joshua ^{Say "hi" to me!}_{What have I done?} 01:18, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Quote ""yi" is pronounced as [ji]" is simply wrong, pinyin "yi" is a single vowel [i], "ee" in "English" spelling. LDHan 20:17, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

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The "Consonants and vowels of the Chinese phonetic alphabet and their corresponding international phonetic symbols" in the appendices of the Concise English-Chinese Chinese-English Dictionary (The Commercial Press, Oxford University Press), shows that "y" "w" "i" "u" are pronounced [j] [w] [i] [u] respectively.

(*"y" before "u" is pronounced as [ɥ].)

Please stop adding "y" and "w" as initials unless the PRC government amends the Hanyu Pinyin fang'an to include them as initials. I would like to remind you about Wikipedia policy on original research. --Joshua ^{Say "hi" to me!}_{What have I done?} 23:55, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

As I had noted before, "initial" in pinyin is not synonymous with "consonant" in English. Putting "ng" in the initial chart is simply wrong, because "ng" does not occur at the beginning of any syllable in Mandarin. Pinyin is just a way to write Chinese (or more precisely, Mandarin) in the Latin alphabet, not to change the pronunciations of Chinese characters in Standard Mandarin.--Joshua ^{Say "hi" to me!}_{What have I done?} 00:37, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

The Concise English-Chinese Chinese-English Dictionary, while it is an excellent dictionary for learners of Chinese, is not an authoritive reference work on pinyin orthography nor Chinese phonetics. The list of "Consonants and vowels of the Chinese phonetic alphabet and their corresponding international phonetic symbols" cannot be used by itself as a guide to pronunciation without taking into account pinyin spelling conventions. Eg, it does not tell you that the "u" in "shu" and "xu" are in fact different sounds, or that "yi" is pronounced [i]. LDHan 12:49, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Question about Pinyin <e>

Hello hello,

My roommate, a Shanghai native, can't recall any instances of when you'd pronounce the pinyin /e/ as anything but a schwa [ə]. Is it common for the pinyin <e> to be pronounced as [ɤ], or is that perhaps a regional thing? Just curous what you guys think about it. Let me know. – Lantoka (talk) 10:18, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Okay, we thought of two examples that use the sound in question: weng and feng. Took awhile to figure it out though. The sound seems somewhat rare. – Lantoka (talk) 10:27, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

If /e/ refers to syllables like ge, ke and he, than this /e/ is, according to the book I introduced above (ISBN 7100041759, in Chinese), roughly ɤ instead of the schwa. The schwa does appear in some other syllables, but probably not in ge, ke and he, where the vowel isn't that "front".--61.92.239.192 17:49, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Pinyin "yu" pronounced as [ɥy]

Recent edit: "syllable "yu" is pronounced as [ɥy]"

Please provide a authoritive reference which says that "yu" is pronounced as [ɥy], all the reference works I have seen states that pinyin "ü" [y] when it is a stand alone syllable, is written as "yu" as a spelling convention, the pronunciation does not change. The letter "y" is added to prevent ambiguity because multi-syllabic Chinese words are written as one unit in pinyin. LDHan 19:59, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

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The "Consonants and vowels of the Chinese phonetic alphabet and their corresponding international phonetic symbols" in the appendices of the Concise English-Chinese Chinese-English Dictionary (The Commercial Press, Oxford University Press), shows that "y" "w" "i" "u" are pronounced [j] [w] [i] [u] respectively.

Are you saying that "yu" is not pronounced as [ɥy]? You seem to have contradicted yourself. LDHan 12:49, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

[ɥy] is written as "yu" in broad transcription. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.104.49.157 (talk) 23:46, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

"Yu" is written [y] in broad transcription. kwami (talk) 05:33, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

phonetics too precise

This article basically lists the Beijing pronunciation, and goes to great lengths to try to make it clear that something like "shi" does not used the unvoiced alveolar fricative, etc. This is unnecessary -- the article should identify phonemes, not phonetics -- perhaps characters or words to go along with it. Many other Mandarin speakers do not precisely follow these pronunciations and they only generate confusion, not understanding. Native speakers in Singapore, for example, do not exactly follow the detail of these phonetics either (such that "shi" is not exactly the same as an English "shin" minus the n but is closer to it than the pronunciation given here). I wonder if other speakers in Taiwan, etc. have been confused by the phonetic details too.

The phonetic detail with the entire tongue, laminal "free of tip" and all that actually seem to describe what we Singaporeans recognise as the "Beijing drawl" -- resulting vowels that come after seem to have an "r-quality" to it, in part due to the elevated nature of the consonants. John Riemann Soong 12:38, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

I recognise that many if not most Chinese speakers do not speak Putonghua with the standard accent but if an article is going to describe standard Putonghua and pinyin then of course we have to use its actual pronunciation, not regional variations nor how it is spoken by someone with a regional accent. Should the article state that in pinyin shi and si are actually the same sound because that's how some speakers pronounce it? There wouldn't be much piont in listing every variation and accent as it would be practically endless. Of course you are more than welcome to start the Singaporean Putonghua article. LDHan 15:40, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

That wasn't my point so more as making the descriptions less precise -- describing the phoneme each pinyin initial is supposed to represent, rather than the strict phonetics. For example, "ch" as an "aspirated zh" works, while the description for "zh" needs to just show it is distinct from q- or j- without going into phonetic detail. Perhaps the article is to be restructured, because it should be made clear that the pronunciation guides represent the Beijing pronunciation (as a standard). John Riemann Soong 18:19, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Writing system infobox

