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The Chinese Script

is the only ideographic (picture) script that is still used today, and
at the same time it is the oldest one in use (about 3200 years). Its
great advantage is that is can be used by all dialect speakers in and
outside of China that call the same object with a quite different
prononciation that can hardly be recognized by somebody who only
speaks the official standard language. People that can not communicate
by language can use the characters to make an understanding possible.
Even people that speak a language that is totally different from
Chinese, like Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese, are (were) able to
communicate with each other by using Chinese characters.
The character of Chinese as a language with isolated syllables not
having a declination or conjugation makes it possible to express every
spoken word in a written form simply by writing one single character.
It is impossible to see or to hear if a word is a noun or a verb or an
adjective, and in old Chinese most words could be used as noun or verb
or adjective or adverb (for instance, the word [duN] can mean the noun
"east", the adjective "eastern", the adverb "to do something in the
east", and the verb "to go eastwards"). But the great problem of
Chinese language is that it has only very few syllables compared to
languages with closed syllables (for example the European languages
except English, the Altaic languages like Mongolian or even Korean and
Japanese). There is an extremely high number of words that sound
totally identical, even if Chinese language has four (dialects have
more) tone pitches (high, rising, low, falling): for example, the
syllable [dji] in the high tone pitch could mean "table", "mocking",
"striking", "hungry", "machine", "muscle", "cock", "trace", "piling
up", "basis", "concubine", and so on. This extreme high homophony
(equal sounds) in Chinese language comes from the simplification of
the language in shape of the governmental official's language (guanhua
±, in portuguese called Mandarin) that developed during the Yuan, Ming
and Qing Dynasties in the northern capital in Peking. Officials that
came from different regions of the vast empire of China had to create
a common language that based upon the smallest common denominator.
Like most languages, Chinese thus shows the trend of simplification.
Words that sounded totally different two thousand years ago today
sound absolutely identical.

The Mandarin Language

is called
* Putonghua ®± "Common Language"
in Mainland China
* Guoyu "National Language"
inTaiwan
* Huayu ¯ by the Chinese overseas communities

Dialects or Languages?

Chinese language is the language spoken by most people of the world,
at least theoretically. There exist many inhabitants of China,
especially in the South, that do barely understand the official
language that is based upon the dialect of Peking. There are a few
numbers of dialects, or we should better call it languages, in China
that are related to the official language. These dialects are more
archaic than the modern official language and tend to have more tone
pitches and closed syllable endings. The most important languages are:
* Cantonese Guangdonghua £±± or Yueyu µ, spoken in Guangdong (the
origin of the city name Canton is actually the province name, the
city is called Guangzhou)
* Wu ³, spoken in the Yangtse Delta and Shanghai (hence called
Shanghaihua ·±). Wu is the name of an old feudal state of the
Spring and Autumn Period.
* Northern Min Minbeihua ©±, spoken in northern Fujian province
* Southern Min Minnanhua ©±, spoken in southern Fujian and Taiwan
* Hakka ¢¶, distributed in many provinces of South China and
oversees. "Hakka" means "guest people"; the Hakka language
"islands" are enclaves inmidst of territories where mainly
Cantonese is spoken
* Gan , spoken in Jiangxi
* Xiang , spoken in Hunan
* Recently some dialects were classified as languages: Dongan (the
language of the Muslim Chinese in the West), Jin in Shanxi,
Mindong, Minzhong and Puxian in Fujian, and Huizhou in Anhui and
Zhejiang.
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Relatives of the Chinese Language

are the Tibeto-Burmese languages, the languages of Tibet and of modern
Myanmar and many, many small tribes that live in the Himalaya and its
foothills. Thai and Vietnamese are definitely not related to Chinese,
even if both are isolating (one word-one syllable) languages that have
also tone pitches. English for example is also an isolating language,
and many highly agglutinating (one word-one chain) languages like
Turkish and Japanese have lots of one syllable nouns. Tone pitch
languages exist all over the world, and tonality is no criterium for
language relationship.
The vast country of China comprises many territories where people live
that speak languages that are not related to Chinese, like Uighurs,
Mongols, Tajiks, Koreans and Russians. And we don't have to forget the
many national minorities in the southwest that speak languages related
to Thai, Vietnamese and Tibetian. In Taiwan live a few aboriginal
people of Malaio-Polynesian origin. The aboriginal people of southern
China as well as the nomad immigrants in the north are long
assimilated to the Chinese and are not distinguishible except a few
officially accepted minorities.

