The Yale romanizations are four systems created during World War II for use by United States military personnel. They romanize the four East Asian languages of Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, and Japanese. The four Romanizations, however, are unrelated in the sense that the same letter from one Romanization may not represent the same sound in another. The Korean language (한국어/조선어, see below) is the official language of both North and South Korea. ... There are three commonly used romanization schemes for the Korean Hangul script, namely: Revised Romanization of Korean: official in South Korea since 2000 and quite common on the Internet; McCune-Reischauer: formerly official in South Korea and a variation of which is currently official in North Korea, and common in... The Revised Romanization of Korean (Korean: 국어의 로마자 표기법; 國語의 로마字 表記法) is the official Korean language romanization system in South Korea. ... McCune-Reischauer romanization is one of the two most widely used Korean language romanization systems, along with the Revised Romanization of Korean, which replaced (a modified) McCune-Reischauer as the official romanization system in South Korea in 2000. ... The Yale Romanizations are four systems created during World War II by the United States for its soldiers. ... Combatants Allies: Poland, British Commonwealth, France/Free France, Soviet Union, United States, China, and others Axis Powers: Germany, Italy, Japan, and others Casualties Military dead:17 million Civilian dead:33 million Total dead:50 million Military dead:8 million Civilian dead:4 million Total dead:12 million World War II... The armed forces of the United States of America consist of the United States Army United States Navy United States Air Force United States Marine Corps United States Coast Guard Note: The United States Coast Guard has both military and law enforcement functions. ... A 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. ... Geographic scope of East Asia East Asia is a subregion of Asia that can be defined in either geographical or cultural terms. ... Mandarin, or Guanhua (Traditional Chinese: 官話; Simplified Chinese: 官话; Hanyu Pinyin: ; literally official speech), or Beifanghua (Chinese: 北方方言; Hanyu Pinyin: ; literally Northern Dialect(s)) is a category of related Chinese dialects spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. ... Cantonese (Traditional Chinese: 粵語; Simplified Chinese: 粤语, Cantonese: Yuet6yue5; Mandarin pinyin: Yueyu, Yụet (Guangdong) language) is one of the major dialect groups or languages of the Chinese language or language family. ...

They were once used in the US for teaching these Asian languages to civilian students, but are now mostly obscure and only sometimes used by academic linguists. Teaching Mandarin, for example, virtually always employs Hanyu Pinyin. McCune-Reischauer, which predates Yale, has dominated the Korean romanization field for several decades and has recently lost ground to the Revised Romanization rather than any Yale-based system. The following is a list of linguists, those who study linguistics. ... Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: 汉语拼音; Traditional Chinese: 漢語拼音; Hanyu Pinyin: , lit. ... McCune-Reischauer romanization is one of the two most widely used Korean language romanization systems, along with the Revised Romanization of Korean, which replaced (a modified) McCune-Reischauer as the official romanization system in South Korea in 2000. ... There are three commonly used romanization schemes for the Korean Hangul script, namely: Revised Romanization of Korean: official in South Korea since 2000 and quite common on the Internet; McCune-Reischauer: formerly official in South Korea and a variation of which is currently official in North Korea, and common in... The Revised Romanization of Korean (Korean: 국어의 로마자 표기법; 國語의 로마字 表記法) is the official Korean language romanization system in South Korea. ...

Mandarin

Mandarin Yale was developed to prepare American soldiers to communicate with their Chinese allies on the battlefield. Rather than try to teach recruits to interpret the standard Romanization of the time, the Wade-Giles system, a new system was invented that utilized the decoding skills that recruits would already know from having learned to read English. It avoided the main problems that the Wade-Giles system presented to the uninitiated student or news announcer trying to get somebody's name right in a public forum, because it did not use the "rough breathing mark" (which looks like an apostrophe) to distinguish between sounds like gee and chee(se). In Wade-Giles the first of those would be written chi and the second would be written ch'i. In the Yale romanization they would be written ji and chi. The Yale system also avoids the difficulties faced by the beginner trying to read Pinyin Romanization because it uses certain roman letters and combinations of letters in such a way that they no longer carry their expected values. For instance, q in pinyin is pronounced something like the ch in chicken and is written as ch in Yale Romanization. xi in pinyin is pronounced something like the sh in sheep, but in Yale it is written as syi. zh in pinyin sounds something like the ger in gerbil, and is written as jr in Yale romanization. In Wade-Giles, "knowledge" (知识) is chih-shih, in pinyin it is written zhishi, but in Yale romanization it is written jr-shr, and only the latter will get the unprepared reader anywhere near to pronouncing the Chinese word correctly. Wade-Giles, sometimes abbreviated Wade, is a Romanization (phonetic notation and transliteration) system for the Chinese language based on Mandarin. ...

