>All my Chinese teachers explained that young schoolchildren were taught basic pronunciation with bopomofo (which uses special characters, not latin letters), not pinyin.
No, we use latin letters in mainland China, Taiwan uses special characters.
The article is very accurate. Older generations like my parents have to learn latin lettered pinyin by themselves to use PCs and smartphones.
And the pinyin form of my name and home address are on my passport.
Is it something that's mostly tradition or is there advantage to typing this way?
I've always been curious about east Asian languages and culture since they're relatively isolated from Western influence and historic ties to the British empire
他: he, him; it 她: she, her
These are both pronounced EXACTLY the same in spoken mandarin, and would be indistinguishable in a phonetic transcription. But standard written Chinese is more expressive than spoken mandarin because it allows for gender clarification.
Also take this example:
買: "mǎi" to buy 賣: "mài" to sell
These have exactly opposite meaning, and are differentiated only by tone. Without tone diacritics you would not be able to distinguish the two apart. Even with tone diacritics, reading is slowed because the difference between the two is only a small, semantically meaningless diacritical mark, whereas 賣 has an extra symbolic component that indicates its meaning.
What also happened then was an influential movement to fully romanise written Chinese and some of the proposals are radical even for today as they plan to do away with tones completely.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latinxua_Sin_Wenz
Pinyin was a scaled down version of these except it was never meant to replace the current writing system.
It is not rare to see people who are having an oral conversation disambiguate words by drawing them with the index finger in the palm of their hand.
Do you think learning Pinyin first threw off your early pronunciation of English?
If people learned their languages in unique phonetic characters, would they be more likely to focus on learning the new sounds of other languages?
Pinyin to us is basically International Phonetic Alphabet to English. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabe...
This is especially important because each region in China speak their own dialect of Chinese and sometimes it is almost an complete different language. As an Cantonese growing up, pinyin was my way of learning Chinese.
To be counted as a different language, I would say it should be as different as Zhuang language, Tibetan, Uyghur, Manchu, Hmong, etc. People who speak these languages might or might not come from politically controversial regions, but I don't think anyone would consider these languages Chinese for a second.
They share the majority of the syntactic and grammar. Their written form are all the same. Pronunciation is the major difference. This level of unity is established probably since the Qin dynasty.
Regional languages in China have separate writing system when you need to write what is actually spoken.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Written_Cantonese#Vocabulary
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzhou_dialect#Writing_system
Easiest way to see this difference is watch the news in Cantonese -- it is mostly 书面语 (standard) mandarin but pronounced as Cantonese, whereas day-to-day spoken Cantonese is completely different in structure and vocabulary. What do you think gets written in HK movie scripts? Definitely not standard written mandarin.
Here's what linguists say:
1. From "Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems" by John DeFrancis:
"Chinese [...] is an umbrella designation for at least eight present-day varieties of what are usually called "dialects" but, since they are mutually unintelligible, might better be considered parallel to the various languages that make up the Romance group of languages."
2. From "Asia's Orthographic Dilemma" by Wm. C. Hannas:
"some eighty million or more people living in China [...] speak non-Chinese languages written in alphabetic or indigenous systems. [...] If we ignore this inconvenient phenomenon and focus on the speech of China's Han population, we find a collection of at least seven or eight mutually unintelligible varieties that in any other context would be called "languages," but which are "dialects" in China, in part for political reasons and in part because of a problem with the translation of the Chinese term fāngyán. The political motivation for claiming that these distinct varieties constitute a single language is fairly obvious: it is easier to govern a country in which the majority believe they are speaking one "language" (whatever the linguistic reality) composed of several "dialects" instead of several related languages.
[...]
Most linguists familiar with the classification problem acknowledge that the major Chinese varieties differ from each other at least on the order of the different languages of the Romance family.
[..]
