Tongyong Pinyin

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Chinese language romanization

Chinese language

Mandarin

For Standard Mandarin
    Hanyu Pinyin (ISO official)
    EFEO
    Gwoyeu Romatzyh
    Latinxua Sinwenz
    Mandarin Phonetic Symbols II
    Chinese Postal Map Romanization
    Tongyong Pinyin
    Wade-Giles
    Yale
    Legge romanization

See also:
   General Chinese (Chao Yuenren)
   Cyrillization
   Xiao'erjing
   Zhuyin
   Romanisation in Singapore

Cantonese

For Standard Cantonese
    Canton
    Hong Kong Government
    Jyutping
    Meyer-Wempe
    Sidney Lau
    S. L. Wong (romanisation)
    Standard Cantonese Pinyin
    Standard Romanization
    Yale

Wu
    Long-short (romanization)

Min Nan
For Taiwanese, Xiamen, and related
    Pe̍h-oē-jī
For Hainanese
    Hainanhua Pinyin Fang'an
For Teochew
    Peng'im

Min Dong

For Fuzhou dialect
    Bàng-uâ-cê

Hakka

For Moiyan dialect
    Kejiahua Pinyin Fang'an
For Siyen dialect
    Phak-fa-s

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Tongyong Pinyin (Chinese: 通用拼音; pinyin: Tōngyòng pīnyīn; literally "Universal/General Usage Sound-combining") is the current official romanization of the Chinese language adopted by the national government (although not all local governments) of the Republic of China on Taiwan since 2002. Like all previous ROC official romanizations, it is based on the official Chinese dialect of Mandarin Chinese. Around 80% of the Tongyong Pinyin syllables are spelled identically to those of mainland China's Hanyu Pinyin, but if measured according to frequency of words used in everyday life, the percentage of similar spellings is considerably lower.

Contents

[edit] Features

[edit] Spelling

Notable features of Tongyong Pinyin are:

  • Hanyu zh becomes jh (Wade-Giles uses ch).
  • Hanyu x and q are completely unused in Tongyong Pinyin: they become s and c (Wade-Giles uses hs and ch') before front vowel (i and e), but sy and cy before yu (to avoid confusion with su and cu).
  • The Hanyu i not represented in Zhuyin -- the empty rime (空韻) -- are shown as ih (partially like Wade-Giles), i.e, those in Hanyu as zi (資), ci (慈), si (思), zhi (知), chi (吃), shi (詩), and ri (日) all end in -ih in Tongyong.
  • eng becomes ong after f- and w- (奉、瓮)
  • wen (溫) becomes wun
  • iong becomes yong, e.g. syong instead of pinyin xiong (兇)
  • Ü used in Pinyin is replaced by yu.
  • Unlike Wade-Giles and Hanyu, iu and ui [e.g., liu (六) and gui (鬼)] contractions can be optionally written out in full as iou and uei. However, according to the Ministry of the Interior, in romanizations of names of places that is at township-level or below township-level, the letters must be written in full.

[edit] Punctuation

  • Tongyong syllables in the same word (except placenames) are to be separated by hyphens, like Wade-Giles. Except that, in Ministry of the Interior's romanizations, placenames have no spaces between the syllables.
  • Tongyong uses tone marks like Zhuyin, and not like Hanyu, i.e., Tongyong has no mark for the first tone, but a dot for the neutral tone (which is optional on computers).
  • The optional syllable disambiguity mark is apostrophe (like Hanyu), e.g., ji'nan vs. jin'an. The mark may also, as in the Ministry of the Interior placenames, be a hyphen.

[edit] Adoption and controversy

Tongyong Pinyin is the successor of MPS II. Created by Yu Bor-chuan (余伯泉, Yu Boquan) in 1998, Tongyong Pinyin has been modified several times since.

Even though in early October 2000, the Mandarin Commission of the Ministry of Education proposed to use Tongyong Pinyin as the national standard, Education Minister Ovid Tzeng (曾志朗) submitted a draft of the Taiwanese Romanization in late October to the Executive Yuan, but it was rejected.

The adoption of Tongyong Pinyin has also resulted in political controversy. Much of the controversy centered on issues of national identity, with proponents of Chinese reunification favoring the Hanyu Pinyin system which is used in the People's Republic of China, and proponents of Taiwanese independence favoring the use of Tongyong Pinyin.

In August 2002, the ROC government adopted Tongyong Pinyin but through an administrative order which local governments can override. Localities with governments controlled by the Kuomintang, most notably Taipei City, have overridden the order and are using Hanyu Pinyin for local signs in accordance with the wishes of various groups representing foreign businesses. This creates the odd situation in which adjacent signs have different pinyin based on which government controls them.