If an American soldier, speaking in Wade-Giles, asked, "Where is the Japanese man's machine gun?" he would perhaps utter something like "Jippen jenty cheekwan chong tsai nay pien?" A Chinese soldier with a little English might strain something like this out of the question: "Jipping Jenny! Habitually chooses which cheat?!?" Reciting something from a sheet of emergency sentences written in Yale romanization he would say, "R ben ren de jigwan chyang dzai nei byan?" Even if it were not read perfectly, given the social context a speaker of Mandarin probably would get the idea pretty quickly. The pinyin version, "Ribenren de jiguanqiang zai nei bian?" wouldn't be too bad if the soldier could pronounce qiang.

Cantonese

Unlike the Mandarin Yale romanization, Cantonese Yale is still widely used in books and dictionaries for Standard Cantonese, especially for foreign learner. Developed by Parker Po-fei Huang and Gerald P. Kok, it shares some similarities with Hanyu Pinyin in that unvoiced, unaspirated consonants are represented by letters traditionally used in English and most other European languages to represent voiced sounds. For example, [p] is represented as b in Yale, whereas its aspirated counterpart, [pʰ] is represented as p. Because of this and other factors, Yale romanization is usually held to be easy for American English speakers to pronounce without much training. In Hong Kong, more people use Standard Cantonese Pinyin and Jyutping as they are more localize to Hong Kong people. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a system of phonetic notation devised by linguists to accurately and uniquely represent each of the wide variety of sounds (phones or phonemes) used in spoken human language. ... Phonetic (pho-NET-ic) is a nationwide voicemail-to-text messaging service available for most digital mobile phones in which a subscriber is provided a custom voice mailbox for the purpose of receiving all incoming voice messages as actual transcribed text for reading via short messaging (also known as SMS... Due to technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ... This is a concise version of the International Phonetic Alphabet for English sounds. ... Standard Cantonese is a variant, and is generally considered the prestige dialect of Cantonese Chinese. ... Pinyin (拼音, Pīnyīn) literally means join (together) sounds (a less literal translation being phoneticize, spell or transcription) in Chinese and usually refers to Hànyǔ Pīnyīn (汉语拼音, literal meaning: Han language pinyin), which is a system of romanization (phonetic notation and transliteration to roman script) for Standard Mandarin used in the... See also consonance in music. ... American English (AmE) is the dialect of the English language used mostly in the United States of America. ... Standard Cantonese Pinyin is a romanization system for Standard Cantonese developed by the Yu Bingzhao (ch. ... Jyutping (Traditional Chinese: 粵拼; Simplified Chinese: 粤拼; pinyin: yuèpÄ«n; Yale: yuhtpÄ«ng; Jyutping: jyut6ping3; sometimes spelled Jyutpin) is a romanization system for Standard Cantonese developed by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong (LSHK) in 1993. ...

Initials

The initial, also called the onset, or in Chinese shengmu (PY: shēngmǔ, TC: 聲母, SC: 声母), is an important concept in the phonological study of Chinese languages. ...

Finals

• The finals m and ng can only be used as standalone nasal syllables.

The final, also called the rhyme, or in Chinese yunmu (PY: yùnmǔ, TC: 韻母, SC: 韵母), is an important concept in the phonological study of Chinese languages. ... A nasal stop is produced when the velum—that fleshy part of the palate near the back—is lowered, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. ...

Tones

There are nine tones in six distinct tone contours in Cantonese. Cantonese Yale represents tones using tone marks and the letter h, as shown in the following table: It has been suggested that Tonal language be merged into this article or section. ... The tone contours of Standard Mandarin Tone contours are numbers that represent the way pitch varies over a syllable. ...

• Tones can also be written using the tone number instead of the tone mark and h.
• In modern Standard Cantonese, the high-flat and high-falling tones are indistinguishable and, therefore, are represented with the same tone number.
• Three entering tone: entering high-flat, entering mid-flat, entering low-flat have the same tone contours with high-flat, mid-flat, low-flat, but it have difference in coda which affect its short falling cadence only. So we use the same representation between three entering tones and flat tones.

Standard Cantonese is a variant, and is generally considered the prestige dialect of Cantonese Chinese. ... The tone contours of Standard Mandarin Tone contours are numbers that represent the way pitch varies over a syllable. ... Note: This page contains phonetic information presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) using Unicode. ...

Examples

Traditional Chinese characters are one of two standard character sets of printed contemporary Chinese written language. ... Simplified Chinese characters (Simplified Chinese: 简体字; Traditional Chinese: 簡體字; pinyin: jiǎntǐzì; also called 简化字/簡化字, jiǎnhuàzì) are one of two standard character sets of printed contemporary Chinese written language. ...

