Talk:Pinyin/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

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)

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)

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.

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)

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)

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)

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)

Wikipedia PinYin-ization project

I propose to make a project to standardize all Wikipedia articles with mainland-chinese terms to PinYin. Except names that originate 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)

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)

Has w and y always been in the list of initials? I have seen many tables that do not have them. 90.136.171.74 (talk) 14:33, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

They have never been in the list of initials nor in the list of finals. Sillyvalley (talk) 02:16, 5 August 2008 (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)

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)

To untrained Chinese ears, the difference between [tɕ] and [dʒ] doesn't exist; same with [p] and [b]. So you may as well pronounce Beijing as "Beidgeeng" ([beidʒi:ŋ]), and native Chinese will think your mandarin perfect. With the recent focus on 2008 Olympics, NBC suddenly has so many announcements about "[beiʒiŋ]", it hurts the ears! I thought U.S. and Canada had long adopted [beidʒiŋ] in broadcast media? Sillyvalley (talk) 04:52, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

I believe the j in Beijing and in jingle bell should be the same sound to me, a Chinese. -Percyboy (talk) 20:20, 2 December 2008 (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)

I agree with those who said that the correct English pronunciation of Beijing should be [dʒ], never [ʒ] (even though it's [tɕ] in standard Mandarin). I tried to add this in Beijing article a while ago but it was reversed by someone who didn't like my claim. It's a case of overcorrection. Pinochet is pronounced as expected, not the French way. If someone can find a reliable source, we need to add the English pronunciation. --Anatoli (talk) 21:06, 2 December 2008 (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)

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)

Additionally, the Shanghai native is wrong most of the time if not always. A third pronunciation of Pinyin /e/ is open [e], like in the first syllable of yéye (simplified Chinese: 爷爷; traditional Chinese: 爺爺, grandfather). Only in occasions such as the second syllable in this example does /e/ sound close to a schwa - and it's a Chinese style schwa (mainly marked by its low and flat intonation rather than a given position; in this example, the position remains very close to [e]), completely distinct from European schwas. In Chinese table of rhymes, [e] is not a particularly small group, and they are all represented by 'e' in Pinyin. Sillyvalley (talk) 02:13, 22 July 2008 (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)

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)

This is something that has bugged for such a long time. In what aspect are /ji/ and /i/ different? Or /wu/ and /u/? Don't /j/ and /i/ have basically the same tongue position? For my part, as a native Mandarin speaker, it's almost impossible for me to produce or perceive a difference between "east" and "yeast". In any case, the distinction is probably not made in Mandarin: there's no consonantal /j/ /w/ in words like "一", "五". Keith Galveston (talk) 09:23, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

As a non-chinese speaker, I perceive a clear /jiː/ for 1. Perhaps the difference lies in the contrast with English, where "east" is pronounced almost like /ʔiːst/ and "yeast" as /jiːst/. In Chinese the lack of a slight /ʔ/ onset may be perceived as a weak /j/. What is your thought? −Woodstone (talk) 11:00, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

In my perception (as a native Chinese speaker), the Chinese pronounce 一 （one) with teeth so tight together that there is always friction; yet the friction is really not enough to make a clear consonant. Another source of light friction comes from the side of the tongue, i.e., somewhat different from a standard palatal. (In fact, there is another school of stage performers who pronounce 一 like the French /iː/ - with no friction; this, to Chinese ears, sounds even more pretentious than /ji/ if used in daily conversations.) There could also be a variation of sound due to accentuation. In my observation, 一 as a word is always stressed with friction. When it is used in a two-syllable word, accentuation depends on its position. I think pronunciations of 衣 (clothes) in "穿衣" (put on clothes) and that in "衣服" (clothes) are different, with the former closer to a pure vowel. (Also compare "合一" (combine into one) with "一个" (one).) I tend to agree with kwami that there is an influence of Pinyin orthography; school teachers may be unconsciously assigning new sound to characters spelled with 'y' and 'w', as I hear more young children on stage sing and narrate with /ji/ and /wu/ than adult performers. Another influence may come from mass media. If you listen to well trained narrators on Central People's Radio Station (中央人民广播电台), and even CCTV news anchors when they are not on stage, you tend to find smoother /i/'s with 一, 衣 and so on. But there seem to be a trend for people in audible mass media to bring stage pronunciation into other places. I started to hear ratio and TV hosts using /ji/ in talk shows, i.e., when they are supposed to use "personable" language. On-site news reporters these days are more liberal, as many of them are not well trained in 普通话 (Putonghua). This can definitely affect people's everyday language. Sillyvalley (talk) 09:44, 29 July 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)

