Bopomofo, also called Zhuyin Fuhao ( ; ), or simply Zhuyin, is a transliteration system for Standard Chinese and other Sinitic languages. It is the principal method of teaching Mandarin pronunciation in Taiwan. It consists of 37 characters and five tone marks, which together can transcribe all possible sounds in Mandarin Chinese.
Bopomofo was first introduced in China during the 1910s by the Beiyang government, where it was used alongside Wade–Giles, a romanization system which used a modified Latin alphabet. Today, Bopomofo is more common in Taiwan than on the mainland, and is used as the primary electronic input method for Taiwanese Mandarin, as well as in dictionaries and other non-official documents.
Terminology Bopomofo is the name used for the system by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and Unicode. Analogous to how the word alphabet is derived from the names of the first two letters in the Greek alphabet, alpha and beta, the name bopomofo derives from the first four syllabographs in the system's conventional consonant order: , , , and .
In Taiwan, the system is commonly known by its official name , or simply as . In official documents, it is occasionally called Mandarin Phonetic Symbols I (), abbreviated as , to distinguish it from the Mandarin Phonetic Symbols II (MPS II) system published in 1984. Formerly, the system was named and .
History Origins
The Commission on the Unification of Pronunciation, led by Wu Zhihui from 1912 to 1913, created a system called Zhuyin Zimu, which was based on Zhang Binglin's shorthand. It was used as the official phonetic script to annotate the sounds of the characters in accordance with the Old National Pronunciation. A draft was released on 11 July 1913, by the Republic of China National Ministry of Education, but it was not officially proclaimed until 23 November 1928. It was first named 'national pronunciation alphabet', but in April 1930 was renamed 'phonetic symbols' to address fears that the alphabetic system might independently replace Chinese characters.John DeFrancis. The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1984. p. 242.
Modern use
Bopomofo is the predominant phonetic system in teaching reading and writing in elementary school in Taiwan. In elementary school, particularly in the lower years, Chinese characters in textbooks are often annotated with Bopomofo as ruby characters as an aid to learning. Additionally, one children's newspaper in Taiwan, the Mandarin Daily News, annotates all articles with Bopomofo ruby characters.
It is also the most popular way for Taiwanese to enter Chinese characters into computers and smartphones and to look up characters in a dictionary.
In teaching Mandarin, Taiwan institutions and some overseas communities, such as Filipino Chinese, use Bopomofo.
Bopomofo is shown in a position secondary to that of Hanyu Pinyin in all editions of Xiandai Hanyu Cidian from the 1960 edition to the current 2016 edition (7th edition).
Bopomofo is also used to transcribe other Chinese languages, most commonly Taiwanese Hokkien and Cantonese; however, its use can be applied to practically any variety in handwriting (because not all letters are encoded). Outside of Chinese, Bopomofo letters are also used in Hmu and Ge languages by a small number of Hmu Christians.
Symbols
The Bopomofo characters were created by Zhang Binglin, taken mainly from "regularized" forms of ancient Chinese characters, the modern readings of which contain the sound that each letter represents. The consonants are listed in order of place of articulation, from the front of the mouth to the back, , , , , , , , , etc.
Origin of bopomofo symbols
+ ConsonantsBopomofoOriginIPAPinyinWGExampleFrom , the ancient form and current top portion of , "to wrap up; package"bp From , a variant form of , "to knock lightly".ppʻ From , the archaic character and current "cover" radical .mm From the "right open box" radical .ff From , a simplification of , "ten thousand". No longer used in Mandarin transcription.v ()From , archaic form of , "blade". Compare the Shuowen seal .dt From , an upside-down form of and an ancient form of ( and in seal script)Wenlin dictionary, entry .KangXi: page 164, character 1 kangxizidian.comttʻ From /, ancient form of , "to be" (a copula in Classical Chinese).nn From , archaic form of , "power".ll From the obsolete character /, "ditch".gk From the archaic character, now "breath" or "sigh" component .kkʻ From , "towering". No longer used in Mandarin transcription.ngng ()From the archaic character and current radical .~hh From the archaic character .jch From the archaic character , graphic root of the character chuān, "river" (modern ).qchʻ From the archaic character , "dotted cliff". Not used in Mandarin anymore.gngn ()From , an ancient form of , "under".xhs From /, archaic form of , a genitive marker in Classical Chinese.zhi, zh-ch ; From the character and radical chi, ch-chʻ ; From , an ancient form of shi, sh-sh shì; shùModified from the seal script form of , "day" or "sun".~ri, r-j ; From the archaic character and current radical , dialectically (; in Wade–Giles)zi, z-ts ; From , archaic form of , dialectically (; in Wade–Giles). Compare semi-cursive form and seal-script .ci, c-tsʻ ; From the archaic character , which was later replaced by its compound .si, s-s ;
+ Rhymes and medialsBopomofoOriginIPAPinyinWGExampleFrom aa From the obsolete character , inhalation, the reverse of , which is preserved as a phonetic in the compound .oo Derived from its allophone in Standard Chinese, eo/ê From , "also". Compare the Warring States bamboo form -ie/êeh From , archaic form of .aiai From , an obsolete character meaning , "to move".eiei From aoao From ouou From the archaic character "to bloom", preserved as a phonetic in the compound anan From , archaic variant of or Wenlin dictionary, entry . ( is according to other sources)enên From angang From , archaic form of Wenlin dictionary, entry .engêng From , the bottom portion of used as a cursive and simplified formerêrh From , "one"y, yi, -ii ; nìFrom , ancient form of , "five". Compare the transitory form .w, wu, -uu/w ; ㄨㄛˇ From the ancient character yu, -ü ü/yü ; From the character . It represents the fricative vowel of ，，，，，，，though it is not used after them in transcription.Michael Everson, H. W. Ho, Andrew West, "Proposal to encode one Bopomofo character in the UCS ", SC2 WG2 N3179.~, ~-iih/ŭ ; ;
Writing
Stroke order Bopomofo is written in the same stroke order rule as Chinese characters. However, the number of strokes can differ from the derived character and the Bopomofo character. For example, is written with three strokes, unlike the character from which it is derived (), which has four strokes.
