Bopomofo vs. Pinyin
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There has been a considerable amount of discussion concerning the relative merits of bopomofo and Pinyin in Taiwan in recent weeks. A typical article in this vein is "Fèi zhùyīn fúhào jiàoxué, zǎo xué duōzhǒng pīnyīn xìtǒng 廢注音符號教學，早學多種拼音系統" ("Abandon teaching in Mandarin Phonetic Symbols; learn a variety of alphabetical systems from a young age") in Xiǎngxiǎng 想想 ("Thinking-Taiwan") (4/24/15).
Bopomofo is the official phonetic notation for the transcription of Mandarin in the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan; Hanyu Pinyin is the official Romanization of Mandarin in the People's Republic of China on the mainland.
Reaction to this article from an American colleague who taught teachers of Mandarin as a second language in Taiwan two years ago:
When I was at Tsing Hwa in fall 2013, one student objected to having to learn Hanyu Pinyin, so I suppose her spoken view represented the opinion of others who didn’t speak out. I can understand their resistance. My initial reaction to the title “duozhong pinyin” is that it’s just a wedge in the door toward conformity to PRC standard. As I put it to them, Hanyu Pinyin is an international standard now, so they need to know if if they want to go abroad and teach Mandarin, as my students did want to do. One of them has been teaching in South Korea since fall 2014.
Reaction from a senior Chinese colleague:
I have given some thought to this question, and after all I sense that the writer of this article is still somewhat biased, be it ideologically, politically, or culturally, even though he might not be aware of it.
Y. R. Chao wrote an article in 1934, “The non-uniqueness of phonemic solutions of phonetic systems” (Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology [BIHP], 4.4, 1934, pp. 363-397), arguing that any phonemic system is good if it clearly and faithfully represents the phonetic system. This view had been broadly accepted and his article also appears in Martin Joos, ed., Readings in Linguistics, pp. 38-54.
Guóyǔ zhùyīn fúhào 國語注音符號 ("Mandarin Phonetic Symbols [MPS]") satisfy this criterion completely. They were promulgated in 1918 by the Ministry of Education, used for over ninety years, and taught to three to four generations of students with no problem whatsoever. There is no ground to abolish these symbols now for academic or educational reasons.
To complement this system, the Ministry of Education, Republic of China, promulgated the Guóyǔ luómǎ zì 國語羅馬字 ("Mandarin Romanization"), i.e., Gwoyeu Romatzyh (G. R.) in 1928. It is by far the best phonemic system, using the common English alphabet and incorporating the tones in spelling. It was the first time one could use the English typewriter to type Chinese letters without ambiguity.
The G. R. system was quickly and widely accepted by Western linguists and China specialists, and prevailed for three decades or so, but then came the Hanyu Pinyin system of the P.R.C. which eventually took over and became an internationally acknowledged system. This was obviously a politically oriented cultural activity, with Hanyu Pinyin inheriting the legacy of Hanyu Ladinghua* movement which was started by Qú Qiūbái 瞿秋白, one of the founding members of the Chinese Communist Party.
[*Lādīnghuà xīn wénzì 拉丁化新文字 ("New Latinized Alphabet")]
Tōngyòng hànyǔ pīnyīn 通用漢語拼音 was created independently and had some merits of its own, but it would be problematic to replace Hanyu Pinyin in a time of globalization.
The writer of this article also argued that it was difficult for children to learn MPS / bopomofo (國語注音符號) and that this system was not very useful, which I can not agree with according to my own experience. As a kid I learned the MPS / bopomofo 國語注音符號 within a week, and benefited from it ever since. I have read many children books with bopomofo phonetic annotation (zhùyīn fúhào 注音符號) on the right side of each character that enabled me to read the text aloud, and the Guóyǔ cídiǎn 國語辭典 ("Mandarin Dictionary"), Guóyǔ rìbào 國語日報 ("Mandarin Daily News"), Gǔjīn wénxuǎn 古今文選 ("Anthology of Ancient and Modern Writing"), and many similar publications accompanied me through my college years. Later when I had to learn the Yale system and G.R. system to teach foreign students, and the Wade Giles system to read earlier Western books about China, in all cases I learned and mastered the new system in a few hours, because I had the MPS / bopomofo 國語注音符號 deeply embedded in my mind to make comparisons. It was surely the benefit of learning a fundamental phonemic system early in my life.
My opinion is that both zhùyīn fúhào 注音符號 ("bopomofo phonetic annotation") and Hànyǔ pīnyīn 漢語拼音 are good systems, and they can be learned side-by-side. They can also be switched back and forth very easily. Both systems can be used on computers, and thus facilitate electronic correspondence and communication. As for dialects’ Romanization, it is certainly a plus to preserve local cultural traditions, but not a critical need in public education.