I share your pain, Woodstone, with a different experience. I was brought up in Pinyin. When I had to confront the concept of 'plough' be pronounced like 'plao' in Pinyin and 'laugh' like 'laf', I was so frustrated that I demanded an similar explanation from my mother, from my English teacher, and anyone I trust had a higher level of knowledge in this matter. My mother, though not wanting to lose that trust, said it most blatantly: "This is not the same as Chinese. You'll learn as you go." My teacher was less explicit: "You'll learn rules of pronunciation. But they are not always followed." (Oh do I love French!) The challenge is: Pinyin is very much based on Zhuyin and its predecessors, which was (were) designed for people who can speak Chinese but need a way to explain the sound of an unknown character. The basic method in Zhuyin is "split", or "切“, i.e., compare the sound of the unknown character to those of two commonly known characters; you take the initial from the first known character, and the ending of the second known character to form a complete syllable. The skill to "split" each Chinese syllable into an initial and an ending (rhyming sound, or "韵") is so natural among native Chinese speakers, it's like the skill to isolate syllables into vowels and consonant in native Indo-European language speakers. (Most native Chinese speakers do not have that latter skill until a much later stage - when they start to learn a European language.) Simply put, the fundamental difficulty in coming up with such explanations lies in the difference in languages themselves. (Same goes with grammar, e.g., when you learn that the Chinese use "adverbs" to form a complete sentence without the presence of a verb.)

This said, any effort to construct such explanations in a systematic manner would be welcome by educators - although not in the scope of Wikipedia. Sillyvalley (talk) 02:46, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Sandhi

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

I nearly started to draft a paragraph when I came to realize that while this rule is commonly taught together with Pinyin, this is not part of Pinyin; rather, it is part of Putonghua the language/dialect. Not sure how to handle this material. I cannot find any reference to this rule in the context of Pinyin. Yet if the scope of this article includes helping people use Pinyin to learn Mandarin, this information would be in scope. Sillyvalley (talk) 10:03, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

It seems that this is not standardized. I have seen both "bú shì" and "bù shì" in various sources. But saying this in the article would be OR. — Sebastian 04:33, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Actually it is standardized by Basic rules for Hanyu Pinyin Orthography 1996, look at section 4.11.1 at the bottom. Cababunga (talk) 19:30, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

I see - thanks for the link! It's standardized with exception: "但是在语音教学时可以根据需要按变调标写。" So for someone like me who mostly sees pinyin in a learning context, the exception is about as frequent as the rule. — Sebastian 19:54, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

"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)

"Unconventional" sound values

From the article: ''However, this very disregard for conventional pronunciations of the letters has enabled pinyin to represent Chinese sounds with economy and internal consistency.

Pinyin assigns some Roman letters phonological values which are quite different from that of most languages.

I think the above sentences do not reflect a world-wide view. What are "conventional pronunciations"? Even within English there isn't a consistent and regular pronunciation let alone all the languages in the world that use the Roman alphabet. For example, what is the "conventional pronunciation" of initial "ch"? In English, French or Italian, initial "ch" are all different sounds. In fact it is English that have many "unconventional" pronunciations, especially in regards to vowel letters.

The simple fact is that pinyin is not based on the spelling conventions of any one particular language. All the article needs to say is that pinyin should not be pronounced according to the spellings of English or any other language. LDHan (talk) 00:18, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the only letters which don't follow European usage are q and initial r. Pinyin is no more distinct from the European norm than are Turkish or Albanian. Less exotic than Albanian, I'd say. kwami (talk) 00:26, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

personal view beyond linguistics

I grew up learning kok-im (or zhuyin as it is called in Wikipedia and elsewhere) as the pronunciation key for Chinese words/characters. Last night (July 8, 2008), I searched the Net for info regarding reading and pronouncing Chinese in kok-im and found just a few pages. Pinyin apparently has taken over the "standard." Chinese schools where I live now use pinyin instead of zhuyin. While I am all for using the IPA or pinyin, I feel sad that the Chinese "phonetic alphabets" - zhuyin - are "no longer in vogue." The Chinese in me wants to keep that heritage. Zhuyin is Chinese. Pinyin, while Chinese, is "not utterly Chinese." I mean no offense to anyone. I guess the old Chinese in me goes against my linguistic sense. Teach pinyin or whatever will broaden the reach of the Chinese language, but I hope for the traditional kok-im to be retained. My Wikipedia account is Trevz. I forgot my password. Thank you for your indulgence. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.1.97.123 (talk) 16:54, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Bad algorithm for placing the tone mark

The article gives two algorithms for placing the tone mark. They give different results for qiao, shuai, tiao, xiao, and zhuai, with the first algorithm incorrectly placing the tone mark on the last vowel, and the second correctly placing the tone mark on the a.