The Development of Chinese Language

Like stated above, Chinese is a tonale language. In modern Chinese,
every syllable has four different tone pitches (sisheng ²):
* high pitch (yinsheng °²),
* rising pitch (yangsheng ½²),
* lower rising pitch (shangsheng ²), and
* falling pitch (qusheng »²).

The quickly falling tone pitch (rusheng ¥²) that once marked a final
voiceless stop, disappeared during the end of Song and the Yuan
Dynasties. Finally, in two-syllable-words, the second syllable is
sometimes unaccented, so to say a pitchless tone (lingsheng ¶²). In
Cantonese exist eight different tone pitches: high, upper rising,
upper falling, upper entering, low, lower rising, lower falling, and
lower entering; in daily use they are reduced to six.
The problem in reconstructing old Chinese language is that we do know
how words were written, but because Chinese script is not a sound
script (at least not in general) but a symbolic script, we do know
nothing about the pronunciation of the old words. Only the researches
of Bernard Karlgren (1889-1978) and E. G. Pulleyblank (* 1922) helped
to reconstruct middle Chinese (Tang to Song Dynasties) and finally old
and archaic Chinese. Both used the rime dictionaries of the Tang and
Song Dynasties (Qieyun and Guangyun) and rime groups of the oldest
poetry book, the Shijing. Frome these studies, we see that the final
sound system of old Chinese was much more complex than today. While we
have today only open syllables (without consonant: cha, ji, bo, dao)
and the two finals -n (fan, lun, jin) and -ng (fang, cheng, qing). In
old Chinese there were also finals like -l, -m, -g, -k, -t, and -p, in
archaic Chinese even -gs. And there existed sound clusters at the
begin of a syllable, like gl-, hl-, tr-, mj-, shw- and so on. Such a
sound system makes old Chinese much more similar to Tibetian and
Burmese. Compared to this, modern Chinese sounds quite crippled and
oversimplified. Even at the begin of the 20th century, there existed
not so much vowel-less syllables like in modern Chinese, like the
seven syllables [d ][t ][ ][ ],[dz][ts][s]. Syllables like [dzi] or
[tsi] have died out. Southern dialects (or languages?) in China still
show final consonants like -m, -p, -t and -k. Chinese loanwords in
Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese show the vanished syllable endings.
The Chinese loanword "law" (modern Chinese falü, old Chinese something
like paplüet) in Korean is pôp, in Japanese a little bit forced to
hôritsu, in Vietnamese turned around to luât pháp. Southern Chinese
dialects like Cantonese still today show the ancient syllable endings:
"law" in Cantonese is faatleuht. The simplification of the language
was due to the central administration in a vast empire that allowed
people to come around. Different dialects had to near each other and
step by step threw away difficult sounds.

