| Chinese language romanization | | Mandarin Chinese (written) language (pinyin: zhōngw n) written in Chinese characters The Chinese language (汉语/漢語, 华语/華語, or 中文; Pinyin: H nyǔ, Hu yǔ, or Zhōngw n) is a member of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. ...
In linguistics, romanization or latinization is a system for representing a word or language with the Roman (Latin) alphabet, where the original word or language used a different writing system. ...
Mandarin listen?(Traditional: 北方話, Simplified: 北方è¯, Hanyu Pinyin: BÄ›ifÄnghuà , lit. ...
For Standard Mandarin
EFEO
Gwoyeu Romatzyh
Hanyu Pinyin
Latinxua Sinwenz
Lessing-Othmer
Mandarin Phonetic Symbols II
Postal System Pinyin
Tongyong Pinyin
Wade-Giles
Yale Standard Mandarin is the official Chinese spoken language used by the Peoples Republic of China, the Republic of China on Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore. ...
The École française dExtrême-Orient (EFEO) is a French institute dedicated to the study of Asian societies. ...
Gwoyeu Romatzyh (國語羅馬字 Pinyin: Guóyǔ Luómǎzì), abbreviated GR, is a romanization (formerly used officially in the Republic of China) with complex spelling rules which allow for tonal distinctions (unlike most other Romanizations, which require additional diacritics or numerals). ...
Pinyin (拼音, pÄ«nyÄ«n) literally means join (together) sounds (a less literal translation being phoneticize, spell or transcription) in Chinese and usually refers to Hà nyÇ” PÄ«nyÄ«n (汉è¯æ‹¼éŸ³, literal meaning: Han language pinyin), which is a system of romanization (phonemic notation and transcription to Roman script) for Standard Mandarin. ...
Latinxua Sinwenz (拉丁化新文字; also known as Sin Wenz, Latinxua Sinwenz, Zhongguo Latinxua Sin Wenz, Beifangxua Latinxua Sin Wenz or Latinxua) is a little-used romanization system for Mandarin Chinese. ...
Mandarin Phonetic Symbols II (國語注音符號第二式), abbreviated MPS II, is a romanization system formerly used in the Republic of China (Taiwan). ...
In the early twentieth century, China (starting with the dying Qing Empire) used Postal (Office) System Pinyin (郵政å¼æ‹¼éŸ³ Hanyu Pinyin: Yóuzhèngshì PÄ«nyÄ«n) (unrelated to the modern Hanyu Pinyin), based on Wade-Giles (in particularly, Herbert Giless A Chinese-English Dictionary) for postal purposes, especially for placenames...
Tongyong Pinyin (Chinese: 通用拼音; Pinyin: ; 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 (Taiwan) since late 2000, announced by the Mandarin Promotion Council of the Ministry of Education. ...
Wade-Giles, sometimes abbreviated Wade, is a Romanization (phonetic notation and transliteration) system for the Chinese language based on Mandarin. ...
The Yale Romanizations are four systems created during World War II by the United States for its soldiers. ...
| | Cantonese Cantonese (粵語/粤è¯, lit. ...
For Standard Cantonese
Barnett-Chao
Canton
Hong Kong Government
Jyutping
Meyer-Wempe
Sidney Lau
Yale
Yuetyue Lomaji (not yet established) Standard Cantonese refers to the most prestigious dialect of Cantonese. ...
Guangdong Romanization refers to the four romanization schemes published by the Guangdong Provincial Education Department in 1960 for transliterating the Standard Cantonese, Teochew, Hakka, and Hainanese spoken varieties of Chinese. ...
Hong Kong Government Cantonese Romanisation (not an official title) is the method of romanisation used in Hong Kong. ...
Jyutping (Traditional Chinese: 粵拼; Simplified Chinese: 粤拼; pinyin: yuèpīn; Yale: yuhtpīng; sometimes spelled Jyutpin) is a romanization system for Standard Cantonese developed by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong (LSHK) in 1993. ...
The Meyer-Wempe romanisation system was developed by two Catholic missionaries in Hong Kong, Bernhard F. Meyer and Theodore F. Wempe, during the 1920s and 1930s. ...
The Yale Romanizations are four systems created during World War II by the United States for its soldiers. ...
