Don’t you mean Tan-Shui? 
[/quote]
Or Tamsui?
Don’t you mean Tan-Shui? [/quote]
Pu hao i szu!
holds gun to head, hands trembling
Personally I have two standards (where I even have a choice) - if it’s for information, I use HYPY; if it’s more meant to look pretty, Wade-Giles.
Personally I have two standards (where I even have a choice) - if it’s for information, I use HYPY; if it’s more meant to look pretty, Wade-Giles.[/quote]
Off-topic, but where the hell have you been? And welcome back!
Having more than one standard is the primary problem, though.
:s
Okay if that’s the case then indeed nothing I am arguing holds water. If you want a general romanization system that doesn’t apply to just one western language then indeed the letters you choose are almost arbitrary.[/quote]
If you’re looking for a romanization scheme that comes closest to English, then Mandarin Phonetic Symbols II (MPS II) would be my pick and as noted earlier, my preferred scheme.[/quote]Thanks for the link. I’ve been to Cranky’s site a few times, but hadn’t noticed that page.
Yes, for me, either MPS II or Yale would be ideal in a perfect world. Those who talk about the odd letters of Hanyu Pinyin not mattering at all, and who point out the use of those letters in other European languages, are being a little disingenuous in my opinion. Yes, of course, Mandarin is not English and we should not attempt to pronounce it as such. But why on earth not have a system that is reasonably close to English in its phonemic representation? English is the global lingua franca, after all. Why not use an accurate phonemic transcription system that also helps non-Mandarin speakers make themselves understood when using phrasebooks, maps, street signs and pronouncing names in Mandarin?
And I feel that those who argue that a similarity to English is unhelpful should go the whole hog and use Zhuyin or smiley faces or something.
This is all in a perfect world, though. I agree with all the pragmatists who say we should use Hanyu Pinyin now as it’s the global standard. I just disagree with those who say that it’s the best possible system, or even that it’s as good as any other.
Well, Ｉfind the ch, k, t and so on of Wade Giles much more misleading than, say, the x and zh of HYPY, because 1) the unititiated are more likely to just read them for their western values, and 2) in some contexts when you don’t have enough info to know which system is being used, they will mislead the initiated as well. With x and zh of HYPY, when you see them you know what system is being used (again, for the initiated).
Ok, but the vowels of Mandarin are too far from English for such a system to work. You might as well start with Spanish. So where does that lead us? Dunjua North Road, anyone? 
You know, I can’t remember anyone saying it’s the best possible system. I’m a strong proponent of HYPY, but I’d trade in a few of the consonants if I had my druthers.
Well, Ｉfind the ch, k, t and so on of Wade Giles much more misleading than, say, the x and zh of HYPY, because 1) the unititiated are more likely to just read them for their western values, and 2) in some contexts when you don’t have enough info to know which system is being used, they will mislead the initiated as well. With x and zh of HYPY, when you see them you know what system is being used (again, for the initiated). [/quote]I’m saying that Yale and MPSII are the best systems in this regard.
Ok, but the vowels of Mandarin are too far from English for such a system to work. You might as well start with Spanish. So where does that lead us? Dunjua North Road, anyone? [/quote]Yale and MPSII are closer to English than Hanyu Pinyin is, do you agree? And Spanish, while very widely spoken, is not really a global lingua franca.
[quote=“Dragonbones”]You know, I can’t remember anyone saying it’s the best possible system.[/quote]I seem to remember quite a few people saying that, over my four years on Forumosa.
[quote=“Dragonbones”]I’m a strong proponent of HYPY, but I’d trade in a few of the consonants if I had my druthers.[/quote]Yeah, I propone HYPY too , but my druthers are for Yale or MPSII. I think an opportunity was missed here. All the Western universities were using Yale, and Taiwan could have been a bastion of really sensible Romanization by continuing to use the same system.
I think of HYPY as the Microsoft Windows of romanization schemes. Yes, there are better technical alternatives but because it’s so widely used, resistance is futile.
Well, Ｉfind the ch, k, t and so on of Wade Giles much more misleading than, say, the x and zh of HYPY, because 1) the unititiated are more likely to just read them for their western values, and 2) in some contexts when you don’t have enough info to know which system is being used, they will mislead the initiated as well. With x and zh of HYPY, when you see them you know what system is being used (again, for the initiated). [/quote]I’m saying that Yale and MPSII are the best systems in this regard.[/quote]
Agree on Yale and MPS II, although I prefer MPS II over Yale. MPS II avoids Yale constructs like “lwo” for “luo”, which is easier on the eyes of an English speaker.
DB, don’t you think properly written W-G is very easy to distinguish? It’s the only major system that uses the apostrophe. Not only that, the “ts”, “tz”, “ss” initials, when taken together, along with the “eh” final also point to the system being W-G.
If you want the uninitiated to avoid reading them for their western values, then you should suggest that they use zhuyin (or should that be juyin ) exclusively as a pronunciation tool. In fact, this is the very reason I teach my son zhuyin rather than any romanization scheme.
