Today’s selection from Yin Binyong’s Xīnhuá Pīnxiě Cídiǎn (《新华拼写词典》 / 《新華拼寫詞典》) deals with how to write Mandarin’s various de‘s, mood particles, and interjections.
This reading is available in two versions:
I’ve already written about the principles in previous posts. For example, see
Today’s selection from Yin Binyong’s Xīnhuá Pīnxiě Cídiǎn (《新华拼写词典》 / 《新華拼寫詞典》) is about writing numbers and measure words.
This reading is available in two versions:
For more on this, see these posts and the PDFs linked to therein.
Here’s the first of several selected readings from Yin Binyong’s Xīnhuá Pīnxiě Cídiǎn (《新华拼写词典》 / 《新華拼寫詞典》). It covers the writing of verbs.
This reading is available in two versions:
For those who would like to read about this in English, see
Xīnhuá Pīnxiě Cídiǎn (《新华拼写词典》 / 《新華拼寫詞典》), is the second of Yin Binyong’s two books on Pinyin orthography. The first, Chinese Romanization: Pronunciation and Orthography, is in English and Mandarin; much of it is already available here on Pinyin.Info.
Although Xinhua Pinxie Cidian is only in Mandarin, the large number of examples makes it easy to get the point even if you may not read Mandarin in Chinese characters very well.
This week I will begin posting some excerpts from this invaluable work. What’s more, I have made a version in traditional Chinese characters, which I hope that readers in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and elsewhere will take advantage of. So those not used to reading simplified Chinese characters will have a choice (which is more than the government of Taiwan is providing these days).
I’m extremely happy to be able to bring you this information and wish to acknowledge the generosity of the Commercial Press. Stay tuned.
About a year ago (which is roughly how overdue this post is), a commenter noted that some Chinese publishers “are convinced that Pinyin must be printed with ɑ (single-story „Latin alpha“, as opposed to double-story a), and with ɡ (single story; not double story g).”
But does Hanyu Pinyin in fact call for this longstanding Chinese habit of bad typography? This was one of the first questions I asked of Zhou Youguang, the father of Hanyu Pinyin, when I met with him: Are those who insist upon the ɑ-style letter correct?
“Oh, no,” Zhou replied. “That ‘ɑ’ is just for babies!” And he laughed that wonderful laugh of his that no doubt has contributed to his remarkable longevity.
Zhou was referring to the facts that the “ɑ” style of letter is usually found specifically in books for infants … and that this style generally does not belong elsewhere. In fact, ɑ and ɡ (written thusly, as opposed to g) are often referred to as infant characters. A variant of the letter y is sometimes included in this set.
Letters in that style are also found in the West — but almost always in books for toddlers, and often not even in those. Furthermore, even in those cases the use of such letters appears to have no positive effect on children’s reading.
The correct-style letters for Pinyin are the same as those for English, Zhou stated.
I hope that anyone who has been using “ɑ” will both officially and in practice switch to “a”. It’s long past time that the supposed rule calling for “ɑ” was treated as a dead letter.
Long live good typography!
Arrr! 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:
Today’s selection from Yin Binyong’s Chinese Romanization: Pronunciation and Orthography is onomatopoeic words (340 KB PDF).
Yin Binyong makes a distinction between onomatopoeic words that originate in Literary Sinitic (which thus generally have fixed forms in Chinese characters) and those from Modern Mandarin. The former can be written with tone marks, the latter aren’t.
In practice that distinction may well be more trouble than it’s worth. But I was happy to learn a new expression from his examples: shūshēnglǎnglǎng (the sound of reading aloud), which YBY writes as two words and the ABC Chinese-English Comprehensive Dictionary writes solid.
OK, for some niceties and examples:
Some of these words can be stretched out for auditory effect; to express this lengthening in writing, a dash is added after the syllable:
- Du — , qìdi xiǎng le. (Toot went the steam whistle.)
- Dà gōngjī, o — o — tí. (The rooster crowed cock-a-doodle-do.)
Reduplication is of course quite common in Mandarin.
All of those could also be written tripled instead of doubled, e.g., wangwangwang, miaomiaomiao, hahaha.
Yin provides some orthographic rules based on the patterns of the onomatopoeic words. The sound of a ticking clock, for example, could take various forms, such as
Note spacing, hyphens, and lack thereof. See the PDF for all the details.
Still, don’t sweat the stylistic niceties of these too much. It’s onomatopoeia, so have fun!
further reading:
Today’s post is on the “mood particles” of Mandarin (426 KB PDF), e.g., a, ba, la, ma, ne.
Mood-indicating particles are used to add various moods, spirits and tones to an utterance. “Mood” includes such diverse qualities as interrogation, request, command, emphasis, and exclamation. Some Chinese grammatologists classify mood particles as an independent part of speech, calling them “mood words.” Two distinctive features of mood particles are their position, typically at the end of a sentence or phrase, and their tone — they are usually read in the neutral tone. (In Hanyu Pinyin, consequently, they are never marked with tones.) The intonation of a sentence, which in Putonghua usually rests largely on the final syllable of an utterance, is in the case of a particle-final sentence transferred to the penultimate syllable. Mood particles are always written separately, from other components of a sentence.
Again: They’re always written separately and never with tone marks. So the orthography of these is easy.
OK, well, maybe the orthography is a little trickier than that. First, the examples give “bàle” (罷了/罢了), which sure looks to me like it has a tone mark. And then there’s the case of “a” (啊), which is an extremely common particle “used to express emotion, affirmation, interrogation, and other moods.”
In speech, its pronunciation is partially determined by the final of the syllable preceding it. After -a, -e, -i, -o, or -ü, a 啊 is pronounced “ya” 呀; after -u, “wa” 哇; and after -n, “na” 哪. These different pronunciations are conventionally represented by the different characters seen here; in Hanyu Pinyin, however, a single “a” is used to represent them all.
That certainly complicates matters if you’re trying to get a Chinese-characters-to-Pinyin converter to work properly. Note that when Yin Binyong is writing above about finals, he’s referring to sounds, not spellings. Thus, what’s written “hǎo a” is pronounced “hǎo wa,” not “hǎo ya” (and not “hǎo a” either, of course). If you’re still wondering about this, say –ao very slowly to notice the -u final. (Y.R. Chao and George Kennedy had good reasons for choosing -au in their romanization systems rather for what is -ao in Hanyu Pinyin.) Also, the distinction between a/ya isn’t absolute.
But the practice of just using “a” makes life easy if you’re writing something in Pinyin, which I’m grateful for, given that particles are, for people trying to learn how to employ them, zhēn de hǎo máfan a! So beginning and intermediate students of Mandarin should definitely read this selection.