can be written as a vertical line () or a horizontal line (); both are accepted forms. Traditionally, it should be written as a horizontal line in vertical writing, and a vertical line in horizontal writing. The People's Republic of China almost exclusively uses horizontal writing, so the vertical form (in the rare occasion that Bopomofo is used) has become the standard form there. Language education in Taiwan generally uses vertical writing, so most people learn it as a horizontal line, and use a horizontal form even in horizontal writing. In 2008, the Taiwanese Ministry of Education decided that the primary form should always be the horizontal form, but that the vertical form is an accepted alternative. Unicode 8.0.0 published an errata in 2014 that updates the representative glyph to be the horizontal form.Unicode Consortium, "Errata Fixed in Unicode 8.0.0 " Computer fonts may only display one form or the other, or may be able to display both if the font is aware of changes needed for vertical writing.
Bopomofo is occasionally unofficially handwritten as syllable blocks, similar to Hangul, however this is not considered an accepted form by the People's Republic of China nor the Republic of China, and it is unsupported by Unicode.
Tonal marks
As shown in the following table, tone marks for the second, third, and fourth tones are shared between bopomofo and pinyin. In bopomofo, the mark for first tone is usually omitted but can be included, while a dot above indicates the fifth tone (also known as the neutral tone). In pinyin, a macron (overbar) indicates the first tone, and the lack of a marker usually indicates the fifth (light) tone.
Tone Bopomofo Pinyin Tone Marker Unicode Name Tone Marker Unicode Name 1 ˉ Modifier Letter Macron(usually omitted) Combining Macron 2 ˊ Modifier Letter Acute Accent Combining Acute Accent 3 ˇ Caron Combining Caron 4 ˋ Modifier Letter Grave Accent Combining Grave Accent 5 ˙ Dot Above Middle Dot(usually omitted)The middle dot may optionally precede light-tone syllables only in reference books (), see section 7.3 of the PRC national standard GB/T 16159-2012 Basic rules of the Chinese phonetic alphabet orthography.
Unlike Hanyu Pinyin, Bopomofo aligns well with the Chinese characters in books whose texts are printed vertically, making Bopomofo better suited for annotating the pronunciation of vertically oriented Chinese text.
When used in conjunction with Chinese characters, Bopomofo is typically placed to the right of the Chinese character vertically in both vertical print and horizontal print or to the top of the Chinese character in horizontal print (see Ruby characters).
Example
Below is an example for the word "bottle" ():
, or
Erhua transcription Words rhotacized as a result of erhua are spelled with attached to the syllable (like ). In case the syllable uses other tones than the 1st tone, the tone mark is attached to the penultimate letter standing for syllable nucleus, but not to (e.g. ; ; ).
Comparison
Pinyin Bopomofo and pinyin are based on the same Mandarin pronunciations; hence there is a one-to-one correspondence between the two systems:
+ IPA and pinyin counterparts of Bopomofo finals Rime ㄚ ㄛ ㄜ ㄝ ㄞ ㄟ ㄠ ㄡ ㄢ ㄣ ㄤ ㄥ ㄦ Medial () 1-i a-a 3o-o 3 e-e ê ai-ai ei-ei ao-ao ou-ou an-an en-en ang-ang eng-eng er yi-i ya-ia yo ye-ie yai yao-iao you-iu yan-ian yin-in yang-iang ying-ing wu-u wa-ua 3wo-uo 3 wai-uai wei-ui wan-uan wen-un wang-uang weng-ong 4 yu-ü 2 yue-üe 2 yuan-üan 2 yun-ün 2 yong-iong
1 Not written.
2 is written as after , , , or .
3 / is written as / after /, /, /, /.
4 is pronounced (written as ) when it follows an initial.
Chart
Use outside Standard Mandarin Bopomofo symbols for non-Mandarin Chinese varieties are added to Unicode in the Bopomofo Extended block.
Three letters no longer used for Mandarin are carried over from Old National Pronunciation:
BopomofoIPAGRPinyinvvngnggngn
Taiwanese Hokkien
In Taiwan, Bopomofo is used to teach Taiwanese Hokkien, and it is also used to transcribe it phonetically in contexts such as on storefront signs, karaoke lyrics, and film subtitles.
23 more letters were added specifically for Taiwanese Hokkien: BopomofoIPATLDerivationb with voicing circleg with voicing circleji with voicing circlej with voicing circleir and combined (?)oofrom efrom ann with nasal curlonn with nasal curlenn with nasal curl/inn with nasal curlunn with nasal curlainn with nasal curlaunn with nasal curlam and combinedom and combinedongm with syllabic strokeng with syllabic stroke -psmall -tsmall / -ksmall (and variant small ) -hsmall Two tone marks were added for the additional tones: ,
Cantonese
The following letters are used in Cantonese.
BopomofoIPAJyutpinggwkweoa
If a syllable ends with a consonant other than or , the consonant's letter is added, then followed by a final middle dot.
is used for () (e.g. , , "to be defeated").
is used for () (e.g. , , "to follow"), and is used for () (e.g. , , "within"). Other vowels that end with use · for the final . (e.g. , , "to see").