This is, of course, my personal opinion on this specific matter, and I hope that I have made my point clear enough.
What the author of these remarks says about his experience with bopomofo corroborates well my own, as described in these posts:
"The future of Chinese language learning is now" (5/5/14)
"How to learn to read Chinese" (5/25/08)
[h/t Grace Wu]
Mark Hansell said,
April 28, 2015 @ 9:39 am
On its merits as a system for graphically representing the sounds of Mandarin, there is no reason to prefer Pinyin to Bopomofo. (In fact, Bopomofo is superior both as a script and as an orthography.) However, utility outweighs quality if you want to communicate with the wider world, and for all its flaws Mainland-style Hanyu Pinyin has become the world standard. For that matter, the Roman alphabet is pretty mediocre, far inferior to more systematic scripts like Hangul, but once something is entrenched as a standard it is very hard to resist (I'm looking at you, Microsoft!)
JS said,
April 28, 2015 @ 10:46 am
I don't see where the author of the article claims that it is "difficult for children to learn MPS / bopomofo," though I may have missed it. The emphasis rather seems to be that instruction in the alphabet and alphabetized transcription supports instruction in computing, in Chinese languages (with special attention, interestingly, given to local and indigenous languages), and in English and other foreign languages in a way which bopomofo does not and cannot, which seems reasonable.
This is in contrast to the sorts of opinions expressed by responders above, e.g., that Gwoyeu Romatzyh is "by far the best phonemic system" or that Bomomofo is "superior [to pinyin] both as a script and as an orthography." All of these systems have their strengths, as well as design points that fair-minded people might quibble with — but in the final analysis it's a case of dà tóng xiǎo yì / ㄉㄚˋ ㄊㄨㄥˊ ㄒㄧㄠˇ ㄧˋ / dah torng sheau yih / ta4 t`ung2 hsiao3 i4 / da4 tung2 shiau3 yi4 / da4 tung2 syau3 yi4 / da4 tong2 siao3 yi4.
Eric said,
April 28, 2015 @ 11:14 am
No major qualms with any of the opinions expressed in the post, but thinking about the matter from a current language learner's perspective, I definitely would prefer a single notation. I've been in the role of a learner—starting in China with Pinyin, then moving to Taiwan—and later as Chinese teacher taking American college students to Taiwan for study abroad. Both as learner and teacher it was annoying that moving to Taiwan meant having to deal with a new phonetic notation. With all the other language learning tasks one has to do (two forms of character orthography, for example), learning bopomofo was very low priority. On the other hand, not learning it was regularly a hamper to fully appreciating the language learning materials available in Taiwan. This is a very learner/teacher centric view of things—obviously Taiwanese society doesn't need to change for the language learner's convenience, and Taiwan offers a bounty of things that make up for the possible hassle of learning bopomofo on top of Pinyin.
Jim said,
April 28, 2015 @ 11:36 am
" It is by far the best phonemic system, using the common English alphabet… "
Does he mean English spelling conventions? That right there disqualifies it.
Rubrick said,
April 28, 2015 @ 12:58 pm
"In all cases I learned and mastered the new system in a few hours."
This strikes me as highly unlikely. Learned, maybe, but mastered? Either the author is tremendously gifted, his definition of mastery of a skill is very different from mine, or the various transcription systems differ far more trivially than I'd understood (I don't speak Mandarin).
Eli Nelson said,
April 28, 2015 @ 3:16 pm
@Jim: I'd assume he means it uses no extra letters beyond those needed for English, such as ü or the tone-marked letters. As he says, this is convenient when using an English typewriter that can't type letters with funny foreign sqiggles.
David Marjanović said,
April 28, 2015 @ 3:26 pm
It's not completely trivial; some can be transcribed into each other pretty easily, but there are traps everywhere.
G. R. has a feature that makes it particularly hard to learn: for each syllable, the most common tone is unmarked, and the others are marked in ways that are rather inconsistent among syllables.
Hànyǔ pīnyīn has an advantage for nonnative speakers: it was, in part designed to teach the pronunciation of the most prestigious Mandarin accent to nonnative speakers. It spells out a few phonetic details that are of no phonemic relevance, e.g. the tiny difference between bo, po, mo, fo vs. luo, nuo, duo, tuo.
Xiao Shi said,
April 28, 2015 @ 5:16 pm
It's a pity that Pinyin seems to be more popular, since BPMF is actually more convenient for typing (fewer symbols to type to crank out a sound, e.g. "beng" is five keystrokes v ㄅㄥ . It's really not hard to pick up where the sounds are on your keyboard.