In part because of the lack of agreement of which pinyin to use, the goal of the Ministry of Education to replace Zhuyin with pinyin to teach pronunciation in elementary school remains stalled as of 2003.

Tongyong Pinyin also has a Taiwanese phonetic symbol version (台語音標版) which lacks the letter f but adds the letter v (for 万). On September 28, 2006, the Ministry of Education rejected the use of Tongyong Pinyin for the Taiwanese dialect in favor of 台羅版拼音.

Some have criticised Tongyong Pinyin for matching more than one traditional zhuyin initial to the letters c and s. Others have pointed out that every single Mandarin syllable can be expressed in equal or fewer keystrokes in Hanyu Pinyin [1]. Still others have criticized the exceptional spelling of "wun", which does not fit in with the "ben", "pen", "men", "fen" series which rhyme with 文. Nonetheless, the largest difficulty may lie in that Hanyu Pinyin is both the standard of the PRC, and the internationally accepted ISO standard for the romanization of Mandarin Chinese. For those who have studied Mandarin outside Taiwan and for those who are accustomed to doing business in China, Hanyu Pinyin may be quite indispensable. On the other hand, Tongyong Pinyin supporters have argued that their system avoids q and x, letters that are confusing to many English-speakers as to their proper pronunciation.

[edit] Comparison chart

Vowels
IPA a ɔ ə ai ei au ou an ən əŋ aɻ ʊŋ i iɛ iou iɛn ɪn
Pinyin a o e ai ei ao ou an en ang eng er ong yi ye you yan yin ying
Tongyong Pinyin a o e ai ei ao ou an en ang eng er ong yi ye you yan yin ying
Wade-Giles a o o/ê ai ei ao ou an ên ang êng êrh ung i yeh yu yen yin ying
zhuyin ㄨㄥ ㄧㄝ ㄧㄡ ㄧㄢ ㄧㄣ ㄧㄥ
example
Vowels
IPA u uɔ uei uan uən uʊn uəŋ uʊŋ y yɛ yɛn yn yʊŋ
Pinyin wu wo wei wan wen weng yu yue yuan yun yong
Tongyong Pinyin wu wo wei wan wun wong yu yue yuan yun yong
Wade-Giles wu wo wei wan wên wêng yüeh yüan yün yung
zhuyin ㄨㄛ ㄨㄟ ㄨㄢ ㄨㄣ ㄨㄥ ㄩㄝ ㄩㄢ ㄩㄣ ㄩㄥ
example


Consonants
IPA p pʰ m fəŋ fʊŋ tiou tuei tʰ ny ly ɻ kʰ tɕiɛn tɕyʊŋ tɕʰɪn ɕyɛn
Pinyin b p m feng diu dui t ger k he jian jiong qin xuan
Tongyong Pinyin b p m fong diou duei t nyu lyu ger k he jian jyong cin syuan
Wade-Giles p p' m fêng tiu tui t' kêrh k' ho chien chiung ch'in hsüan
zhuyin ㄈㄥ ㄉㄧㄡ ㄉㄨㄟ ㄋㄩ ㄌㄩ ㄍㄜㄦ ㄏㄜ ㄐㄧㄢ ㄐㄩㄥ ㄑㄧㄣ ㄒㄩㄢ
example 歌儿
Consonants
IPA tʂə tʂɚ tʂʰə tʂʰɚ ʂə ʂɚ ʐə ʐɚ tsə tsuɔ tsɨ tsʰə tsʰɨ sɨ
Pinyin zhe zhi che chi she shi re ri ze zuo zi ce ci se si
Tongyong Pinyin jhe jhih che chih she shih re rih ze zuo zih ce cih se sih
Wade-Giles chê chih ch'ê ch'ih shê shih jih tsê tso tzŭ ts'ê tz'ŭ szŭ
zhuyin ㄓㄜ ㄔㄜ ㄕㄜ ㄖㄜ ㄗㄜ ㄗㄨㄛ ㄘㄜ ㄙㄜ
example
Tones
IPA ma˥˥ ma˧˥ ma˨˩˦ ma˥˩
Pinyin
Tongyong Pinyin ma maˊ maˇ maˋ
Wade-Giles ma1 ma2 ma3 ma4
zhuyin ㄇㄚ ㄇㄚˊ ㄇㄚˇ ㄇㄚˋ
example (traditional/simplfied) 媽/妈 麻/麻 馬/马 罵/骂

[edit] External links

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