For reference, the first algorithm in the article is:

1. If there is more than one vowel and the first vowel is i, u, or ü, then the tone mark appears on the last vowel.
2. In all other cases, the tone mark appears on the vowels in this order: a, o, e.

and the second algorithm is:

1. First, look for an "a" or an "e". If either vowel appears, it takes the tone mark. There are no possible pinyin syllables that contain both an "a" and an "e".
2. If there is no "a" or "e", look for an "ou". If "ou" appears, then the "o" takes the tone mark.
3. If none of the above cases hold, then the last vowel in the syllable takes the tone mark.

Does anyone object if I delete the first algorithm? I don't think it's useful to give an algorithm that mostly works. Billgordon1099 (talk) 06:42, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Pronunciation of 'x'

According to the article:

x [ɕ] like sh or palatalised s, but take the sound and pass it backwards along the tongue until it is clear of the tongue tip; very similar to the final sound in German ich, and to huge or Hugh in some English dialects. The combination "xi" is very similar both to the Russian си or the Japanese し.

In both huge and Hugh the h is bolded as to indicate [ɕ] resembles an English h. Is this correct? ☆ CieloEstrellado 05:45, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

No, it should not. The German and Russian are just as wrong. kwami (talk) 06:46, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. ☆ CieloEstrellado 04:12, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Ah, correction: It is like some dialects of German, such as in Dresden. But not as how German is normally taught in other countries. kwami (talk) 01:30, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Who cares??

"Zhou Youguang (born 1905, turning 103 in 2008 in good health). This information in bold is not needed in this article and belongs in the article about Zhou. Really, people - some of you are utterly clueless! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 162.95.216.225 (talk) 19:18, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

is ng a pinyin ?

In several dictionaries (for example 新华字典), I have seen ng as the pinyin for the character 嗯. In other sources, the pinyin given is en.

ng does seem quite strange, is there a reason for this exception or is it just a lot of dictionaries making mistakes ? Koxinga (talk) 09:40, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

To me, it seems quite Cantonese. --JensMueller (talk) 20:39, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Not exactly Cantonese, as 嗯 in mandarin is pronounced as a pure nasal in practically all situations. It resembles what is commonly written as 'mmm' in English. But this caught me in a big surprise. I can't locate my older dictionaries, but the 《现代汉语词典》 last revised in 1978 does list it under 'ng'; it also gives an alternative pronunciation as 'n'! This actually makes sense in mandarin, but all these years I assumed that it was 'en'. I've seen various lists of pinyin syllables, none of which lists 'n' or 'ng' as a syllable but the national standard itself doesn't define such a list. Sillyvalley (talk) 04:16, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

the formal spelling for "嗯" is "ng". But chinese will understand if you say "mmm","en"or"ng". Type on computer using"全拼" it is "ng", using"智能ABC" it is "n88"(even most chinese don't know it) talk) 13:22, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

diacritics optional or not?

Hi, are the tone indicators an obligatory part of a pinyin trnscription or not? I know that they convey important information, my question is solely whether "Beijing" counts as "Hanyu Pinyin transcription of 北京", or whether the only real Hanyu Pinyin transcription for 北京 is "Běijīng". Yaan (talk) 18:18, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Both are transcriptions, but the transcription with diacritics is more accurate and therefore more useful. -- Evertype·✆ 02:20, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

In the street and city names in English and other languages diacritics are not used, although the spelling is usually based on Hanyu Pinyin: e.g. "He lives in Beijing" (English). --Atitarev (talk) 05:32, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Maybe I should phrase it differently: Is writing "Fuxingmenwai Dajie" (without tone indicators) in line with ISO 7098:1991, or is it not? Yaan (talk) 11:37, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

My modifications rolled back

I made the following modifications but ALL are rolled back by User:Badagnani. I gave up to modify it any more from now on. But I think I should leave my modifications for you, English speakers, as a reference.

• 1. For j, change the Explanation column as:

While this exact sound is not used in English, fortunately, to Chinese ears they don't distinguish between [tɕ] and [dʒ], so you may sound it as [dʒ], just like when you say "jingle bells".

• 2. For q, add a sentense to the Explanation column:

quite close to [tʃ]

• 3. For w, remove [u] from the IPA column and change the Explanation column as:

As in water

Note that when some final is used alone without an initial, u is written as w. See Final-only form column in the following table.