We have seen that the Chinese languages differ not just in pronunciation but also in vocabulary and grammar, and that these differences are realized through unique morphemes (or unique uses of shared morphemes) for which characters do not exist at all, do not exist in Mandarin, or are used with different meanings and functions. Consequently, character texts in Cantonese and (where available) in Taiwanese are largely unintelligible to Mandarin readers. Many characters are completely unfamiliar; others are recognizable but make no sense in context. This occurs where conventions exist for writing the non-Mandarin variety in characters. Actually, most of these languages have no established writing system and hence lack even the possibility of being understood by readers of other varieties.
I mean, 90%+ of Chinese people were taught and speak Standard Mandarin anyway. Language is not a reason for separatism today.
and the possibility that Catalonia might break away from Spain: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/10/catalan-indepe...
To be consistent with the linguistic facts, one should speak of the Chinese languages. You could also consistently speak of a Chinese language with dialects, and then also consider Romanian, French, Spanish, Portuguese different dialects of the Romance language; but that would redefine the terms from how they're currently commonly understood.
And by politics, I think one really means culture. It is the need of communicating with each other on a daily basis forges a language.
Well, I was mostly commenting on the traditional Chinese. Traditionally most population are illiterate so there is little problem having disconnected spoken language and written language. With the modernization and majority of population becoming literate, there is a unification between spoken language and written language. That has updated both Chinese spoken language and written language to a common form -- dialects are becoming merely a different pronunciation form. Today, with schools mandate speaking of mandarin, dialects (the spoken languages) are on the way out.
This process take place in both the main land and Hong Kong and Taiwan. But due to the isolation, they took slightly different form. That is how to a foreigner's view, Chinese dialects appears to be different languages. This is not fundamentally different from between French and Spanish, only the extent of time differs. With only decades, the Chinese in Hong Kong and main land, e.g., are still viewed by most Chinese as the same language.
Also, I would say that yes, pinyin did help me learn the language, and was especially important in providing a phonetic standard for characters.
Taiwan is in a bit of a confusing place right now with phonetic alphabets for Mandarin. Here's my understanding - I'll use the abbreviations "WG" for Wade-Giles and "HP" for "Hanyu-Pinyin".
- They traditionally used Wade-Giles to romanise things for international consumption. ie Taipei (HP: Taibei), Taichung (HP: Taizhong), Kaohsiung (HP: Gaoxiong) etc.
- They officially switched to Hanyu Pinyin as their official romanisation about 10 years ago, but it seems to only have taken place on a very low scale. Ie the Da'An (WG: Ta'an) distrct in Taipei, or Wuri (WG: Wujih) in Taichung. With regards to people - the second president of the ROC-On-Taiwan is known in English by his WG name Chiang Ching-kuo (HP: Jiang Jing-Guo), while the current president is knowing exclusively by her HP name Tsai Ing-Wen (WG: Zai Ying-Wen). You can see this confusion manifest itself today - we still eat "Peking Duck" (WG), but we refer to the city as "Beijing" (HP).
- Some places in Taiwan are romanized with neither system, like Keelung, which seems to be some ad-hoc romanisation of Taiwanese Hokkien (another Chinese language entirely) that took root in the 19th century. Though interestingly enough, in the most common Taiwanese Hokkien romanisation system it would be "Kelang".
- In terms of education for locals, it's 100% Bopomofo as far as I can tell. I've also yet to meet a Taiwanese person who uses anything other than Bopomofo for input on their phones and computers. Apple atually added an extra tone mark to their Bopomofo IME (high tone is indicated by no tone mark, traditionally), which some Taiwanese people now seem to think is actually part of the alphabet!
- And lastly, in terms of education for foreigners, it seems to be a hugely mixed bag. Many foreigners now demand the use of Pinyin because it uses the Latin alphabet and it's more comfortable for them. A lot of places will still expect you to learn Bopomofo (which IMO has a lot of advantages - it's only 37 characters, stops you thinking in terms of your native pronounciation, and the IMEs for it are way better because they let you filter characters by tone). AFAIK Wade-Giles is dead for teaching, but one famous Taiwanese book for teaching Mandarin I used uses all three phonetic alphabets - WG, HP and Bopomofo, which was quite distracting!