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The classical written language that had developed during the late Zhou
and Han Dynasty, had the same importance like Latin in the West. Until
the begin of the 20th century, all official documents, and even
private essays and letters were written in a 2000 years old
monosyllabic language, full of citings of the old books and writings.
This language could only be used by scholars and well educated people.
The literary form that first used the everyday language were the Yuan
Dynasty theatre plays and Ming and Qing novels. Writers of the early
20th century fought for the introduction of everyday language
(putonghua ®±) into the literature. Today, only official letters and
documents are written in classic language, but even newspapers and
higher literature make use of the short and precise classical written
language. People who know to write in classical Chinese (wenyan ) are
esteemed highly.
During the course of centuries, Chinese language did not only make
itself free from a rich but complicated sound system, but the tone
pitches assimilated in such a way that some sounds like [dji] or [u]
can stand for more than one dozen words of very different meaning. In
written language, there is no problem with homophony as every word or
almost every word has only one character that can barely
misunderstood. Reading alound a text in classical written language,
the listeners are hardly able to understand a great part of the text.
Measurements of the spoken language to encounter this homophony was
the development of two-syllable words for nouns, verbs, adjectives and
even for conjunctions. Today, most words in Chinese consist of two
syllables, composed of two single words, like aiqing "love" from ai
"love, affection" and qing "feeling, sentiment, temperament". The
classical word fang ¹ can have the meanings of "direction" (modern:
fangxiang ¹), "location" (difang °¹), "square" (fangxing ¹¢; fangmi ¹³
fangzhang tion), "aspect, side, party" (fangmian ¹¢), "mode, manner"
(fangshi ¹), "method" (fangfa ¹), "plan, concept" (fanglüe ¹¥),
"stategy" (fangce ¹), "recipe" (fangji ¹, fangzi ¹, fangr ¹er,
"occultism" (fangshu ¹, fangji ¹), "honest, upright" (fangzheng ¹£),
"just now" (fangcai ¹), and so on; to discern between the different
meanings, two-syllable words came up (in brackets). Already in the
oldest examples of Chinese literature, we find two-syllable words with
rhyming or reduplication character, like yaotiao "lonely, pityful;
honest", qingting » "dragonfly", putao ¡ "grapes". Another method to
enrich a word are suffixes, like the [dz] in [ba -dz] baozi "filled
dumpling" and [i-dz] yizi "chair", or the guttural [^r] in [t a-^r]
char ¶er "tea" (in Peking dialect).

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Loanwords, New Words and Foreign Names

Like all people, the Chinese had an intensive contact with neighboring
people. They adopted many words from the northern steppe people that
used things the Chinese did not know. When the Chinese learned to know
and to use these things, they also adopted the foreign word for these
objects: ± lwaktuo "camel" or ª lwak "yoghurt" from the nomad people,
mjit "honey" and shejshe "lion" from the Tocharians. Southern China
was occupied 2500 years ago by Austro-Asiatic people, different from
the Chinese in ethnic, cultural and linguistic means. Still today,
south Chinese people look different from the northern people that were
stongly mixed with the steppe peoples. But also the non-Chinese people
of the south tributed their parts to Chinese language, especially to
the southern dialects of Fujian province. In the official language, we
find still today traces of the southern peoples' languages: klang
"stream, Yangtse river" or khla "tiger". Words that came with Buddhist
religion were either transscribed with sounds (and their respective
characters without taking their real meaning) or translated: the
Buddhist term nirvâna is called in Chinese niepan (a crippled version
of the Sanskrit word) or ji "serenity" or º£ zhiyuanmie "destroying
the cause of awareness" or simply mie . Even personal names of
foreigners were sometimes translated by their meaning, like º· Zhufahu
"Protecor of the Law" for the Indian monk translator Dharmaraksha
(transcribed as © "Tanmoluoji").

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During the 19th century many Chinese went to Japan for educational
purposes. Like in Europe where scholars created artificial Latin or
Greek words, Japanese and Korean scholars created artificial Chinese
words that came to China when the foreign Chinese students went back
to their country. In our times, when hundreds of new words rush into
China, there is also a need either to describe them with sounds or to
translate them. Some loanwords use describing syllables that have also
a meaning: ¢ heike "black host = computer hacker", · leishe "thunder
stroke = Laser". A very famous example of marketing is that of
Coca-Cola company, in Chinese called ¯£¯ Kekou-kele "tasty and funny".
Other examples are paoche "racing car = Porsche" or the word for
"taxi", « dishi (Cantonese pronunciation: diksi) "targeting Sirs".
Other characters of loanwords have no real meaning in that
combination, like kaobei "copy", ©» modeng "modern" or kelong "clone".
There are much more examples of translated words, for example »¦
diannao "electric brain = computer" or guangdie "gleaming disk = CD".
Some items also show the possibility of both translating, like ´³¨
kuoyinqi "sound enlarging tool = microphone", and transscribing ¥¨
maikefeng, or »µ¶ dianzi youjian "electronical mail" as a translation
for e-mail, simply called yimeir ¹ following the sound of the English
word. A special field of adopting loan words and even creating new
characters, is the field of chemistry. ¨ an "ammonium" is described
with the character for £ "gas, air" and the phonetic part an. dian
"iodine" with the radical for ³ "stone" and the phonetic part ¸ dian.
gong "quicksilver" is decribed as a liquid thing ´ "water" called ¥
gong (from mercurium). ¯ zhi "esters" are described with a bottle and
¨ zhi "tasty, fragrant", because many esters have a very aromatic
perfume. The word for "carbohydrate" £ tang (all kinds of sugar) is
combined of a bottle and the abbreviated character and sound for tang
"sugar".