• 4. For y, remove [i] from the IPA column and change the Explanation column as:

As in yes

Note that when some final is used alone without an initial, i is written as y and ü is written as yu. See Final-only form column in the following table.

• 5. For ü, add a sentense to the Explanation column:

(To get this sound, ....) otherwise you may try "July" in English

• 6. For ue, first of all, it should be üe, and secondly change the Explanation column from

as ü + ê

to

as ü + e

• 7. Add a paragraph to "The character "ü"" section:

Although nüe written in nue, and lüe written in lue won't be confusing, nue or lue is not correct according the rules. You should use nüe and lüe. However, some Chinese input method (e.g. Microsoft Pinyin IME) both support nve/lve(here v is for ü) and nue/lue.

I don't mean all of these should be adopted but I believe some of these (for example the last two) should be adopted. But unfortunately ALL of these are rolled back, so I'll quit on this item. -Percyboy (talk) 22:40, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Badagnani was too harsh. There were clearly worthwhile changes. Much of the difference is a matter of taste, and there's something to be said for a more personal style. I will at least reinsert the section about "üe" for now.

That said, I am not too happy with this list growing much here. This only reduplicates the descriptions we already have at Chinese language#Phonology,Spoken Chinese#Phonology, Mandarin Chinese#Phonology, and, most importantly, Standard Mandarin#Phonology. The latter is the most detailed one, and could easily be an article of its own. — Sebastian 02:54, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

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)

In the tones section, I noticed that the words in parentheses after the first a are boxes on my computer... Any reason for this?--~*Angelstar*~ 02:22, 7 January 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Angelstarstar (talk • contribs)

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)

IPA is not an alphabet proper. It's a set of glyphs that mostly remind of latin and greek characters, but it is designed for phonetical transcription. Many glyphs lack a CAPITAL counterpart. I would gladly substitute the Latin alphabet for an IPA based alphabet, but then I need a new keyboard. ... said: Rursus (bork²) 12:45, 6 May 2009 (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.

There needs to be a declaration in the article to state the fact that "consonants and vowels" are not part of the Hanyu Pinyin system. The entire system is defined in 5 sections: Table of Letters (simplified Chinese: 字母表; traditional Chinese: 字母錶), Table of Initials (simplified Chinese: 声母表; traditional Chinese: 聲母錶, Table of Endings (simplified Chinese: 韵母表; traditional Chinese: 韻母錶), Symbols for Intonation (simplified Chinese: 声调符号; traditional Chinese: 聲調符號), and Apostrophe (simplified Chinese: 隔音符号; traditional Chinese: 隔音符號). There has never been a table of consonants.Sillyvalley (talk) 01:42, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

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

(seems that M$En¢arta doesn't use IPA, since by the rules of IPA [[[y]]] is a rounded front close vowel, not a consonant ... said ... said: Rursus (bork²) 12:59, 6 May 2009 (UTC))

[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.

Don't quite see relevance of this citation, but "yi" doesn't sound like "ee" because the ending 'i' in Pinyin already contains a consonant quite close to the English 'y'. Sillyvalley (talk) 01:56, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

---

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.

If Encarta explicitly states that "y" and "w" - or any letter for that matter, are consonants in Hanyu Pinyin, then that's an incorrect statement. Hanyu Pinyin does not use the concept of consonants and vowels. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sillyvalley (talk • contribs) 02:02, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Warning against using MSEncarta as a source!! Strictly speaking, the phonetic sounds [j] and [w] are semivowels. The grapheme "y" might be used to represent [j] in English and Chinese, but for [y] (a vowel) in other languages. All graphemes per se, including "y" and "w" lack classification as to being vowels, consonants or semivowels. Such classification apply to the phonetic sound only, and "w" may in Welsh actually represent a vowel. It seems that the digraph "yu" in Pinyin represents the vowel [y] or the very similar semi-vowel [ɥ], but, when "y" is not followed by "u", that it instead represents the semivowel [j]. Don't use MSEncarta as a source! ... said: Rursus (bork²) 13:11, 6 May 2009 (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. --—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).