Korean

Korean Yale was developed by S. Martin and his colleagues at Yale University about half a decade after McCune-Reischauer, and is still used today, although mainly by linguists, among whom it has become the standard romanization for the language. The Yale system places primary emphasis on showing a word's morphophonemic structure. This distinguishes it from the other two widely used systems for romanizing Korean, the Revised Romanization of Korean (RR) and McCune-Reischauer. These two usually provide the pronunciation for an entire word, but the morphophonemic elements accounting for that pronunciation often can not be recovered from the romanizations, which makes them ill-suited for linguistic use. In terms of morphophonemic content, the Yale system's approach can be compared to North Korea's Chosŏnŏ sin ch'ŏlchabŏp. Samuel Elmo Martin is a prolific author of several books on the Korean and Japanese languages. ... Yale University is a private university in New Haven, Connecticut. ... McCune-Reischauer romanization is one of the two most widely used Korean language romanization systems, along with the Revised Romanization of Korean, which replaced (a modified) McCune-Reischauer as the official romanization system in South Korea in 2000. ... Linguistics is the scientific study of human language, and someone who engages in this study is called a linguist. ... The Revised Romanization of Korean (Korean: 국어의 로마자 표기법; 國語의 로마字 表記法) is the official Korean language romanization system in South Korea. ... McCune-Reischauer romanization is one of the two most widely used Korean language romanization systems, along with the Revised Romanization of Korean, which replaced (a modified) McCune-Reischauer as the official romanization system in South Korea in 2000. ...

The Yale romanization represents each morphophonemic element (which in most cases corresponds to a jamo, a letter of the Korean alphabet) by the same roman letter, irrelevant of its context, with the notable exceptions of ㅜ (RR u) and ㅡ (RR eu) which the Yale system always romanizes as u after bilabial consonants because there is no audible distinction between the two in many speakers' speech, and of the digraph wu that represents ㅜ (RR u) in all other contexts. Hangul also refers to a word processing application widely used in Korea. ... In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. ... Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ...

The letter q indicates reinforcement which is not shown in hangul spelling: Fortis (from Latin fortis strong) and lenis (from Latin lenis weak) are linguistics terms. ...

• 할 일 halq il /hallil/
• 할 것 halq kes /halkket/
• 글자 kulqca /kulcca/

In cases of letter combinations that would otherwise be ambiguous, a period indicates the orthographic syllable boundary. It is also used for other purposes such as to indicate sound change:

• 늙은 nulk.un “old”
• 같이 kath.i /kachi/ “together”; “like”, “as” etc.

A macron over a vowel letter indicate that in old or dialectal language, this vowel is pronounced long: In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. ...

• 말 māl “word(s)”
• 말 mal “horse(s)”

Note: Vowel length (or pitch, depending on the dialect) as a distinctive feature seems to have disappeared at least among younger speakers of the Seoul dialect sometime in the late 20th century. Pitch accent is a kind of accent system employed in many languages around the world. ... The Seoul dialect is the basis of the standard dialect of Korean in South Korea. ...

A superscript letter indicates consonants that have disappeared from at a word's South Korean orthography and standard pronunciation. For example, the South Korean orthographic syllable 영 (RR yeong) is romanized as follows: Hangeul machumbeop, often romanized to Hangul Matchumbeop, could be translated to Korean orthography (rules). It often appears as the title of spelling dictionaries or other publications of orthographic guidelines. ...

• yeng where no initial consonant has been dropped.
  Example: 영어 (英語) yenge
• ^lyeng where an initial l (ㄹ) has been dropped or changed to n (ㄴ) in the South Korean standard language.
  Examples: 영[=령]도 (領導) ^lyengto; 노[=로]무현 (盧武鉉) ^lNo Muhyen
• ⁿyeng where an initial n (ㄴ) has been dropped in the South Korean standard language.
  Example: 영[=녕]변 (寧邊) ⁿYengpyen

The indication of vowel length or pitch and disappeared consonants often make it easier to predict how a word is pronounced in Korean dialects when given its Yale romanization compared to its South Korean hangul spelling.

There are separate rules for Middle Korean. For example, o means ㅗ (RR o) in a romanization of the current language, but ㆍ (arae a) for Middle Korean, where ㅗ is transcribed as wo. Martin 1992 uses italics for romanizations of Middle Korean as well as other texts predating the 1933 abandonment of arae a, whereas current language is shown in boldface.

Japanese

References

• Guan, Caihua (2000). English-Cantonese Dictionary, Chinese University Press. ISBN 9622019706.
• Matthews, Stephen & Yip, Virginia (1994). Cantonese. A Comprehensive Grammar, Routledge. ISBN 041508945X.
• Martin, Samuel E. (1992). “Yale Romanization.”, A Reference Grammar of Korean, 1st edition, 8 ff, Rutland and Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Publishing. ISBN 0-8048-1887-8.

Samuel Elmo Martin is a prolific author of several books on the Korean and Japanese languages. ... Rutland City, Vermont Rutland City is a city located in Rutland County, Vermont. ... Tokyo ) (help· info), literally eastern capital, is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan and includes the highly urbanized central area formerly known as the city of Tokyo which is the heart of the Greater Tokyo Area. ...

External links

• Comparison chart of Yale Romanization for Mandarin with Hanyu Pinyin and Zhuyin Fuhao
• MDBG free online Chinese-English dictionary (supports Cantonese Yale romanization)