I do remember some suggesting that HYPY is the best, but I think the term was being used in a broader sense rather than strictly technical.
[quote=“sjcma”]If you want the uninitiated to avoid reading them for their western values, then you should suggest that they use zhuyin (or should that be juyin 
) exclusively as a pronunciation tool. In fact, this is the very reason I teach my son zhuyin rather than any romanization scheme.
[/quote]
HYPY or any other Romanization scheme is hardly intended for the “uninitiated”, and I can’t see why that should be any reason to adopt one or the other scheme.
Romanization or any writing system – particular that with a strong phonetic component, like Hanyu Pinyin – should be taught only after the student knows at least some of the language in question – that is, has the sounds already in his or her head. Same with reading: are we teaching reading or “decoding”? To give an example, first you familiarize the students with the sounds of the language using meaningful words, then you might use flashcards to teach them to identify those words they already know in written form. That way you are matching a visual form to a known sound, not inviting problems and practically guaranteeing interference from the native (or other already acquired) languages.
In this regard, it’s the same as giving a kid a French textbook and saying “Learn French”. He might come out with a fairly good reading knowledge of French, but his pronunciation will unavoidably be biased toward his native language (I’m assuming English for this example). The brain attempts to make sense of things using what resources it can find – in this case, whatever languages happen to be in there already. Do you blame the French use of the Roman alphabet for this? Or the French spelling system? Seems like you would be much more likely to ask how the person acquired his French and how long he had spent in a French-speaking environment (preferably early on in his French adventure).
Blaming Romanization conventions for poor foreign accent is just plain…well, I don’t want to get into personal attacks here.
ironlady, you have more academic background in this matter so I won’t get into a deep debate with you. I’m schooled in neither teaching nor linguistics so I simply do what makes sense to me intuitively, admitting of course, that my intuitive may be out to lunch.
If I understand you correctly, you advocate learning how to speak first before learning the writing system so accents will not be skewed by the common use of Roman characters.
In my son’s case, it is a moot point since his learning material is from Taiwan and thus, he has no choice but to know zhuyin. He also learned to read characters right off the bat without any phonetic aid whatsoever. It was only after I introduced children’s books to him with zhuyin did I embark on a side mission to teach this to him. In his particular situation, he was learning English phonetics a la phonics at the same time that he was learning Chinese phonetics. If both were to use Roman characters, wouldn’t it be more likely that he’ll cross-polinate the two and cause some initial confusion?
Sure, you can say that a kid learning French and English at the same time will face the same issues; however, there’s no alternative writing system for French or English. For Chinese phonetics, there is another option besides romanization schemes. Thus, my intuition tells me that eventually, kids will figure out how to differentiate sounds in different writing systems and thus, there is no real long term gain in terms of accent by using zhuyin over romanization. However, I do believe it helps in the short term in avoiding confusion.
What’s really confusing (to me at least) is some of the Mandarin material published by the overseas chinese office that have zhuyin on the side of the characters, tongyong beneath the characters, and then HYPY underneath the tongyong in cases where they differ. Ugh!!
Then what you’re saying is that your son is a native speaker of Chinese, and he’s just learning to read (one of) his native language(s)? That’s a completely different situation than a foreigner starting out with no knowledge of Chinese and getting sidetracked on accent because of overreliance on any phonetic scheme rather than hearing the sounds made correctly (or at least fairly close).
As for the learning English and Chinese phonics at the same time, there are plenty of kids who learn two Roman-alphabet languages simultaneously (for reading) and they manage just fine. It’s kind of the same argument as saying you should only speak one language to a child “so they won’t get confused”. Their brains sort things out just fine. For reading it usually comes down to which language the child has more opportunity to read stuff in, or other factors like motivation, group identity, and so on. I don’t see where there would be much problem. Anyway, English and Chinese phonics, in terms of reading, are used for completely different things. Even if your son learned HYPY, I can’t see him being sat down to read whole stories written in HYPY (being as how he is a native speaker, evidently). A student – maybe, because that would be a good way to get wider exposure to the language without the problem of characters not yet learned. But for a kid, HYPY or bopomofo would only be a crutch for those characters not yet learned, and – again – a reminder of a sound already known. The kid could probably flll in the blank if you just blanked all those words out, while a beginning student couldn’t.
One further consideration is that if he wants college credit for Chinese language anywhere else but Taiwan, he would probably have to demonstrate knowledge of HYPY. But there’s plenty of time for that. Fortunately it’s not one of those things where you have to play HYPY pronunciation tapes to your kid in the womb to ensure that they get into a good HYPY preschool…and so on. 
In a multi-language environment, what is considered one’s native language anyway? But to answer your question, ironlady, I have been speaking to my son in Mandarin in earnest starting around the age of 3 (he’s now 4.5). I’m the only one that speaks Mandarin to him besides his Saturday school Chinese teacher. His best language is Cantonese, which is what his mother speaks. So yes, he’s learning how to acquire reading skills in Mandarin Chinese at the same time as English (not a native language, yet). His kindergarten also teaches an hour of French a day but it’s only spoken and there’s no rigorous reading involved.
