Category Archives: Hanyu

-r endings, their pronunciation, and Pinyin spelling

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cover of Chinese Romanization: Pronunciation and OrthographyArrr! In recognition of International Talk Like a Beijinger Pirate Day, here are the rules for how to spell those -r endings in Hanyu Pinyin and how those endings affect the pronunciation of syllables. In many cases, it’s more complicated than just adding an -r sound at the end of the standard syllable.

This information is from Yin Binyong’s Chinese Romanization: Pronunciation and Orthography. The full section from this book is available in PDF form: r- Suffixed Syllables.

Written form Actual pronunciation
-ar (mǎr, horse) -ar (mǎr)
-air (gàir, lid) -ar (gàr)
-anr (pánr, plate) -ar (pár)
-aor (bāor, bundle) -aor (bāor)
-angr (gāngr, jar) -ãr (gãr)
-or (mòr, dust) -or (mòr)
-our (hóur, monkey) -our (hóur)
-ongr (chóngr, insect) -õr (chõr)
-er (gēr, song) -er (gēr)
-eir (bèir, back) -er (bèr)
-enr (ménr, door) -er (mér)
-engr (dēngr, lamp) -ẽr (dẽr)
-ir* (zìr, Chinese character) -er (zèr)
-ir (mǐr, rice) -ier (mǐer)
-iar (xiár, box) -iar (xiár)
-ier (diér, saucer) -ier (diér)
-iaor (niǎor, bird) -iaor (niǎor)
-iur (qiúr, ball) -iour (qióur)
-ianr (diǎnr, bit) -iar (diǎr)
-iangr (qiāngr, tune) -iãr (qiãr)
-inr (xīnr, core) -ier (xīer)
-ingr (língr, bell) -iẽr (liẽr)
-iongr (xióngr, bear) -iõr (xiõr)
-ur (tùr, rabbit) -ur (tùr)
-uar (huār, flower) -uar (huār)
-uor (huór, work) -uor (huór)
-uair (kuàir, piece) -uar (kuàr)
-uir (shuǐr, water) -uer (shuěr)
-uanr (wánr, to play) -uar (wár)
-uangr (kuāngr, basket) -uãr (kuãr)
-unr (lúnr, wheel) -uer (luér)
-ür (qǔr, song) -üer (qǔer)
-üer (juér, peg) -üer (juér)
-üanr (quānr, loop) -üar (quār)
-ünr (qúnr, skirt) -üer (quér)

Notes:

  • ã, õ, ẽ indicate nasalized a, o, e.
  • The -i marked with an asterisk indicates either of the apical vowels that follow zh, ch, sh, r and z, c, s.

Pinyin with audio and Chinese characters: Fortress Besieged

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cover of the book 'The Besieged City' (围城)Sinolingua‘s terrific series of abridged editions of classic Chinese books includes one of my favorites, which may well be the finest novel written in Mandarin during the twentieth century: Qian Zhongshu’s Wéichéng (圍城/围城), best known in English as Fortress Besieged but published by Sinolingua with the English title of The Besieged City.

I’m very pleased to announce that Pinyin.info now offers the first chapter of Sinolingua’s edition this book, along with an audio file of it being read aloud. This edition is in Mandarin, in word-parsed Hanyu Pinyin (with Chinese characters underneath) and has a few notes in English as well as mp3 files of the text being read aloud.

Here’s the download page: Wéichéng (圍城/围城/).

I’ve often told people who plan to go to China and want me to recommend a book that will help them “understand” the country (as if!) they’re about to visit: “By all means, read the Analects of Confucius, the Dàodéjīng, and the Zhuāngzǐ; but know in advance that they’ll be about as relevent to your trip as reading the Gospels would be to someone from China who’s about to travel to the West for the first time. And don’t waste your time with crap like The Tao of the Chinese Boardroom’s Inner Art of Feng-shui or whatever. Read Fortress Besieged. It’s as good a start as just about anything — and a lot more fun to read.”

The novel is also available in a fine English translation.

Related reading:

screenshot of part of a paragraph of the PDF of this book

Ba Jin in Pinyin, with audio

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illustration of two young men under an umbrella -- from Ba Jin's 'Family'This bit of news is simply wonderful. As part of Sinolingua‘s Abridged Chinese Classic Series, all three volumes in Bā Jīn‘s “torrents” trilogy (Jīliú sānbùqǔ / 激流三部曲) are now available in abridged editions in word-parsed Hanyu Pinyin (with Chinese characters underneath), along with a few notes in English and mp3 files of the text being read aloud.

