Is there a website where I can find the bopomofo characters and translations. How many are there in total? I think there are 37. My friend wrote them down for me but I only count 33. She said she wrote them in order, like our ABCs. Where it stops is: chr, shr, ___, ___, ___, ___, ee, oo, etc… Does anyone know what those 4 missing ones are?
Thanks.
The 1st link talks about non-Zhuyin characters used to denote Min, Hakka and other dialects…
帀
What’s a retroflex i? What dialect uses it, and can someone try to describe how it’s pronounced?
I’m not 100% sure, but I think it’s the “i” in zhi/chi/shi when properly pronounced.
Yes, there are 37. Try this URL. There’s lots of information at this site.
I’m not sure about retroflex but I think it is when the tongue is constricted backward, like indeed with “zhi”, and also with “ri” (day) for instance. But a retroflex “i”? Maybe that’s Hakka?
Most Chinese-English dictionaries give BoPoMoFo plus guoyin or pinyin, and have also correspondance tables. The Far East one does.
EB
I’m pretty sure Hakka has no (or very few) retroflexes. That’s almost definitely the ‘i’ final in zhi/chi/shi/ri in Mandarin.
You are right, I found this discussion on the topic …
http://leoboard.cpatch.org/cgi-bin/topic.cgi?forum=23&topic=52&replynum=last
So it seems that 帀 is the missing zhuyin fuhao, the “38th” bopomofo symbol. It’s not really correct to call it the “retroflex i”, 'cause it also appears in the non-retroflex syllables zi, ci ,si. This final doesn’t have a sound on its own, so it’s similar to the “schwa” sound in English, which is sometimes denoted with a * or with an upsidedown e. I guess we could call it “Chinese schwa”. (I’m curious what it’s called in Chinese).
Pinyin uses the letter i to represent it, which fits with our sense of order, that each syllable should have at least one vowel. The bopomofo people, however, decided to drop it, which fits with the Chinese tendency to shorten their script whenever possible.
I’ve tried and just don’t know how to pronounce this:
Um, can’t you ask your friend who wrote down the Zhuyin?
[quote=“the_p0et”]I’ve tried and just don’t know how to pronounce this:
[quote=“mangalica”][quote=“the_p0et”]I’ve tried and just don’t know how to pronounce this:
For the umlaut U, think of the way Inspector Clouseau (in the Pink Panther movies) says “phone”. Remember “The pheun is rrrrringing.”? His “o” sound is a pretty good place to start if you’re a native English speaker who can’t seem to make the leap from chu to qu.
You probably don’t speak French, but the eu sound is also a good place to start. As in jeu or feu.
When asking my girl and her brother about pronunciation in the Bo Po Mo Fo, they looked me strange and said they learned it as Ba Pa Ma Fa. Is there a difference? One better then the other?
Most keyboards have bopomofo on them, and handily they are arranged in the correct groups of three or four, plus the “finals” (vowel or vowel+n).
Frost,
Indeed, if you were to say Bo as in Bo Peep, it would sound strange to Taiwanese ears. Soften that o sound, and it’s a pretty good approximation.
But listen to your wife and mother in law.
Basically, 23 million Taiwanese can’t be wrong about zhuyinfuhao (Bopomofo by another name).
There is no “other”. I can only assume you were massacaring the pronunciation 
Some pronounce it “be pe me fe” while others say “bo po mo fo” (that’s the Hanyu Pinyin “e” and “o” sounds, not English). Perhaps you heard them saying “be pe me fe”.
bo po mo fo/be pe me fe/ba pa ma fo…arrggghh!!! Anyone else find this hard when you first started learning and thought to yourself “I am never gonna be able to do this” I feel that way alot, lol! Anyone got stories to share about their beginnings into the life of another language? Funny stories on how you screwed up, or what point did you finally realize you were making great progress?
Well, don’t be too embarrassed to use a children’s CD to learn something.
A double CD set (cassettes available, too) produced by You4 Fu2* will give you a working knowledge of bopomofo quickly (mastering comes later). The CD set is called, simply, “Bo Po Mo Fo Jiao4xue2 (C1 & C2)”. They’re available at any place that sales bargain CDs. The total cost might be around $50 ~ 90NT for each CD.
*The You4 Fu2 logo (“you4” as in “you4 zhi4 yuan2”; “fu2” as in “fu2 yin1” <- if you know the characters) is a boy wearing a cap enclosed in a red square. It’ll be somewhere on the front.
The CDs begin with a short song whose words are only the sounds of the 37 phonetic symbols. You should be able to memorize the song after 3 sittings.
What’s even better is that inside the CD cover there is a chart of the 37 symbols and also a general guide on how to make the sounds.
Although some people think learning the 37 phonetic symbols is useless in light of pinyin, I found it to be a nice additional tool while learning Chinese - and if you can write it you’ll surprise - maybe even shock - some Taiwanese. 