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Foreign names cannot be translated but must be transscribed with
characters that sound like the syllables of the foreign name: Bulaier
¾ for Prime Minister Tony Blair. While there are great differences in
how to transscribe a foreign name, the government of mainland China
tries to standardize transscriptions. The Soviet ruler Stalin is
transscribed in mainland China as ¯§ Sidalin [sz-da-lin], in Taiwan as
, with different characters. Countries are often abbreviated, like ¿© 
Ameilijia (southern dialect pronunciation Ameliga) "America" to Meiguo
"beautiful country". But there are examples of translated names like
that of the city of San Francisco. During the gold rush, Chinese
immigrants called this city ± Jinshan "Gold mountain".

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Transcriptions: how to write down pronunciation

The old Chinese became aware of the sound system of their own language
when they had to translate foreign words with a meaning that could not
be expressed in Chinese: Buddhist terms. Dictionaries that tried to
express pronunciation came up during the Tang Dynasty. They used the
"reverse cutting" system (fanqie ), using the initial sound and the
final sound of two words/characters to describe the sound of a
word/character. For example: [ta][tçi n]qie "pronounced like [t-] and
[-i n] ([tj n])". Another possibility to express the pronunciation of
a character was to cite a character with an identical pronunciation,
like ª¥° "xin (firewood), read like xin (new).".

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The first transscriptions of Chinese language that have been made by
Westerners were all written like the particular travelers, merchants
or missionaries heard the words and wrote them down following the
writing rules of their own language. French people of course wrote the
same words not in the same style like British would have done or
people from the Netherlands. There did not exist a standardized style
of transscription until the late 19th century. Typically for the early
transscriptions was the hard style transscription of the sounds [dj]
or [tç] as "k", like "kin" for [djin] or "kü" for [tçy], for instance
"King-ting ku-kin t'u-shu ki-ch'eng" for ¤¸ (pinyin: Qing ding Gujin
tushu jicheng). Many geographic names of China are still known today
in their old transscription like the provinces Shan-tung, Fo-kien,
Kiang-su, or the cities of Peking and Kanton. Also the names of people
like Chiang Kai-shek or Sun Yat-sen are derived from non-standardized
transscriptions of non-Mandarin languages or dialects (in standard
Mandarin, they are called Jiang Jieshi resp. Sun Yixian - but no
Chinese calles the founder of the Republic by this name - the is
called Sun Zhongshan).