Full disclaimer - my Mandarin is rudimentary and I am not Taiwanese.
- In Taiwan, it's officially using TP during 2002~2008, the reason was to unify romanize/pinyin system for Mandarin/Taiwanese Hokkien/Taiwanese Hakka.
- It was then switched to HP at 2008 for English-friendlier environment.
- It is 100% Bopomofo in education. For most Taiwanese people we use Bopomofo as computer input method, but there are alternatives like Cangjie (based on how we write characters), Ziran (means natural literally, which is a mix of Cangjie and Bopomofo plus some heuristic). The alternatives are invented because there are too many characters sharing the same Bopomofo, you still have to choose characters after typed Bopomofo. Most alternatives have low market share in general public, but high market share in typing heavy jobs.
- Because WG was officially translation rule of ministry of foreign affairs before 2002 and they only recommend instead of forcing switch to TP/HP, so name of most city and people are still based on WG. So does those widespread words (like, Peking Duck).
As far as I know, the rule of thumb is that exchange students are taught using Pinyin, and full-time students use Bopomofo. Teaching materials usually have both, anyway, so I don't think it's a big deal.
> I've also yet to meet a Taiwanese person who uses anything other than Bopomofo for input on their phones and computers.
I've seen older people use the handwriting IME on iOS. You can tell when you see stray simplified characters or other variants that can't be produced with Bopomofo :)
To add to the confusion, Taiwan seems to have had their own adapation of wade-giles between 2002-2008 called Tongyong Pinyin...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongyong_Pinyin
The moral of the story is - when asking for directions in Taiwan, don't rely on the street signs much for pronunciation :D
Chinese literacy isn't necessarily that great...
E.g.
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-literacy-rate-in-China-so-h...
What people have been doing in Chinese is basically write only one syllable of a multi-syllable word, which would be ambiguous in speech, but disambiguated in writing by the character. But then, if your writing were more phonetic, you'd just have to write the full word.
My point is that written Chinese is much terser than spoken Chinese (particularly classical Chinese, of course) and that this is enabled by the disambiguation inherent in the characters. That is, where in spoken language you'd use a two-character word, when writing it would be sufficient to write just one character to evoke what's meant.
Now, if you were to write in some sort of alphabetical script, you'd just write the full two-syllable word.
"Before Pinyin was developed, 85% of Chinese people could not read, now almost all can."
In reads like the development of Pinyin is what led to this big change in the % of Chinese people who can now read. That is not correct and very misleading.
Pinyin was not the catalyst nor the major reason for changes in literacy levels. Rather it was new education policy and development of the new Simplified Chinese Characters (Newer Chinese characters with fewer line strokes in them - makes reading and writing much much more simple - it is still used today and is the official character language in China).
Pinyin was and is a huge deal. For foreigners learning Chinese and more importantly later on when it was chosen to be utilized as the input method when technology developed that required putting the Chinese language into computers and mobile phones.
Then why do Hong Kong and Taiwan have higher literacy rates?
EDIT: Why the down votes? The parent is making an unsubstantiated claim for which there is conflicting evidence:
1) Reading simplified is not objectively easier in the inside view as some characters with distinct meanings are ambiguously combined, and semantic information stripped from many other characters so if you aren't quite remembering that character you aren't given any hints.
2) Writing simplified is not objectively easier in the inside view as many of the components are changed in form from the characters they derive from, and again some semantic clues are stripped from the character. So there may be slightly fewer characters composed of slightly fewer strokes on average, but those aren't the metrics one should use for measuring difficulty -- a character with more strokes can be easier to write on demand because the strokes are part of components that carry semantic meaning. You don't have to remember each little detail, just the broad gist of a plot for the character and then systematic rules fill in the rest.
3) Finally in the outside view, non-mainland communities like Hong Kong and Taiwan have always used and continue to use the traditional characters. And these communities have higher literacy rates across the board compared with mainland China.
People who have already learned simplified-only find simplified characters easier to read. That shouldn't be surprising, but it is not objective truth. And the PRC likes to toot its own horn and say that simplified characters are cleaner, neater, simpler, more modern, led to higher literacy rates, cure cancer, etc. But that doesn't make it true without further substantiation either.
