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March 8, 2014 |
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Pinyin (拼音, Pīnyīn) literally means "join (together) sounds" (a less literal translation being "phoneticize", "spell" or "transcription") in Chinese language|Chinese and usually refers to H?nyǔ Pīnyīn (汉语拼音, literal meaning: "Han Chinese|Han language pinyin"), which is a system of romanization (phonetic notation and transliteration to roman script) for Standard Mandarin used in the People's Republic of China. Pinyin was approved in 1958 and adopted in 1979 by its government. It superseded older transcriptions like the Wade-Giles system (1859; modified 1912) or Zhuyin|Bopomofo. Similar systems have been designed for Chinese dialects and List of Chinese ethnic groups|non-Han minority languages in the PRC. Since then, pinyin has been accepted by the Library of Congress, The American Library Association, and most international institutions as the transcription system for Mandarin. In 1979 the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) adopted pinyin as the standard romanization for Modern Chinese. It is important to maintain the distinction that pinyin is a romanization and not an anglicization; that is, it is equally applicable for transliteration into any language that uses a roman alphabet. Indeed some of the transliterations in pinyin such as the ang ending, do not correspond to English pronunciations. Pinyin has also become a useful tool for Chinese input methods for computers|entering Chinese language text into computers. IPA notice The primary purpose of pinyin in Chinese schools is to teach Mandarin pronunciation. Many in the West are under the mistaken belief that pinyin is used to help children associate characters with spoken words which they already know, but this is incorrect as many Chinese do not use Mandarin at home, and therefore do not know the Mandarin pronunciation of words until they learn them in elementary school through the use of pinyin. Pinyin uses the Roman alphabet, hence the pronunciation is relatively straightforward for Westerners. A pitfall for English-speaking novices is, however, the unusual pronunciation x, q, c and z and the unvoiced pronunciation of d, b, g, j. More information on the pronunciation of all pinyin letters in terms of English approximations is given further below. The combined initial (linguistics)|initials and final (linguistics)|finals represent the segmental phonemic portion of the language. Initials In each cell below, the first line indicates International Phonetic Alphabet|IPA, the second indicates pinyin.
Conventional order: b p m f d t n l g k (ng) h j q x zh ch sh r z c s. Finals In each cell below, the first line indicates IPA, the second indicates pinyin for a standalone (no-initial) form, and the third indicates pinyin for a combination with an initial. Finals modified by an -r are omitted. 1
2 "?" is written as "u" after j, q, or x. 3 "uo" is written as "o" after b, p, m, or f. 4 It is pronounced IPA|ʊŋ when it follows an initial, and pinyin reflects this difference. All rules given here in terms of English pronunciation are approximate. Pronunciation of initials
Pinyin differs from other Romanizations in several aspects, such as:
The Pinyin system also incorporates suprasegmental phonemes to represent the four Mandarin (linguistics)#Tones|tones of Mandarin. Each tone is indicated by a diacritical mark above a non-medial vowel. Note that the lower-case letter "a" in pinyin is supposed to be of the handwritten type with no curl over the top. This can be achieved by using a font in which the letter happens to look like this, or alternatively by specifying it using Unicode as we have done in the bracketed example. Note that tones marks can also appear on consonants in certain vowelless exclamations. # The first tone is represented by a macron (ˉ) added to the pinyin vowel: #: (ɑ̄) ā ē ī ō ū ǖ Ā Ē Ī Ō Ū Ǖ # The second tone is denoted by an acute accent (ˊ): #: (ɑ́) ? ? ? ? ? ǘ ? ? ? ? ? Ǘ # The third tone is symbolized by a hacek|caron (ˇ, also known as a reverse circumflex). Note, it is officially not a breve (˘, lacking a downward angle), although this misuse is somewhat common on the Internet. #: (ɑ̌) ǎ ě ǐ ǒ ǔ ǚ Ǎ Ě Ǐ Ǒ Ǔ Ǚ # The fourth tone is represented by a grave accent (ˋ): #: (ɑ̀) ? ? ? ? ? ǜ ? ? ? ? ? Ǜ # The fifth or neutral tone is represented by a normal vowel without any accent mark: #: (ɑ) a e i o u ? A E I O U ?