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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)

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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)

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^* "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)

Legal Status of HP in the ROC (Taiwan)

Hello there... Hanyu Pinyin is now the OFFICIAl romanization system in the Republic of China: does any contributor have more sources about the switch from togyong? Gumuhua (talk) 22:19, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

It has already been in the article for some time with links. --Anatoli (talk) 05:05, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Any news on when they will start spelling Taibei and Gaoxiong (Kaohsiung)? I noticed that wikipedia already has those redirects. Do we want to reverse the article titles? Do we at least add the pinyin spelling to the article? −Woodstone (talk) 11:06, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

I do. We should at the very least have the pinyin in the lead. kwami (talk) 19:00, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

In response to Woodstone's question "Any news on when they will start spelling Taibei and Gaoxiong (Kaohsiung)?" I lived in Taiwan until October 2009 and I don't see that they're planning on changing the official English names/spellings of those cities. Although the Republic of China has adopted Hanyu Pinyin now as their official romanization system, the name and spelling of Taipei, at least, has long been very well established, thus I doubt it's going to change anytime in the near future. I think it's kind of like Hong Kong. Even the P.R.C. hasn't attempted to change the English name and spelling of that city to Xianggang. ~Alex 69.171.161.24 (talk) 04:35, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

B

I feel that the b sounds more like the b in but, not a p. --~*Angelstar*~ 02:31, 7 January 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Angelstarstar (talk • contribs)

It's safer to say B than P. That way you avoid aspirating it. The voice is absent though. Anatoli (talk) 05:07, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Is there a source for this? As a native speaker with linguistics background, this seems entirely counter intuitive. 70.68.111.192 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 17:31, 20 May 2009 (UTC).

Counterintuitive how? As /b/ or as /p/? As for sourcing, any discussion of Mandarin will cover it. kwami (talk) 18:43, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

History section improvements

I added a couple tags in the history section - clarification of which war Zhou Youguang was returning to help rebuild after (changed to Korean War given it ended a year earlier) and why he was assigned to help develop pinyin. There's no explanation for why an economics professor and former banker was working on it. Also, no reason to wikilink his name, it redirects here. [[[User talk:Natural Cut|talk]]) 20:37, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

ui/iu/un

I don't understand why the finals uei, iou and uen are written ui, iu an un. Is this arbitrary? Like someone said "Let's complicate things a bit further by removing the central vowel of these syllables! mwahwahwa!". The article simply states that it is a "simplification", but I don't get it. What's the rationale? 201.37.81.24 (talk) 10:39, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Presumably a way to shorten texts. Like iong for *iueng, ing for *ieng, in for *ien, iun for *iuen. kwami (talk) 18:41, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Now i see that Wades-Giles also had this "feature". So Pinyin did not create this inconsistency, just borrowed it. 201.37.67.127 (talk) 00:21, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Translating Non-Chinese Names Into Hanyu Pinyin

While I understand that there is no easy way to get Chinese romanizations of certain non-Chinese personalities and place names, a few pages devoted to Hanyu Pinyin romanization of non-Chinese personalities do exist: Chinese names -- Writing your name in Chinese

For example, Microsoft founder Bill Gates' name as spelled out in Chinese would become Bier Gaici (in Wade-Giles, this is Pi-erh Kai-ts'i). However, his last name in HP could also wind up being spelled as Jieci (if one had relied on the sound of the Chinese "k" from the much older Chinese Postal Map Romanization rules, which is how Peking ended up becoming Beijing and Nanking as Nanjing in modern times).

However, other times only the first syllable of a certain non-Chinese word or name would be transliterated into Chinese and the other part of the Chinese transliteration would identify the meaning of the name, such as England becoming Yīngguó (WG Ying-kuo; for which guó / kuo mean "city"), France becoming Fâguó (WG: Fa-kuo), and Russia becoming Leguo (WG: Le-kuo). Shakespeare (a British playwright), would become Shā-wēng (where wēng means "old man"). City names such as Chicago become Xicheng (WG: Hsi-ch'eng; for which cheng / ch'eng means "city"). WikiPro1981X (talk) 06:07, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Used to teach Mandarin to schoolchildren

Someone just added a {{Clarify}} tag to the statement "The system is used in the PRC to teach Mandarin Chinese to schoolchildren" with the following reason: "i would've thought that the Chinese use their own alphabet when schooling their children". Maybe what the editor meant by "their own alphabet" was Bopomofo, which doesn't use Latin letters, and has indeed been used in the Republic of China and early PRC. But that's not an alphabet, and Pinyin is just as much "their own", having been developed in the same century in China, too. I don't see how we can clarify that in the text without making it more complicated. — Sebastian 01:49, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Obviously, Hanyu Pinyin is very much [mainland] Chinese people's very own alphabet, just like the English or Hungarian alphabet is "their own alphabet" for English speakers or Hungarians. I've replaced that tag with a reference to a book that explains what a typical elementary schoolbook in PRC looks like (with each Hanzi annotated with Pinyin), and tells more about the use of Pinyin in educations. That should be enough for any curious reader.