I understand your point in saying that a student of Mandarin may get “sidetracked on accent because of overreliance on [a] phonetic scheme”. Thus, it shouldn’t matter which phonetic system the student chooses be it a romanization scheme or zhuyin. In actual pratice, it may very well be the case that most students do fine distinguishing their own native language’s written phonetics against those of HYPY (to take an example). However, there are always those that don’t fit neatly into generalizations. Anecdotally, there have been a few on this forum that have indicated that their pronunciation improved when they made the switch from HYPY to zhuyin. I’m sure there are some folks out there that have such a strong auto-association of Roman characters with sounds in their native language that they find it difficult to attach any other sounds to these characters be it French, Spanish or HYPY. Thus, zhuyin may be a better way to go for those individuals. Could they have overcome it with more effort? A different way of learning? A better way of being taught? Maybe, but the fact that some have made more progress by switching to zhuyin indicates that a different script do have a practical advantage for those that need it.
I do plenty of hand waving generalizations as well but in the case of language acquisition, I do have a certain bias due to the failure of some of these generalizations in my son’s case. When we sent our son to Montessori at the age of 2, we relayed our concern to the school indicating that he did not know any English. We were assured by teacher after teacher that kids pick up languages like a sponge and in 3-4 months, he’ll be all caught up. All kids do, they told us. These reassurances continued when he turned 3 as he got a new Montessori teacher. Forward the clock another 12 months; he had turned four and had been in a English Montessori environment for 2 full years. He could not even string a simple sentence together such as “I want to drink water” or “I want to sit here”. During circle time when the teacher would read a story to the class, he would get up and wander around; he didn’t understand the story and he was bored. The fact that other foreign language speaking kids had progressed and thus fit the prophecies of these teachers was not exactly comforting to us, but rather made us all the more anxious. After 2 years in an English school, he was testing at the 0.7 percentile in English abilities. If you didn’t know that he could speak both Mandarin and Cantonese fluently, you would have rightly questioned his mental capacity. We’ve taken steps to rectify the situation and he’s now doing splendidly. I’m sure soon enough, we’ll be desperately trying to retrieve his Chinese in the dustbin of forgotten knowledge while English becomes his native tongue like almost all ABC/CBCs.
Am I just rambling here or do I have a point? I guess the point is that learning a new language is very individual and what works for most may not work for you. This includes the phonetic system you decide to use.
Getting college credits for knowing Chinese is the furthest thing from my mind. Besides, once you know one phonetic scheme, it’s a cinch learning other ones (unless it’s one of those tonal spelling schemes like Gwoyeu Romatzyh).
Actually, ‘a screwed up modified Wade-Giles’ is a more appropriate description. My wife’s name has the ‘g’ of a final ‘ng’ dropped, and has an Shu where WG would be Hsu with an umlaut, I think.
That is about how far 99% of Taiwanese have progressed in their understanding of romanization systems. They think Chinese is English if you spell it with abc.
We will do everybody a big favor if we argue for one standard system, Hanyu Pinyin. Language “works” because people just agree on things like the spelling of words. They accept standards. The more univerally recognized the standards are the more people can use them reliably to communicate.
It is an awkward phase just now with so many people having used the ol’ “hit and miss, choose any old letters to romanize a word” system, but that can be gotten over most easily if people recognize that a correct spelling for most names actually exists. If a word can be pronounced in Mandarin, it can be written in Pinyin.
That’s it. I find it amazing that there would be any discussion at all of this among western students of Chinese.
Writing pinyin with Wade-Giles is like learning a new language aswell as Chinese. Resulting in bastardised pronounciation of Chinese words for nigh on 100 years!
Using TongYong is the same but you have to acquire a Taiwanese accent.
HanYu we love you!
Has there been any discussions by the new government to get rid of Tongyong in favor of Hanyu Pinyin, or are they all too occupied with the Mainland tourist and direct links issues? To make those tourists feel more at home we could change “Road” on all road signs to “Lu”. How about that?
[quote=“headhonchoII”]Writing Pinyin with Wade-Giles is like learning a new language aswell as Chinese. Resulting in bastardised pronounciation of Chinese words for nigh on 100 years!
Using TongYong is the same but you have to acquire a Taiwanese accent.
HanYu we love you![/quote]
I don’t understand why so many foreigners are dead set against Tongyong pinyin. It actually corrects some of the problems with Hanyu - especially dealing with the ㄨ and ㄩ sounds. It is not a perfect system, but it is a valid and highly usable one.
While I prefer Tongyong, I would like to see one system consistently used through the country - either Hanyu or Tongyong. It would make life easier. Fortunately, I can read Chinese so I don’t have to worry about being confused by seeing the same place name spelt three or four different ways at the same intersection as sometimes happens here in Taichung.
That is what they do in China - or did when I lived there. I assume they haven’t changed.