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Wade-Giles Transcription

The first persons to create a standard transscription of Chinese were
T.F. Wade (d. 1895) and H.A. Giles (d. 1935). Their system called
Wade-Giles (chin.: Wei Tuoma shi pinyin ¥ª¼³) is quite correct in
reflecting the vowels (like "yüen" for [jy n]), but is very
complicated in the manner of reflecting consonants. Wade and Giles saw
the hard sound "k" as a soft one and added an apostroph to express
hard pronunciation: [g an] is written "kuan", [k an] is written k'uan.
The sound [ ] (the french "j") is written "j", the sound [ç] is "hs".
A great problem to find a word in an index is that the Wade-Giles
system makes no difference between the consonants [tç] and [t ] - both
"ch'", [d ] and [dj], both "ch". Only in their syllable context, these
sounds are recognizable as two different sounds: the vowel-less
syllables are added by an "ih", like "ch'ih" for [t ] and "chih" for
[d ]. The syllables [tçi] and [dji] are written "ch'i" resp. "chi".
The syllables [dz] and [dzu] are written "tzu" resp. "tsu".
The tone pitches are marked by one of four numbers added to the
transsciption, like hsiao^3. In spite of these shortcomings, the
transscription system Wade-Giles has been used for a long time and has
been very widespread, especially in the United States where it is
still used today by Sinologists.
The table below gives an overview over the Wade-Giles transscription
of the Chinese sounds, the brackets include the pronunciation
according to the international sound transscription, after the
brackets Wade-Giles.
[b] p  [d] t  [g] k    [dj] ch  [d ] ch  [dz] ts, tz
[p] p' [t] t' [k] k'   [tç] ch' [t ] ch' [ts] ts', tz'
[m] m  [n] n  [x, h] h [ç] hs   [ ] sh   [s] s
[f] f  [l] l                    [ ] j   
The vowel-less syllables [d ][t ][ ][ ],[dz][ts][s] are written chih,
ch'ih, shih, jih, tzû, tz'û, szû. The simple vowels [i][u][y] are
written i, wu, yü. The syllables of two-syllable words are separated
by a dash: "Chung-kuo".
[a]
a [o]
o [ at ]
o [e]
eh [ai]
ai [ei]
ei [aw]
ao [ou]
ou [an]
an [ at n]
en [aN]
ang [ at N]
eng [uN]
ung [ at r]
erh
[-i]
i [-ja]
ia [-je]
ieh [-jaw]
iao [-jou]
iu [-jen]
ien [-in]
in [-iaN]
iang [-iN]
ing [-juN]
iung
[-u]
u [-wa]
ua [-wo]
uo [-wai]
uai [-wei]
uei [-wan]
uan [-un]
un [-waN]
uang [-w at N]
eng
[-y]
ü [-ye]
üeh [-yen]
üan [-yn]
ün

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Pinyin Transcription

Today, the People's Republic of China uses the transscription system
Pinyin «÷µ "Arranged Sounds", a system more coherent in reflecting
consonants than the Wade/Giles system, introducing letters of the
Roman alphabet that are used for very different sounds in European
languages: "h" reflects a sound more similar to the guttural [x], "j"
is [dj], "q" is [tç], "x" is [ç]. The vowel-rare sounds are "zh" for
[d ], "ch" for [t ], "sh" is like [ ] in English, but a little bit
more guttural, "r" is the French "j" with an inheriting English "r" [
], "z" for [dz], "c" for [ts], and "s" just for [s]. Lexically very
useful, this consonantial system is destroyed by a horrible, that
means unlogical system for the vowels. [y] is sometimes written "u"
like in "qu" for [tçy] or "xuan" for [çy n], sometimes written "ü"
like "nü" for [ny] or "lüe" for [ly ]. [ ] is sometimes written "e"
like in "lüe" for [ly ], sometimes written "a" like "xuan" for [çy n].
[ o] is sometimes written "o" like "bo" for [b o], sometimes written
"uo" like "luo" for [l o]. [u] is sometimes written "u" like "lu" for
[lu], sometimes written "o" like "gong" for [gu ]. The letter "a"
sometimes stands for [a] like "xia" for [çja], sometimes for [ ] like
"xian" for [çj n]. Redundant are the letters "y" like "yi" for [i],
while it is used for [j] in "yao" for [ja ], and "w" like "wu" for
[u], while it is used for [ ] in "wo" for [ o]. It can be argued that
the syllables "gong" and "xuan" are pronunciations of the south: [go ]
and [çyan].
Tones pitches are markes by accents: an upper dash for the rising
tone, a raising accent for the raising tone, an upside down circumflex
for the low rising tone, and a falling accent for the falling pitch (b
, bá, b , bà). But the Pinyin system claims to be the correct
pronunciation of the capital Beijing. In that sense, it should be more
coherent to the northern pronunciation. Nevertheless, the Pinyin
system should be accepted as an official transscription of Chinese
words that becomes more and more common outside of China.
The table below gives an overview over the pinyin transscription of
the Chinese sounds, the brackets include the pronunciation according
to the international sound transscription, after the brackets pinyin
transscription.
[b] b [d] d [g] g    [dj] j [d ] zh [dz] z
[p] p [t] t [k] k    [tç] q [t ] ch [ts] c
[m] m [n] n [x, h] h [ç] x  [ ] ch  [s] s
[f] f [l] l                 [ ] r  
The vowel-less syllables [d ][t ][ ][ ],[dz][ts][s] are written zhi,
chi, shi, ri, zi, ci, si. The simple vowels [i][u][y] are written yi,
wu, yu. The syllables of two-syllable words are written as one word:
"Zhongguo".
[a]
a [o]
o [ at ]
e [e]
ê [ai]
ai [ei]
ei [aw]
ao [ou]
ou [an]
an [ at n]
en [aN]
ang [ at N]
eng [uN]
ong, eng [ at r]
er
[-i]
i [-ja]
ia [-je]
ie [-jaw]
iao [-jou]
iu [-jen]
ian [-in]
in [-iaN]
iang [-iN]
ing [-juN]
iong
[-u]
u [-wa]
ua [-wo]
uo [-wai]
uai [-wei]
ui [-wan]
uan [-n]
un [-waN]
uang [-w at N]
eng
[-y]
ü [-ye]
ue [-yen]
uan [-yn]
un