Apologies for any confusion. I was not making a claim nor comparing between characters used by PRC vs. Taiwan vs. Hong Kong, in particular I wasn't ranking them as better or worse or easier or harder.
I understand there are ongoing differences, posturings and debates between PRC and Taiwan and Hong Kong, including about language, and the whole thing is serious and complicated. Bro, I have no dog in that fight. Good luck y'all.
Maybe see my other comment as it goes into more detail. But just on a basic level I think you have mis-interpreted the words "simple" and "easy". A pretty common mistake I have made in the past too. The characters are called "Simplified Chinese Characters" not "Objectively Easier Chinese Characters". The definitions of simple and easy are different. Context matters too.
For example: Contributing useful comments to a discussion on Hacker News is very simple. Clearly it is not easy.
The replacement of characters on a phonological basis is good, but you still have to memorize thousands of characters, simplified or not. Further, I've never seen how "literacy" is defined for those statistics.
IIUC, pinyin was originally proposed as a replacement for characters, and there was some interest when the communist government took over, but the choice was finally made in favor of simplification.
Initially, it might even make things more confusing: In traditional, you immediately see that 言 is part of 語, but the same radical in simplified 语 looks different. Similarly, 金 in 錢, but different in 钱.
We can debate what the actual literacy rates are or how to define it. But it's pretty clear literacy in China has gone up in recent decades however you define it. More so, we can debate how big a part simplified characters were to the change in literacy, but my comment above was trying to clarify any confusion pinyin played that big a part in literacy improvement. Pinyin is taught in schools very recently but it did not play this big part in improving the % of the population who can read and understand Chinese like the article suggested. You do not need to know one letter of pinyin or even have heard of pinyin to read Chinese fluently. In fact, the push to teaching younger students pinyin and the roman alphabet in recent years may actually slow down a bit learning to read Chinese (pinyin is needed to use computers and mobile phones and helps when eventually learning English and is worth teaching early even with such a tradeoff).
Also, memorizing of thousands of characters is not the major problem. Firstly, you don't need to memorize thousands of characters. Words are multiple characters. You can read and understand +90% the Chinese you encounter on a daily basis, involving thousands and thousands of Chinese words with less than a thousand characters. Yes, it is harder to memorize a few hundred characters compared an alphabet with a couple dozen roman letters, but characters are not all that difficult once you understand the system behind it (radicals, components etc). I know a few hundred million people who seemed to have done it just fine.
Lastly, government policy alone could have improved literacy even without simplified Chinese characters. It wasn't a necessary step. And many Chinese can read and understand the gists of texts written in traditional Chinese characters even though they were never taught them. (similarly if you know English but were never taught Latin, go spend an hour reading about Latin and etymology you can probably start understanding a lot more Latin than you realize. errare humanum est)
One great thing is you can precisely pronounce name of a street or a medicine with less effort. Great for communication in daily life.
i would not say pinyin didn't play role in increasing literacy levels, but it was one of the factors together with simplification of characters and wider availability of education
Incidentally, bopomofo is also pretty neat. It's based off common characters with the sound of the letter.
I learned Chinese, like pretty much every other foreigner, via pinyin pronunciation -- and it's great for language courses. And it's also great for road signs that foreigners can actually read.
But I never heard of pinyin being used by/for the Chinese themselves (except, now, as one computer typing system among many, although it still outputs in characters). All my Chinese teachers explained that young schoolchildren were taught basic pronunciation with bopomofo (which uses special characters, not latin letters), not pinyin.
And increases in literacy in China are simply due to widespread schooling and massive efforts at memorization of characters by children -- pinyin has absolutely zero value for functional literacy, because everything is still written in characters. (There are no pinyin newspapers or books I ever saw.)
EDIT: I see from comments below that pinyin is used with schoolchildren in mainland China, thanks. But I still don't see how this has helped literacy, when all reading material is still in characters.