Someone’s just added this infobox to the article and I’m not sure this is correct. While Chinese characters, Latin letters, Hangul etc are writing systems, pinyin is a romanization and uses already existing symbols. If you say pinyin is a writing system, perhaps because it is used to write a certain language, then wouldn’t English spelling, French spelling and probably any other written language be also called a writing system? LDHan 23:02, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

A similar infobox also exists at the Zhuyin article. It appears that it had been in place for quite long. I doubt that the infobox should be added into this 2 articles; pinyin and zhuyin are ways to indicate the pronunciation of Chinese characters, not writing systems in their our own right. While sometimes pinyin is used in lieu of characters (very uncommon), zhuyin has never been used to write Chinese. --Joshua ^{Say "hi" to me!}_{What have I done?} 08:23, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

I do think zhuyin is a writing system, maybe at present it is not used by itself to write Chinese but I don't think that would stop it being classed as a writing system. LDHan 14:06, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

You may be right. Zhuyin was created in the early 20 century, and is distinct from other writing system. Pinyin uses the Latin alphabet which had existed since Roman times. Pinyin is a way to use the Latin alphabet to indicate Mandarin sounds, just like written English uses the Latin alphabet to indicate English sounds, written French uses the Latin alphabet to indicate French sounds, etc.--Joshua ^{Say "hi" to me!}_{What have I done?} 05:40, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

I've made some considerations before I posted this infobox. Pinyin is used quite often in places where inputting Chinese is not possible (e.g. online games). Modern day it is probably more widespread as a system of record than zhuyin outside of Taiwan. It is the most widely used phonetic notation system for mandarin Chinese. Below are examples of other articles containing Template:Infobox Writing system:

• Phonetic notation system: International Phonetic Alphabet
• Writing system that classifies under another writing system: Ukrainian alphabet
• Purely fictional writing system: Sarati

--Voidvector 19:21, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

As the Authorities said,pinyin(literally)is nothing but a phonetic assistant symbolic system(for literacy or phonetic notation).Zhuyin,which the full name is Zhuyin Fuhao(means symbols),is a symbolic system as well. Formerly Zhuyin was called Zhuyin Zimu(letters),there was a reason for the renaming. Besides,inserting Zhuyin characters/Pinyin in Chinese Text is not rare, especially in colloquial text.But they are normally only used to spelling onomatopoetic words,which were very hard to write in Chinese Characters or unprecedented.In some unformal lieu,Pinyin letters also used by mainlander to coin jargon acronyms,especially by adolescent.But many educated people deemed it's vulgar and harmful to the health of literary Chinese.Blankego 05:00, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

i vs yi, u vs wu

In my experience, 一 and 五 (in addition to similar characters) are pronounced /i/ and /u/ respectively. This is true for both Mainland and Taiwanese speakers. /ji/ and /wu/ are sometimes heard, but only in extremely artistic contexts, and have a tendency to sound high-class and/or archaic. --OneTopJob6 20:47, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

This is an influence of pinyin orthography. They should be /i/ and /u/. kwami (talk) 06:00, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Lacking usable vowel pronunciation guide

The current article does not have a succinct explanation of how the vowels in pinyin are pronounced. It takes recourse to describing all combinations of vowels with or without initial and any of the possible final consonants. This is not very helpful for the un-initiated reader. What I would like to see is a simple table explaining every simple vowel (a, e, i, o, u) and some simple rules of how to combine them. Perhaps a few exception rules need to be added. It would be possible to reverse engineer this information from the exhaustive tables, but a knowledgeable chinese speaker could probably create such a guideline quickly. It would be a major improvement to the article. In its current state it is labyrinthine. −Woodstone 21:09, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Sound samples

I only hear three sounds. Also, I don't see the point of having two links. Brutannica 01:42, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Sandhi

There should be a note in the tones section about the pronunciation change with two third tone syllables, ie, qǔshě. SchmuckyTheCat

"Continental R"

Under the section about "Rules given in terms of English pronunciation:Pronunciation of initials", it lists Pinyin L as "something between the l in English and the continental r"... What does this mean? There's more than one continent in the world, but I assume this is British English referring to Europe, but even then, what R is this referring to? Ignoring the fact that there are hundreds of languages in Europe, even a single language like German or French can have 5 possible pronunciations depending on dialect. Someone who knows how this letter is pronounced should reword this. -CumbiaDude (talk) 01:31, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

No doubt they mean the alveolar trill. FilipeS (talk) 00:14, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

And what is that supposed to mean?--Praseprase (talk) 22:28, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Mandarin /l/ is pretty much [l], unless maybe it's flapped between vowels. kwami (talk) 06:00, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Prounciation of c

I changed the pronunciation of the letter c to bats from cats because it confuses people when there is a c in the sample word. "Pronounce it as in cats", well, yeah, C is for Cat, everyone knows that. Normally I would put this comment into the edit history but I accidentally pressed enter while typing in that field. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mr. Shiny & New (talk • contribs) 21:19, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

PinYin means what?

Pin means spell, and yin means sound, so it means spell sound, or the spelling of the sound. It does not only mean spell, as said in the article. If you object, write it here. 99.254.204.28 (talk) 22:45, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh, and the reference says that pinyin means phonetize, not spell. --99.254.204.28 (talk) 22:52, 14 May 2008 (UTC)