Since most computer fonts do not contain the macron or caron accents, a common convention is to postfix the individual syllables with a digit representing their tone (e.g., "t?ng" (tong with the rising tone) is written "tong2"). The digit is numbered as the order listed above, except the "fifth tone", which, in addition to being numbered 5, is also either not numbered or numbered zero, as in ma0 (吗/嗎, an interrogative marker). These tone marks normally are only used in Mandarin textbooks or in foreign learning texts, but they are essential for correct pronunciation of Mandarin syllables, as exemplified by the following classical example of five characters whose pronunciations differ only in their tones: (Being "mother", "hemp", "horse", "insult" and a question particle, respectively.) Audio|zh-pinyin_tones_with_ma.ogg|sound sample of the four tones Rules for placing the tone mark The rules for determining on which vowel the tone mark appears are as follows: # If there is more than one vowel and the first vowel is i, u, or ?, then the tone mark appears on the second vowel. # In all other cases, the tone mark appears on the first vowel (y and w are not considered vowels for these rules.) The reasoning behind these rules is in the case of diphthongs and triphthongs, i, u, and ? (and their orthographic equivalents y and w when there is no initial consonant) are considered medial (linguistics)|medial glides rather than part of the syllable nucleus in Chinese phonology. The rules ensure that the tone mark always appears on the nucleus of a syllable. A dieresis or an umlaut is placed over the letter u when it occurs after the initials l and n. This is necessary in order to distinguish the front high rounded vowel in l? (e.g. 驴/驢 donkey) from the back high rounded vowel in lu (e.g. 炉/爐 oven). Tonal markers are added on top of the umlaut, as in lǘ. However, the umlaut-u is not used in other contexts where it represents a front high rounded vowel, namely after the letters j, q, x and y. For example, the sound of the word 鱼/魚 (fish) is transcribed in pinyin simply as y?, not as yǘ. This practice is opposed to Wade-Giles, which always uses ?, and Tongyong Pinyin, which always uses yu. Whereas Wade-Giles needs to use the umlaut to distinguish between ch? (pinyin ju) and chu (pinyin zhu), this ambiguity cannot arise with pinyin, so the more convenient form ju is used instead of j?. Genuine ambiguities only happen with nu/n? and lu/l?, which are then distinguished by an umlaut diacritic. Many fonts or output methods do not support a diaeresis (umlaut) for ? or cannot place tone marks on top of ?. Likewise, using ? in input methods is difficult because it is not present as a simple key on many keyboard layouts. For these reasons v is sometimes used instead by convention. Occasionally, uu (double u) or U (capital u) is used in its place. See also:
The Republic of China on Taiwan is in the process of adopting a modified version of pinyin (currently Tongyong Pinyin). For elementary education it has used zhuyin, and for romanization there is no standard system in general use in Taiwan despite many efforts to standardize on one system. In the late-1990s, the government of Taiwan formally decided to move from zhuyin to pinyin. This has triggered a very heated discussion of which pinyin system to use: hanyu pinyin of People's Republic of China or some other system. Much of the controversy centers on issues of national identity because of political interests. Proponents for adopting pinyin maintain that it is an international standard that is already used throughout the world. Proponents for adopting a new system maintain that Taiwan should have its own identity and culture separate from the People's Republic of China. A new system Tongyong Pinyin was created in Taiwan in 1998. Tongyong Pinyin is mostly similar to Hanyu Pinyin with a number of changes in the letters and digraphs representing certain sounds. In October 2002, the ROC government adopted Tongyong Pinyin through an administrative order that local governments can override. Localities with governments controlled by the Kuomintang, most notably Taipei City, have overridden the order and converted to Hanyu Pinyin (although with a slightly different capitialization convention than the Mainland). As a result, English signs have inconsistent romanization in Taiwan, with many places using Tongyong Pinyin but some using Hanyu Pinyin, and still others not yet having had the resources to replace older Wade-Giles or MPS2 signage. This has resulted in the odd situation in Taipei City in which inconsistent pinyin are shown in freeway directions, with freeway signs, which are under the control of the national government, using one pinyin, but surface street signs, which are under the control of the city government, using the other. As of 2003, no form of pinyin is used in elementary education on Taiwan to teach pronunciation. Although the ROC government has stated the desire to use romanization rather than bopomofo in education, the lack of agreement on which form of pinyin to use and the huge logistical challenge of teacher training has stalled these efforts. Pinyin has officially been adopted in Taiwan in 2004. However, most international locations still use older systems, most notably Wade-Giles. Debate continues about the actual suitability of pinyin as a Chinese romanization method. This argument revolves around pinyin's unconventional use of Roman letters, of which the phonology|phonological values of some phonemes are quite different from that of most languages utilizing the Roman alphabet. Some sinologists praise this as pinyin's flexibility in that it allows the entire Roman alphabet to be adapted to the Chinese sound system (compared to Wade-Giles, which leaves out or underuses many letters). Others point out that pinyin letter values are so unconventional that for a person unfamiliar with Chinese, they result in a larger number of mispronunciations when compared to Wade-Giles. However, as not only the PRC but by now most institutions and publications have adopted it, the debate seems increasingly obsolete. Pinyin, like all systems of romanization, has certain limitations that users should be aware of:
Computer systems long provided the most convincing argument in favor of pinyin; early computers were able to display nothing but 7-bit ASCII (essentially the 26 letters, the 10 digits, and a handful of punctuation marks). Most contemporary computer systems are now able to readily display characters from not only Chinese, but from many other writing systems as well. In addition, multiple input method editors exist that use standard keyboards to type them (pinyin being one such method). Now, PDAs and digitizing tablets allow users to write characters with a stylus, which can then be stored and edited like any text. Thus, this justification is no longer as strong as it used to be. Nonetheless, pinyin has gained wide acceptance, and supporters believe it is useful for students of Chinese as a second language. Yin Binyong 尹斌庸, Mary Felley: Chinese Romanization. Pronunciation and Orthography (Hanyu pinyin he zhengcifa 汉语拼音和正词法; Sinolingua, Beijing 1990), ISBN 7-80052-148-6 / ISBN 0-8351-1930-0. Auto-converters
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Category:Chinese language romanization ar:بينيين ca:Pinyin cs:Pinyin de:Pinyin eo:Hanyu Pinyin es:Pinyin et:Pinyin fi:Pinyin fr:Pinyin id:Hanyu Pinyin ja:ピン音 nl:Hanyu pinyin pl:Pinyin pt:Pinyin ru:Пиньинь zh:汉语拼音 This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Pinyin".
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