Also, BPMF is much better suited for vertically printed text than Pinyin. I suspect that underlies the original design decision. It remains more appealing to me for annotating sounds in traditionally printed Chinese texts.
Dave Cragin said,
April 28, 2015 @ 5:30 pm
One of the issues relevant to the discussion on pinyin versus Bopomofo is the impact of modern technology.
That is, pinyin is superb in that it allows you to instantly switch & out of typing Chinese characters on a standard keyboard (speaking from an American perspective). To me, it’s still amazing that I can do so without any special software or keyboard.
It’s even more notable if you consider how long ago pinyin was invented.
JS said,
April 28, 2015 @ 7:40 pm
@ David Marjanović:
There's no difference between the rimes of bo/po/mo/fo and duo/tuo/nuo/luo for speakers of MSM; this representation is arguably a defect of Pinyin, actually, since it suggests (even at times to native speakers) that there ought to be a difference. I don't know the history, but perhaps -o here was a compromise between -uo and -e (the che vowel), with which bo/po/mo/fo group in much of Dongbei? Or perhaps, kind of equivalently, it reflects the fact that the medial -u- is non-contrastive after labials…
MO who knows Rubrick personally said,
April 29, 2015 @ 12:47 am
As a child learner in the US who was not really a native speaker, it took me far longer than a few hours to master bopomofo. In fact, the first time I was exposed to it, which was roughly kindergarten/first grade, I did not learn it well at all. (Part of the problem was that no one had bothered to explain to the 5-year-olds the difference between characters and bopomofo, which confused me because I knew that Chinese had a "non-phonetic" writing system, and the other part was that the teachers and the teaching materials assumed native speaking fluency and vocabulary, which I lacked.) After a gap of several years, though, when I returned to it and understood it as an alphabet, it came fairly quickly, with some quirks taking a little while to memorize.
I still, though, can't really auditorially distinguish between the "in" and "ing" sounds in syllables like qin vs. qing or xin vs. xing. (If I can see the character I can usually make an educated guess.) That means I can't assign the proper bopomofo either. So I suppose I still haven't "mastered" the system…
Jongseong Park said,
April 29, 2015 @ 10:09 am
Well, bopomofo itself also distinguishes between bo/po/mo/fo (ㄅㄛ/ㄆㄛ/ㄇㄛ/ㄈㄛ) and duo/tuo/nuo/luo (ㄉㄨㄛ/ㄊㄨㄛ/ㄋㄨㄛ/ㄌㄨㄛ). I think there may have been a historical difference in the pronunciation even if the rimes are merged today, no doubt due to the fact that the -u- glide is hard to contrast after labials.
julie lee said,
April 29, 2015 @ 11:15 pm
I don't know if anyone has pointed this out in the comments above: One advantage of romanized spelling of Chinese, such as Pinyin and Wade-Giles, to bopomofo is that you can write cursive with Pinyin and Wade-Giles spelling, whereas you can't with bopomofo spelling—you can't join the bopomofo letters.
You can also write Chinese characters in cursive, simplifying the characters in the process, which can make writing very fast. But I feel that bopomofo doesn't lend itself to cursive handwriting. I've always felt that to be a disadvantage with bopomofo.
michael farris said,
April 30, 2015 @ 12:04 am
I always wondered why no effort was made to squish bopomofo into character-like squares (a la hangul) or has it been tried (or is it done)?
Gayathri said,
April 30, 2015 @ 1:24 am
Shimmerism (2015) neologism, used to refer to any English professor who doesn’t know his/her English, but slavishly heaps praise upon praise, on her unworthy bosses, in their awful butler gibberish English, to get monetary and other ‘benefits’. In other words, a sycophantic English professor with broken English, who posts eulogies on social media about a College/University, where he/she has not studied, for the sake of attention-seeking and favour-seeking.
arthur waldron said,
April 30, 2015 @ 5:49 am
I of course know both
I learned with bopomofo and all that goes with it–characters with pronunciations noted alongside, newspapers having phonetics with characters, etc.
I believe bopomofo is better for Westerners–the Roman alphabet is too familiar so we will tend to lean on it. The bopomofo is in its own way as alien as the characters and thus to be discarded once it has lost its utility.
The pinyin system is ugly and often unintentionally amusing. Furthermore, why try to use the Roman alphabet to represent Chinese phonemes? Better use tailor made system.
We all have to learn it but I believe we should start our students with bopomofo (and standard characters) unless we want intentionally to create what Fritz Mote called "linguistic cripples" (referring, I think, to his political science colleagues among others). From that foundation the "New" system and the 殘字 are easy to learn. Going the other way is very much more difficult.
