EFEO Chinese transcription

Importance

In French speaking world, the system of École française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO) was the most used phonetic transcription of Chinese until the middle of the XXth century. It was created by Séraphin Couvreur of the aforesaid institute in 1902. Meanwhile, it was replaced by hànyǔ pīnyīn.

Background

The transcription of the EFEO did not borrow its phonetics from the national official Mandarin (pǔtōnghuà). It rather was synthesized independently to be a mean of the mandarin dialects, and shows a state of its sounds a little older (as Latinxua Sinwenz and the ancient version of Wade-Giles). Hence, certain words of which pǔtōnghuà phoneme is [ʨ] (pīnyīn: /j/), have been transcribed there either /ts/ or /k/.

Table

API	EFEO	WG	Pinyin
p	p	p	b
pʰ	p'	p'	p
t	t	t	d
tʰ	t'	t'	t
k	k	k	g
kʰ	k'	k'	k
ts	ts	ts	z
tsʰ	ts'	ts'	c
tʂ	tch	ch	zh
tʂʰ	tch'	ch'	ch
tɕ	k/ts	ch	j
tɕʰ	k'/ts'	ch'	q
ɕ	s/h	hs	x
w	ou/w	w	w
j	i/y	y	y
ɤ	ö/é	o/ê	e
ər	eul	êrh	er
z̩	eu	û	i
i	e	ih	i
y	u	ü	ü/u
u	ou	u	u
ən	en	ên	en
ɤŋ	eng	êng	eng
iɛ	ie	ieh	ie
iɤʊ	ieou/iou	iu	iu
iɛn	ien	ien	ian
uo	ouo	o/uo	o/uo
uaɪ	ouai	uai	uai
ueɪ	ouei	ui	ui
uan	ouan	uan	uan
uən	ouen	un	un
yɛ	iue	üeh	üe/ue
yɛn	iuen	üan	üan/uan
yn	iun	ün	ün/un
yʊŋ	ioung	iung	iong

Hyperlinks

• Romanizations for chinese
• UNESCO transcription norms for Chinese