I wish we also could illustrate the article with a typical Chinese "alphabet poster" (the kind that can be seen in any Chinese bookstore and many homes with young kids, and shows not just letters but also common combinations of them - syllable beginings and endings, I think). If somebody has a photo of one, I guess it can be used under the "fair use" doctrine. Or somebody can create a similar poster himself, on the same principles on which the "real" ones are designed. Vmenkov (talk) 04:36, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

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)

In the overview section, this point is alluded to by the sentence "For example, the aspiration distinction between b, d, g and p, t, k is similar to that of English, but not to that of French.". I find this misleading as it suggests (to me at least) that aspiration is the difference between b,d,g and p,t,k in English, as it is in Chinese. However voicing is another (and probably more important) difference, so I added "(in which the two sets are however also differentiated by voicing)" after "English". Let me know if you disagree with this modification... Nberger (talk) 22:40, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Pinyin: Hanyu Pinyin and other Pinyins?

Recently, an anon made some edits on "definition clarification", which involve defining "Pinyin" as "a general name of Romanization system for Chinese Languages", and includes Cantonese Pinyin, Taiwanese Pinyin, etc. IMO, well there are other Pinyins such as Cantonese Pinyin, Taiwanese Pinyin, etc., "Pinyin" in the narrowest sense refers to the Hanyu Pinyin (which is the definition used prior to the edits), which is used, and only used, for the romanization of Standard Mandarin. The other Pinyins are different systems from the Hanyu Pinyin because there are sounds in the other Chinese languages (or dialects) that are not present in Standard Mandarin and vice versa. I was told some time before somewhere in this talk page that usually people refer to Hanyu Pinyin when they talk about "Pinyin". I had reverted the edits pending some discussions. --Joshua ^{Say "hi" to me!}_{What I've done?} 03:30, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Copied from my talk page:

Precisely speaking, Chinese Pinyin means romanization of Chinese, that is different from Mandarin Pinyin, which is only a kind of Chinese Pinyin only suitable for Mandarin, which means it is not suitable for romanization of others like Cantonese, Taiwanese etc. The long name of Mandarin Pinyin is Chinese Mandarin Pinyin i.e. "漢語普通話拼音". Due to the definition of Chinese Pinyin is a general concept, it is often implied to Chinese Mandarin Pinyin, but actually it is not equal. If Chinese Pinyin only refer to Chinese Mandarin Pinyin, then it does not respect other Chinese languages, which is not the dialect of Mandarin, but is the dialect of Chinese. Secondly, Chinese Mandarin Pinyin lacks of entering tones "入聲", which is the characteristic of Chinese, that is why it cannot represent the precise definition of Chinese Pinyin. If Chinese Pinyin only refer to Mandarin Pinyin, then Cantonese, Taiwanese are not Chinese. That is of course not true.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 116.76.1.248 (talk • contribs) 08:14, 17 July 2009

There is no such thing as a single "Chinese Pinyin" that encompass the different spoken variants of the Chinese language. Although they all share the same word "Pinyin", Cantonese Pinyin, Taiwanese Pinyin, etc. are different systems from the Pinyin of this article. The Pinyin of this article refers to the Hanyu Pinyin, which specifically means the system for romanization of Chinese according to the pronunciation in Standard Mandarin. Broadly speaking, "Hanyu" (漢語) can refer to the various spoken variants of Chinese, but it can also refer only to Standard Mandarin, the standardized form of spoken Chinese in a narrow sense, which is the case here. On a side note, the official name for Hanyu Pinyin is not "Chinese Putonghua Phonetic Alphabet" (漢語普通話拼音), but "Scheme of the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet"(漢語拼音方案).--Joshua ^{Say "hi" to me!}_{What I've done?} 16:13, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

The anon has a point: While there is no such thing as a single "Chinese Pinyin", there isn't such a thing as a single "Pinyin" either. It just so happens that one of the uses of this term is as an abbreviation for "Hanyu Pinyin". Our policy is clear on this: "Prefer spelled-out phrases to abbreviations [...] unless the term you are naming is almost exclusively known only by its abbreviation". With a handful of other "Pinyin" articles, I feel we can not claim exclusivity for this particular use, and we should consequently rename this article to "Hanyu Pinyin". This is also what the Chinese Wikipedia does: See zh:汉语拼音. — Sebastian 21:47, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