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Zhuyin Transcription (Bo-Po-Mo-Fo)

A third system that has been in use only in Taiwan (and in mainland
dictionaries, but only for completion) is the system called Zhuyin ¨³
"Commented Sounds" or simply Bo-po-mo-fo, following the first four
sounds of the alphabet. This system is very easy to learn, but it does
not use Latin letters. Instead, it relies on simplified or very old
forms of characters. In my opinion, it is the best system of
transscription that exists, but it is not very widespread and will
probably die out after Taiwan has started to use the mainland Pinyin
system. The Zhuyin system simply puts together initial and final sound
of one syllable, like b4au "b+a " for [ba ]. Syllables without initial
sound are simply written with the final sound, like u4 "u" for [u].
Syllables without final vowel are simply written with their inital
sound, like zh "dz" for [dz]. Specialities are 1) the use of en "en"
for the final sound [-in], like x4i4en "ç+i+en" for [çin], for the
final sound [-un], like g4u4en "g+u+en" for [gun], and for the final
sound [-yn], like j4iuen "dj+ü+en" for [djyn]; 2) the use of eN "eng"
for the final sound [-ing], like j4i4eN "dj+i+e " for [dji ] and for
the final sound [-ung], like l4u4eN "l+u+e " for [lu ]; 3) the use of
an "an" for the final sound of [- n], like x4i4an "ç+i+an" for [çi n]
(causing here the same problem like in the Pinyin transscription
system); and 4) the use of "ü+eng" for the final sound of [-iu ], like
j4iueN "dj+ü+eng" for [dju ].
The tone pitches are either indicated by accents like in the pinyin
transscription - but without the high tone mark - or by points in the
corner of the vowel: left upper for the low rising pitch, right upper
for the falling pitch, left lower for high and rising pitch.
A hyperlinked table shows the Zhuyin alphabet and the characters the
particular letters are deriving from, transscribed with the
international transscription system.
The final sound usage of the zhuyin transscription system is
demonstrated in the table below. The vowel-less syllables
[d-][t-][-][-],[dz][ts][s] are transscribed by the sole particular
consonants: zhchshr4,z4c4s4. As the zhuyin system is only used by
Chinese to have a reading help, there are no rules for word
separation.
[a]
a4 [o]
o4 [ at ]
e4 [e]
eh4 [ai]
ai [ei]
ei [aw]
au [ou]
ou [an]
an [ at n]
en [aN]
aN [ at N]
eN [uN]
iueN
[-i]
i4 [-ja]
i4a4 [-je]
i4eh4 [-jaw]
i4au [-jou]
i4ou [-jen]
i4an [-in]
i4en [-iaN]
i4aN [-iN]
i4eN [-juN]
i4iueN
[-u]
u4 [-wa]
u4a4 [-wo]
u4o4 [-wai]
u4ai [-wei]
u4ei [-wan]
u4an [-un]
u4en [-waN]
u4aN [-w at N]
u4eN
[-y]
iu [-ye]
iueh4 [-yen]
iuan [-yn]
iuen

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Gwoyeu Rwomaatzyh Transcription