These books would make great material for those who are

  • studying Mandarin
  • trying to memorize Chinese characters
  • learning Hanyu Pinyin
  • wanting to read something in Mandarin that isn’t too damn hard but isn’t a children’s book either
  • looking for something to read in Mandarin that doesn’t require much or even any knowledge of Chinese characters (ABCs and other “overseas Chinese,” take note!)

Through the generousity of the publisher, Pinyin.info now offers sample chapters from each of these three classics of twentieth-century Chinese literature along with audio files of the text being read aloud.

I’m very pleased to offer samples from these books on this site and hope these editions will be enjoyed by many readers worldwide and become standard texts in many classrooms.

Taiwan train stations and the switch to Hanyu Pinyin

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Although Hanyu Pinyin has been Taiwan’s official romanization system since the beginning of this year, progress in implementation on signage has so far been little to none (at least in what I’ve witnessed). So I was pleased to see this sign earlier this week at the remodeled train station in Zhunan, Miaoli County.

sign atop train station reading 'ZHUNAN STATION' in large letters

Those big letters unmistakably spell out the name of the city in Hanyu Pinyin. Good.

But what about the use of romanization inside the station? Here’s a shot of part of a board listing the stations near Zhunan.

train_station_names

Let’s look at the systems used in the names above:

  • Xinfong — Hanyu Pinyin and Tongyong Pinyin mix
  • Zhubei — Hanyu Pinyin
  • Hsinchu — Wade-Giles
  • Xiangshan — Hanyu Pinyin
  • Qiding — Hanyu Pinyin (BTW, that’s a terrible Q, as it’s too little distinct from an O, especially at a distance.)
  • Zhunan — Hanyu Pinyin
  • Zaociao — Tongyong Pinyin
  • Fongfu — Tongyong Pinyin
  • Miaoli — same in most systems

Once again we see the government’s incompetence when it comes to such simple things as spelling names correctly on signage.

But since at least “Zhunan” was right, what about signage for the same name beyond the train station?

Well, there’s still Tongyong Pinyin (“Jhunan”):

directional sign reading 'Central Jhunan'

And there’s still Tongyong’s predecessor, MPS2 (“Junan”), along with other systems, typos, and sloppy English:

signs reading 'Junan', 'West Sea Shore Highway.', 'Lung-Shan Rd.', and 'Chi Ding Bathing Beath.'

And there are still spellings that are simply wrong (“Jhuan”), regardless of the system:
directional sign above the highway, reading 'Jhuan Brewery'

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: “Taiwan’s romanization situation: plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.”

books bought in Beijing

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cover of a book by Zhou YouguangI didn’t have any luck finding anything in Sin Wenz (Lādīnghuà Xīn Wénzì / 拉丁化新文字), despite trips to several large used book stores. (Fortunately, the Internet is now providing some leads. Thanks, Brendan and Joel!) But I did find some other books to bring home.

I acquired lots of books by Zhou Youguang, not all of which focus primarily on linguistics:

Other than the Zhou Youguang books, here are my favorite finds of the trip, as they are for the most part in correctly word-parsed Hanyu Pinyin (with Hanzi underneath), along with a few notes in English:

I’ll soon be posting more about the above books with Pinyin, so watch this site for updates. Really, this is gonna be good.

Although this collection of Y.R. Chao says it’s volume 15, it’s actually two books:

  • Zhào Yuánrèn quánjí, dì 15 juàn (趙元任全集第15卷)

Some more titles:

  • Measured Words: The Development of Objective Language Testing, by Bernard Spolsky
  • Pǔtōnghuà shuǐpíng cèshì shíshī gāngyào (普通話水平測試實施綱要). Now with the great smell of beer! Sorry, Brendan, I owe you one — more than one, actually.

The following I bought because Yin Binyong, the scholar primarily responsible for Hanyu Pinyin’s orthography, is the author of these titles from Sinolingua’s series of Bógǔtōngjīn xué Hànyǔ cóngshū (“Gems of the Chinese Language through the Ages” (their translation)), all of which are in Mandarin (Hanzi) and English, with Pinyin only for the sayings being illustrated:

cover of 'Chinese-English Dictionary of Polyphonic Characters' (多音多义字汉英词典)cover of 'Putonghua shuiping ceshi shishi gangyao' (普通話水平測試實施綱要)cover of 'Xinhua pinxie cidian'

Other:

And finally:

Of course I already have that one — more than one copy, in fact. But it’s always good to have more than one spare when it comes to one of the two most important books on Pinyin orthography. I really need to follow up on my requests to use excerpts from this book, as it is the only major title missing from my list of romanization-related books (though it’s in Mandarin only).

sign in a Beijing bookstore reading 'Education Theury' [sic]

InTerCaPiTaLiZaTion: the Beijing trip

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To my relief, I saw very little in the way of the orthography-killing cancer that is InTerCaPiTaLiZaTion while I was in Beijing.