// Disclaimer Yuetyúe Lòmáji is not an established Cantonese script. ...
| | Min Nan Mǐn N n (Chinese: 閩南語), also spelt as Minnan or Min-nan; native name B ; literally means Southern Min or Southern Fujian and refers to the local language/dialect of southern Fujian province, China. ...
For Hainanese
Hainanhua Pinyin Fang'an
For Taiwanese
Pe̍h-oē-jī
For Teochew
Peng'im Hainanese is a dialect of the Min Nan group spoken in the southern Chinese province of Hainan. ...
Guangdong Romanization refers to the four romanization schemes published by the Guangdong Provincial Education Department in 1960 for transliterating the Standard Cantonese, Teochew, Hakka, and Hainanese spoken varieties of Chinese. ...
Taiwanese (Chinese: å°èªž, å°ç£è©± or ç¦ä½¬è©±; Taiwanese PeÌh-oÄ“-jÄ«: Tâi-oân-oÄ“ or HÅ-ló-oÄ“; Hanyu Pinyin: TáiyÇ” or TáiwÄnhuà ) is the primary spoken language of 70% of the Taiwanese population. ...
PeÌh-oÄ“-jÄ« (POJ) (Chinese: 白話å—; pinyin: ) is a romanization created and introduced to Taiwan by Presbyterian missionaries in the 19th century. ...
The Teochew dialect (Guangdong romanization: Dio7 Ziu1; Missionary romanization: Tiô-chiu-oē, Chinese:潮州话, Hanyu Pinyin: Cháozhōuhuà, Teochiu or Tiuchiu), is a Chinese language and dialect of Minnan spoken in a region of eastern Guangdong referred to as Chaoshan. ...
Guangdong Romanization refers to the four romanization schemes published by the Guangdong Provincial Education Department in 1960 for transliterating the Standard Cantonese, Teochew, Hakka, and Hainanese spoken varieties of Chinese. ...
| | Hakka Hakka is one language in the family of languages known as Chinese. ...
For Moiyan dialect
Kejiahua Pinyin Fang'an Meixian (梅縣; Hakka: Moi-yen or Moi-yan) is a county in north eastern Guangdong province, Peoples Republic of China. ...
Guangdong Romanization refers to the four romanization schemes published by the Guangdong Provincial Education Department in 1960 for transliterating the Standard Cantonese, Teochew, Hakka, and Hainanese spoken varieties of Chinese. ...
| | Universal
General Chinese | General Chinese (GC) is a phonetic system invented by Yuen Ren Chao to represent the pronunciations of all major Chinese dialects. It can also be used for the Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese pronunciations of Chinese characters. It puts the lie to the claim that Chinese characters are required for interdialectal communication in written Chinese. Yuen Ren Chao (趙元任 Pinyin: Zhào Yuánrèn; WG: Chao Yüan-jen; Gwoyeu Romatzyh: Jaw Yuanrenn) (November 3, 1892 - February 25, 1982) was a Chinese phonologist and dialectologist who shaped Gwoyeu Romatzyh. ...
æ¼¢å— hà nzì, hanja, kanji… in Traditional Chinese and other languages. ...
GC is not specifically a romanization system, but two alternate systems: one uses Chinese characters phonetically, and the other is a romanization system with similar sound values and tone spellings to Gwoyeu Romatzyh. Gwoyeu Romatzyh (國語羅馬字 Pinyin: Guóyǔ Luómǎzì), abbreviated GR, is a romanization (formerly used officially in the Republic of China) with complex spelling rules which allow for tonal distinctions (unlike most other Romanizations, which require additional diacritics or numerals). ...
Character-based GC
The character version of GC uses distinct characters for any traditional characters that are distinguished phonemically in any of the control varieties of Chinese, which consist of several dialects of Mandarin, Wu, Min, Hakka, and Yue. That is, a single character will only correspond to more than one traditional character when these are homonyms in all control dialects. In effect, GC is a reconstruction of the pronunciation of Middle Chinese, except that distinctions that have been lost from all major dialects are not bothered with. In oral language, a phoneme is the theoretical basic unit of sound that can be used to distinguish words or morphemes; in sign language, it is a similarly basic unit of hand shape, motion, position, or facial expression. ...
This article is on all of the Northern Chinese dialects. ...
