Jyutping

Jyutping (Chinese: 粵拼; Jyutping: jyut6 ping3; Cantonese pronunciation: [jyːt̚˨ pʰɪŋ˧]), (sometimes spelled Jyutpin) is a romanization system for Cantonese developed by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong (LSHK) in 1993. Its formal name is The Linguistic Society of Hong Kong Cantonese Romanization Scheme. The LSHK promotes the use of this romanization system.

The name Jyutping (itself the Jyutping romanization of its Chinese name, 粵拼) is a contraction consisting of the first Chinese characters of the terms Jyut6 jyu5 (粵語, meaning "Yue language") and ping3 jam1 (拼音 "phonetic alphabet").

Initials

Finals

• Only the finals m and ng can be used as standalone nasal syllables.
• ^ ^ ^ Referring to the colloquial pronunciation of these words.

Tones

There are nine tones in six distinct tone contours in Cantonese. However, as three of the nine are entering tones (入聲, Jyutping: jap6 sing1), which only appear in syllables ending with p, t, and k, they do not have separate tone numbers in Jyutping (though they do in Cantonese Pinyin; these are shown in parentheses in the table below).

Comparison with Yale romanization

Jyutping and the Yale romanization of Cantonese represent Cantonese pronunciations with the same letters in:

• The initials: b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, ng, h, s, gw, kw, w.
• The vowel: aa (except when used alone), a, e, i, o, u, yu.
• The nasal stop: m, ng.
• The coda: i, u, m, n, ng, p, t, k.

But they differ in the following:

• The vowels eo and oe represent /ɵ/ and /œː/ respectively in Jyutping, whereas the eu represents both vowels in Yale.
• The initial j represents /j/ in Jyutping whereas y is used instead in Yale.
• The initial z represents /ts/ in Jyutping whereas j is used instead in Yale.
• The initial c represents /tsʰ/ in Jyutping whereas ch is used instead in Yale.
• In Jyutping, if no consonant precedes the vowel yu, then the initial j is appended before the vowel. In Yale, the corresponding initial y is never appended before yu under any circumstances.
• Jyutping defines three finals not in Yale: eu /ɛːu/, em /ɛːm/, and ep /ɛːp/. These three finals are used in colloquial Cantonese words, such as deu6 (掉), lem2 (舐), and gep6 (夾).
• To represent tones, only tone numbers are used in Jyutping whereas Yale traditionally uses tone marks together with the letter h (though tone numbers can be used in Yale as well).

Comparison with Cantonese pinyin

Jyutping and Cantonese Pinyin represent Cantonese pronunciations with the same letters in:

• The initials: b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, ng, h, s, gw, kw, j, w.
• The vowel: aa, a, e, i, o, u.
• The nasal stop: m, ng.
• The coda: i (except for its use in the coda /y/ in Jyutping; see below), u, m, n, ng, p, t, k.

But they have some differences:

• The vowel oe represents both /ɵ/ and /œː/ in Cantonese Pinyin whereas eo and oe represent /ɵ/ and /œː/ respectively in Jyutping.
• The vowel y represents /y/ in Cantonese Pinyin whereas both yu (used in the nucleus) and i (used in the coda of the final -eoi) are used in Jyutping.
• The initial dz represents /ts/ in Cantonese Pinyin whereas z is used instead in Jyutping.
• The initial ts represents /tsʰ/ in Cantonese Pinyin whereas c is used instead in Jyutping.
• To represent tones, the numbers 1 to 9 are usually used in Cantonese Pinyin, although the use of 1, 3, 6 to replace 7, 8, 9 for the checked tones is acceptable. However, only the numbers 1 to 6 are used in Jyutping.

Examples

Sample transcription of one of the 300 Tang Poems:

Jyutping input method

The Jyutping method (Chinese: 粵拼輸入法) refers to a family of input methods based on the Jyutping romanization system.

The Jyutping method allows a user to input Chinese characters by entering the jyutping of a Chinese character (with or without tone, depending on the system) and then presenting the user with a list of possible characters with that pronunciation.

List of Cantonese phonetic methods

• Yahoo's list of Cantonese IME
• Online Cantonese Input Method (網上廣東話輸入法)
• MDBG
• Red Dragonfly
• LSHK Jyutping for Macintosh Mac OS X and OS 9 (The page also includes Yale input version 0.2)
• Smart Jyutping IME
• Microsoft Office Hong Kong Cantonese IME (微軟香港粵語輸入法)

See also

• Cantonese phonology

Footnotes

External links

• LSHK Cantonese Romanization Scheme
• Jyutping Pronunciation Guide
• 粵語拼盤: Learning the phonetic system of Cantonese
• Chinese Character Database (Phonologically Disambiguated According to the Cantonese Dialect)
• The CantoDict Project is a dedicated Cantonese-Mandarin-English online dictionary which uses Jyutping by default
• MDBG free online Chinese-English dictionary (supports both Jyutping and Yale romanization)
• 粵拼易 JyutPingEasy.Net: a website that transliterates Chinese characters to Jyutping
• 粵音韻彙
• Forvo.com: MP3 of "Jyutping"