Another example of PRC doing something for the second time, badly, when it had already been done well before . . . enforcing it by the police power of the state and leaving us with no choice but to learn both.
Unless of course we are betting that PRC has set new and abiding standards. I would not put my money on that.
Arthur Waldron said,
April 30, 2015 @ 7:54 am
Many would be singing a different song had as they might well have done chosen the Cyrillic alphabet as the basis for pinyin. Best to all Anw
Arthur Waldron said,
April 30, 2015 @ 7:57 am
Had PRC chosen Cyrillic
Sent obviously from my useless phone. ANW
Eli Nelson said,
April 30, 2015 @ 8:14 am
@arthur waldron:
I've never really understood this attitude that foreign language students who use phonetic annotation are somehow "crippled" due to supposedly leaning on it as a crutch. It seems to me like it would help people to associate the correct pronunciation with the non-phonemic native writing system, which would be beneficial and would help the students to read more confidently in situations where they can't use phonetic characters. Some Latin teachers have this same attitude towards macrons, which has always mystified me since Latin is not even a living language and is often taught through writing rather than through listening.
Pinyin may be ugly and unintuitive at first glance to English speakers, but its surely not too difficult to learn the rules for it.
Eric said,
April 30, 2015 @ 10:31 am
@arthur waldron:
Like Eli, I don't understand how Pinyin cripples anyone. Aesthetics seem like a minor concern for a phonetic notation, and it's not necessarily the case that everyone thinks Pinyin is ugly. At least for English speakers learning bopomofo, most often they end up tying the symbols back to the English alphabet anyways, so it's not a magical escape hatch from the influence of the native language sounds. As far as helping with tones, I've always thought the the tonal diacritics become even more of an afterthought in bopomofo than in Pinyin, but I doubt this is terribly important in practice.
The most important point, regardless of what orthography is used, is to help learners avoid the common errors that come from relying on their first language. This is no easy task. Research on these matters suggests that careful teaching of pronunciation can help (best definition of 'careful' still up for grabs) and that orthography helps—this includes evidence that the 'ugly' tonal diacritics of Pinyin help learners better perceive and produce tones. It might be interesting if somebody did a study comparing the effects of Pinyin and bopomofo, but I doubt it would be much to write home about, and in the long run it is unlikely to be a significant factor one way or the other.
shubert said,
April 30, 2015 @ 12:54 pm
Pinyin connects Chinese with English well, such as spell 拼 pin, p-p…
gaoxiaen said,
April 30, 2015 @ 9:13 pm
I did my MA on bopomofo and acquisition of English. Very little research has been done on bopomofo. However it is very easy to learn and helps with the transition into writing Chinese characters. I sometimes solve English pronunciation problems by using bopomofo symbols for pronunciation of English words.
SeekTruthFromFacts said,
May 3, 2015 @ 9:54 pm
"The G. R. system was quickly and widely accepted by Western linguists and China specialists, and prevailed for three decades or so…"
Is this right? I have never seen a Western historiographical source using GR. Did linguists really prefer it to Bopomafo and Wade-Giles in the post-war era?
K. Chang said,
May 10, 2015 @ 2:29 pm
I've been exposed to zhuyin (i.e. bopomofo) when I was very young but only for a few years before I converted to mostly a homeschool Chinese and school English system, and I no longer possess the ability to use zhuyin. I guess you do lose it when you don't use it. :)
IMHO it's probably easier for Westerners to learn Pinyin because they can sort of see how the letters go on the keyboard and the sound is formed rather than learning yet another alphabet from which to form the words, from my purely amateur view of things.
I can completely understand why students in Taiwan can object to learning pinyin. The KMT education had pretty much nurtured a almost isolationist "we are the greatest, we're the real China" type attitude that simply balks at ANYTHING mainland China does, almost as if just to be contrarian. Simplified writing "ruined Chinese", blah blah blah. Just for the record, I was born in Taiwan, but left a very very long time ago. :)
K. Chang said,
May 10, 2015 @ 2:35 pm
@gaoxiaen, @shubert
I agree that Pinyin is probably better to learn CONVERSATIONAL Mandarin, but it doesn't let you pick up the subtle pronunciation differences of tone and such between similar words, esp when you run into forced renderings like 人 is "ren" in pinyin (when it's pronounced zhen) once you learn those quirks and how they shift the tones it's fine.
Bopomofo… it's been decades since I've studied it, so I'll defer to your expertise on that, but it does seem to for a pretty solid foundation to the strokes as well as ways to combine tones to form words. But it's a new alphabet of sorts in itself, and another layer of symbols and sounds for association.