Wu (吳方言 pinyin wú fāng yán; 吳語 pinyin wú yǔ) is one of the major divisions of the Chinese language. ...
Min (閩方言 in pinyin: min3 fang1 yan2) is a general term for a group of dialects of the Chinese language spoken in the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian as well as by migrants from this province in Guangdong (around Chaozhou-Swatou, and Leizhou peninsula), Hainan, three counties in southern Zhejiang...
Hakka is one language in the family of languages known as Chinese. ...
This article is on all of the Yue dialects. ...
Homonyms (in Greek homoios = identical and onoma = name) are words that have the same phonetic or orthographic form but unrelated meaning. ...
Middle Chinese (中古漢語, pinyin: zhōnggǔ Hànyǔ), or Ancient Chinese as used by linguist Bernhard Karlgren, refers to the Chinese language spoken during Northern and Southern Dynasties and the Sui, Tang, and Song dynasties (6th century - 10th century). ...
Often the most common of these homonymic traditional characters is used for GC, but when that character has strong semantic connotations that would interfer with phonetic reading, Chao selected a less common character instead.
Romanized GC Romanized GC has distinct symbols for the onsets (many of them digraphs, and a few trigraphs) and the rimes distinguished by any of the control dialects. For example, it retains the final consonants p, t, k, and the distinction between final m and n, as these are found in several modern dialects. GC also maintains the "round-sharp" distinction, such as sia vs. hia, though those are both xia in Beijing Mandarin. It also indicates the "muddy" (voiced) stops of Shanghainese.
Like Chao's other invention, Gwoyeu Romatzyh, romanized GC uses tone spelling. However, the system is somewhat different. The difference between the yin and yang tones is indicated by the voicing of the initial consonant, which is possible because the original voicing distinctions are retained.
The digraphs are not reliably featural; for example, the digraphs for the voiced stops do not all follow the same pattern. This is because Chao ran frequency tests, and used single letters for the most common consonants and vowels, while restricting digraphs and trigraphs to the more infrequent ones.
An example of GC can be illustrated with Chao's name:
| Characters | 趙 | 元 | 任 | | Notes | | GC | dhyao | qiuan | remm | | | Mandarin (Pinyin) | zhào | yuán | rèn | | Cantonese, colloquial (Yale) | chíuh | yùhn | yahm | | Cantonese, literary (Yale) | jiuh | yùhn | yahm | | Wu (Shanghainese) | dzau | gnioe | gnin | | Japanese, go'on reading | deu | gwan | nin | | post-WWII: jō gan nin | | Japanese, kan'on reading | teu | gen | zin | | post-WWII: chō gen jin | | Korean | jo | weon | im | | Vietnamese | Triệu | Nguyên | Nhâm | All the GC initials here are voiced: The h in dh shows that this is a "muddy" consonant, and the q in qiuan represents an initial ng- (becoming g in Japanese). This voicing shows up in the Cantonese yang tones, which are represented by aitches in Yale romanization. "Heavy" codas, such as remm, indicate the "going" (去) tone, as in Gwoyeu Romatzyh. The y in dhyao indicates that the initial is a stop in Min and Japanese, but otherwise an affricate. Cantonese and Korean retain the final m of remm. These pronunciations are all predictable given the GC transcription. Both the pre-war and post-war Japanese orthographies are recoverable.
In every dialect, some different spellings will be pronounced the same. However, which ones these are will differ from dialect to dialect. There are some irregular correlations with GC. Often a particular dialect will have a pronunciation for a word that is not what you might expect, due to irregular developments in that dialect. This is especially true with the voicing of Japanese consonants, which has evolved idiosyncratically in different compound words. However, except for Japanese voicing, the system is phonetic about 90% of the time.
GC vs. traditional characters Because GC makes many distinctions that Pinyin does not, it has many fewer homonyms to confuse the reader. Combine this with the fact that many traditional Chinese characters are restricted to specific compounds, as well as the fact that many homonymic characters distinguish meanings of what are historically the same word, and therefore understandable in context, and Chao believed that GC begins to approach the effectiveness of traditional characters in representing Chinese.
Reference - 趙元任，通字方案。Yuen-Ren Chao, A Project for General Chinese. Beijing, 1983.
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