拼音 is a generic term in Chinese, but pinyin doesn't have that meaning in English, and it's not an abbreviation, since hanyu pinyin has not been adopted into English. Generally 'pinyin' means 汉语拼音; if any other 拼音 in intended, it's necessary to disambiguate, but that's not the case with hanyu. kwami (talk) 22:58, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Would you be able to back up the statement that "Hanyu Pinyin" hasn't been adopted into English? Google finds 802,000 occurrences, including such statements as "Pinyin, short for Hanyu Pinyin"[3]. — Sebastian 23:19, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

I've never seen hanyu pinyin used as if it were an English word, and never heard 'pinyin' used for anything but hanyu w/o dab. In Daniels & Bright, 5 chapters, by 5 different authors, use the term 'pinyin' for hanyu, but never call it hanyu pinyin. Certainly I would normally understand PY to mean hanyu if it weren't dab'd. kwami (talk) 00:58, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Re "English word": It is irrelevant if "Hanyu Pinyin" is an English word. The vast majority of Wikipedia articles are probably no English words. I just took three random articles, and obtained Clinton Bristow, Jr., Chorchosy, and Sarabetsu, Hokkaidō, none of which I would classify as English words.

Re "Daniels & Bright": Nobody denies that "Pinyin" is often used for "Hanyu Pinyin". The deciding question is not if the former is common, but if it is used exclusively. As I said above, the facts that (1) Google finds 800,000 occurrences of the latter, that (2) we have other "Pinyin" articles, and (3) that "汉语拼音" is the preferred name in Chinese seem rather to indicate that it is not. — Sebastian 02:27, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

If you want to describe several Pinyins in the same article, the name Mandarin Pinyin, Cantonese Pinyin and the like are used. If there is not necessary, the word is omitted in the name Chinese(Mandarin) Pinyin. And if in the proper context, Chinese sometimes is omitted too. The name of "Scheme of the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet" is a document name which is also omitted the word Mandarin, but the content is only focused on Mandarin, merely because the PRC government only focus on Mandarin Chinese(so the PRC government call Mandarin as 漢語, while Taiwan call Mandarin as 國語 respectively, but 漢語(Chinese, Hanyu) is not equivalent of Mandarin). People tends to omit words when it is in the proper context. But this does not mean Pinyin is equal to Chinese Pinyin, and Mandarin Pinyin. So the search result is unreliable. And this is the difference between 'implied' and 'precise'. 116.76.1.248 (talk) 12:59, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

(It's not clear what statement you're replying to. I assume that this is not a reply to the discussion immediately preceding it, so I'll unindent it. Please correct me if I'm wrong.)

From your edits, it seems that you are saying that there is such a thing as "Chinese Pinyin", and it includes Standard Cantonese Pinyin and other systems, correct? We would need to see a reference for that, since it is at first glance not plausible: Standard Cantonese Pinyina uses letters differently from Hanyu Pinyin, even when there is no obvious need for changing the definition, as is the case for the letter "j", which it defines as [j], deviating from Hanyu Pinyin's use of the letter "y" for the same phoneme, while it uses the letter "y" for the phoneme [y], for which Hanyu Pinyin already has the letter "ü". — Sebastian 03:15, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Similar system that uses [j] and [y] according to IPA is Jyutping. 79.191.101.173 (talk) 18:11, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Re Simply speaking, Pinyin is not equal to Chinese Pinyin, and is not equal to Mandarin Chinese Pinyin either. Chinese Pinyin(i.e. Hanyu Pinyin) is just a category. The Pinyin page should give the introduction of Pinyins. And let other page to describe the detailed different Pinyins. Something like Chinese is not only Mandarin, although there are some people extremely loved to do this (force Chinese only refer to Mandarin), deliberately to own the name, like some company's advertisement. And there exists a joke like local Chinese cannot speak Chinese, which actually means he or she cannot speak Mandarin Chinese, to make fun of such hegemony. 116.76.1.248 (talk) 04:00, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

I understand your point about the distinction between Chinese and Mandarin; that is a topic that reaches far beyond the topic of Pinyin. (Although I'm confused that you equate "Chinese Pinyin" with "Hanyu Pinyin". Not all Chinese are Han.) What I don't understand is the relation between the many different names you bring up. Can you please specifically list their hierarchy, as you see it, in a bulleted list? My guess is that you mean something like the following:

• Pinyin
  • Hanyu Pinyin (as described in this article) = Chinese Pinyin (really - see above?)
    • Mandarin Chinese Pinyin (subdivision of Hanyu Pinyin?)
  • Cantonese Pinyin
  • ... other Pinyin systems