Gwoyeu rwomaatzyh ¬ (pinyin: Guoyu Luomazi "National language in Latin
letters") is a transscription system published in 1928, but it is not
very widespread and slowly dying out because the system is too
complicated. It is the only system reflecting the tone pitches not by
marking the tones with numbers or accents, but by inserting the tone
pitch into the transscription.
The high tone is only marked for simple initial sound syllables with
an inheriting "h" (mhau , lha ), the rising tone is marked by an "r"
(char ¶, torng ; syllables with in initial m, n, l, and r don't
change: ren º) or by changing of "i" and "u" to "y" and "w" (chyn ´,
hwang ), the low tone by a doubling of the vowel (chii ·, faan , koou
£) and changing "i" to "e" and "u" to "o" (goan ¡, sheu ±), and the
falling tone by changing "i" to "y" and "u" to "w" (tzay ¨, yaw ) or a
doubling or changing of the the final consonant (bann , jenq £).
The Yale romanization of Cantonese also expresses the low tone pitches
by inserting an "h" into the word: yáuh, fàhn, yeuhn.
[b] b [d] d [g] g    [dj] j  [d ] j  [dz] tz
[p] p [t] t [k] k    [tç] ch [t ] ch [ts] ts
[m] m [n] n [x, h] h [ç] sh  [ ] sh  [s] s
[f] f [l] l                  [ ] r  
The vowel-less syllables [d ][t ][ ][ ],[dz][ts][s] are written jy,
chy, shy, ry, tzy, tsy, sy. The simple vowels [i][u][y] are written
yi, yu, yiu.
[a]
a [o]
o [ at ]
e [e]
ê [ai]
ai [ei]
ei [aw]
au [ou]
ou [an]
an [ at n]
en [aN]
ang [ at N]
eng [uN]
ong [ at r]
el
[-i]
i [-ja]
ia [-je]
ie [-jaw]
iau [-jou]
iou [-jen]
ian [-in]
in [-iN]
iang [-iN]
ing [-juN]
iong
[-u]
u [-wa]
ua [-wo]
uo [-wai]
uai [-wei]
uei [-wan]
uan [-n]
un [-waN]
uang [-w at N]
ueng
[-y]
iu [-ye]
iue [-yen]
iuan [-yn]
iun
And there exists an abundancy of free style transscriptions in all
places where Chinese people live, all without system and according to
the native language of their living place, like "gong shee" for [guN
çi]. Most oversees Chinese are of Cantonese or at least Southern
origin, so the Mandarin Pinyin system could not be applied anyway.

[top [LINK] ][bottom [LINK] ]

Chinese Language and Chinese Script

Every language has its own script, but not every script is suitable
for a language. As a monosyllabic (one word is one syllable),
non-flecting language (there exists no verbal conjugation or noun
declination), a character script is very suitable for Chinese
language. Korea and Japan had to develop their own writing systems
because a character script was not able to reflect grammatical
particles and suffixes of these languages. Vietnamese, although also a
monosyllabic, non-flecting language, has a grammar that is quite
different from Chinese grammar. The Roman alphabet is a better system
to write down words in Vietnamese. Cantonese speakers try to write
their language although they have some problems because the different
grammatical structure and word treasure of Cantonese makes it
necessary to create many new characters.
In old Chinese, when there was still no systematization of characters,
some writers used characters of a totally different word for a word
they did not know the character, for example the character pi or bi
that was simply used phonetically, that means as a sound for the words
that should be written », ¢, ¿ or . Still today, there are many
characters that have two or more pronunciations (duoyinzi ³), like ¿
pian "cheap" or bian "suitable, comfortable", or zhong "heavy" or
chong "double". Many characters of verbs can be pronounced with two
different tone pitches to indicate a causative meaning, like ½ ting
(high pitch) "to hear", tìng (falling pitch) "to make obey"; or kan
(high pitch) "to look after", kàn (falling pitch) "to look"; or ®
zhong (low rising pitch) "seed", zhòng (falling pitch) "to sow". [top
[LINK] ][bottom [LINK] ]

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(C) Ulrich Theobald 2000-2004 www.chinaknowledge.org