The worst offender I spotted was the cover to Qǐyè yǔ xíngzhèng jīguān chángjiàn yìngyòngwén xiězuò dàquán (企业与行政机关常见应用文写作大全 / 企業與行政機關常見應用文寫作大全), which to me just screams out “UGly NightMare”. But at least the word parsing is right, which is more than can be said for many uses of Pinyin in China.

intercapped_book_title

Note that the image is flipped:
detail from the above photo, showing how the title on a book spine is mirrored

More troubling, because it is on official signage, is the use of intercaps on some station guides above the doors of subway cars.

Route Map Of Bei Jing Subway Line 5
The capitalization of “Of” demonstrates that the bro-ken and InTerCaPiTaLized “Bei Jing” is probably due more to standard sloppiness than design. At least I certainly hope no one did that on purpose.

Fortunately, that usage isn’t found throughout the subway system, as this photo from a map of another line shows.
Route Map of Beijing Subway Line2

Reports of what style is to be found on other Beijing subway lines — especially the newest ones — would be welcome.

And Randy spotted this one:
'BeiJing Vikings Football' in black letters on a red van door, with Hanzi

But that appears to be a one-off, since the Beijing Vikings don’t use that style on their Web site or elsewhere that I noticed.

v for ü

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Typing the letter v to produce ü is pretty standard in most Pinyin-related software — the letter v not being used in Pinyin except for loan words, and the letter ü not being found on traditional qwerty keyboards.

Here’s an official sign not far from Tian’anmen Square in Beijing that provides an example of an unconverted v.

official directional sign reading '织女桥东河沿 ZHINVQIAODONGHEYAN' in white letters against a blue background

Of course there’s the usual word-parsing trouble as well, which can indeed be tricky in some cases (but not so much that everythingneedstobewrittensolidlikethis).

This should be “Zhīnǚ Qiáo dōng héyán” (织女桥东河沿 / 織女橋東河沿 / Weaver Girl’s Bridge, east bank) or perhaps “Zhinü Qiao Dong Heyan” or “ZHINÜ QIAO DONG HEYAN”.

Some people might not think this is worth categorizing as a problem. My position, however, is that government has an obligation to write things properly on its official signage. (If this were on some ad hoc sign put up privately it would still be interesting but less problematic.) So, if anyone’s OK with the V, would you also be OK with, say, “之釹喬冬和言”?

OTOH, as mistakes go, at least v remains distinct, unlike when ü gets incorrectly written as u, which is so common in Taiwan that I don’t recall ever having seen a ü on official signage. (Pinyin has the following distinct pairs: nü and nu, lü and lu; nüe (rare) and lüe are also used but not nue or lue since the latter two sounds are not used in modern standard Mandarin.

new name policy for naturalized ROC citizens

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Since July 9, naturalized citizens of Taiwan have been permitted to have a romanized form of their original name included along with their adopted “Chinese name” on their household-registration certificate (hùkǒu). (This is an important government document that states your official residence.)

For example, my original name is Mark Swofford. My Mandarin name is Shǐ Wěifán (史偉凡). If I were to take ROC citizenship (which I’d like but am unlikely to try to gain until Taiwan drops its insistence that I first renounce my U.S. citizenship), my household-registration certificate would have “史偉凡” and could now also have some romanization. But … the romanization would have to be along the lines of Make Siwafo’erde.

What I could not have, according to the new regulations, would be either my original name or a romanization of my Mandarin name (i.e., neither “Mark Swofford” nor “Shi Weifan” would be permitted). Instead, I’d have to use a romanization of a Sinicized form of my original name (Make Siwafo’erde).

This is, well, rather odd. But I called the Ministry of the Interior and received confirmation. Apparently it’s part of the Legislative Yuan’s idea of helping Taiwan’s internationalization. I suppose this is a half step forward. Before the change, the only thing allowed would have been a name in Chinese characters and only Chinese characters.

source: Ministry changes name regulations for naturalization, Taipei Times, July 9, 2009