But before we implement that, we need a reliable source, too. — Sebastian 16:18, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Mandarin Chinese Pinyin is not merely a subdivision of Hanyu Pinyin; Hanyu Pinyin is Mandarin Chinese Pinyin. "Hanyu Pinyin" refers to Mandarin Chinese Pinyin, and only to Mandarin Chinese Pinyin.--Joshua ^{Say "hi" to me!}_{What I've done?} 03:33, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

The definition hierarchy is as this:

• Pinyin (拼音) (Phonetic Alphabet)
  • Hanyu Pinyin (漢語拼音) (translated into English is Chinese Phonetic Alphabet, half translated is Chinese Pinyin)
    • Wade-Giles Pinyin (威氏拼音/威妥玛式拼音/韦氏拼音)
    • Mandarin Pinyin (普通話拼音) or Mandarin Chinese Pinyin (漢語普通話拼音) or Hanyu Pinyin(Mandarin) (漢語拼音(普通話)) or Chinese Pinyin(Mandarin) (漢語拼音(普通話))
    • Cantonese Pinyin (粵語拼音) or Cantonese Chinese Pinyin (中文粵語拼音)
    • Taiwanese Pinyin (台語拼音) or Banlamgu Pinyin (闽南话拼音)
    • Ancient Chinese Pinyin (古汉语拼音) or 反切
    • ...
  • Hanyu Pinyin (韓語拼音) or Korean Phonetic Alphabet (韓語拼音字母)

Note that Hanyu is equal to Chinese (漢語=中文). Although language of minorities in China is not consider as Chinese, because they do not use Chinese character or before Chinese character is born, and analyzed by experts they are foreign languages or ancestor of Chinese.

Pinyin 拼音 only means Phonetic Alphabet

Do you know what Hanyu(漢語) means? Han language. The government do this tricky things by deliberately omitting the name Mandarin. You can see from the above. How many foreigners are misled by the confusing name and kick other Han variations out of Han language? By taking the category name as its name and announced it stands for all people. Mandarin Chinese Pinyin or Mandarin Pinyin is more precise in Wikipedia. You can use the search below to see how many people are using the precise name:

Related search: 漢語普通話拼音 http://www.google.com/search?q=%E6%BC%A2%E8%AA%9E%E6%99%AE%E9%80%9A%E8%A9%B1%E6%8B%BC%E9%9F%B3&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

普通話拼音 http://www.baidu.com/s?wd=%C6%D5%CD%A8%D4%92%C6%B4%D2%F4

普通話拼音 http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%E6%99%AE%E9%80%9A%E8%A9%B1%E6%8B%BC%E9%9F%B3&aq=f&oq=&aqi=

Using the name Mandarin Pinyin and the hierarchy will be correctly sorted. 116.76.1.248 (talk) 13:46, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

As I had said before, while I agree that the term "hanyu" can refer to the variants of the Chinese language in general, the standardized form of spoken and written Chinese is Standard Mandarin. Hence, "hanyu" can also refer only to Standard Mandarin in a narrow sense. Regardless on how you define the term "hanyu", the official name for the romanization scheme covered in this article is 汉语拼音方案 (Hanyu Pinyin Fang'an), or "Hanyu Pinyin" or even "Pinyin" for short. I am unsure of the common usage of "Pinyin" to refer to the scheme, but Wikipedia guideline is to use common names. On the other hand, “漢語普通話拼音”, “普通話拼音”, etc, are personal constructs, which may violate Wikipedia policy of no original research. --Joshua ^{Say "hi" to me!}_{What I've done?} 05:29, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Inconsistency in iong/yong

The table of finals says: iong [i̯ʊŋ] yong as yu + ong

That is, IPA says the pronunciation starts with /i/, but the explanation says that it starts with yu (IPA /y/). Which one is correct? Yuu en (talk) 00:25, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

I am not sure about this, but apparently the "yu + ong" came from the Zhuyin for iong (ㄩㄥ, ü + eng). --Joshua ^{Say "hi" to me!}_{What I've done?} 03:40, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

yong=i+ong !=yu+ ong--刻意(Kèyì) 04:50, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

IPA-like romanizations

Can ye list all romanizations which use j for /j/ and y for /y/, like IPA? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.185.104.27 (talk) 18:20, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

"j" -- voiced and voiceless

In the "Initials" table, "j" is the only letter with a pair of allophones in which the "Explanation" column does not indicate that the voiced version occurs in toneless syllables. Being totally new to Chinese, I dare not add this distinction myself, but someone should do so if I am correct in this. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.101.45.107 (talk) 01:52, 31 December 2010 (UTC)