Zhuyin

A few were made by adding additional strokes, for example:

A few are virtually identical to Chinese characters still in use, for example:

Many are nearly entirely identical to radicalss with the same sounds, for example:

Other symbols, mostly vowel symbols, are based entirely or partly on obsolete variants of characters, for example:

• ㄠ (ao) ← 么 (yāo); an entirely obsolete character, root of 麼

Uses

These phonetic symbols sometimes appear as ruby characters printed next to the Chinese characters in young children's books, and in editions of classical texts (which frequently use characters that appear at very low frequency rates in newspapers and other such daily fare). In advertisements, these phonetic symbols are sometimes used to write certain particles (e.g., ㄉ instead of 的); other than this, one seldom sees these symbols used in mass media adult publications except as a pronunciation guide (or index system) in dictionary entries. Bopomofo symbols are also mapped to the ordinary Roman character keyboard (1 = bo, q = po, a = mo, and so forth) used in one method for inputting Chinese text when using the computer.

Unlike pinyin, the sole purpose for zhuyin in elementary education is to teach Standard Mandarin pronunciation to children. Grade one textbooks of all subjects (including Mandarin) are entirely in zhuyin. After that year, Chinese character texts are given in annotated form. Around grade four, presence of zhuyin annotation is greatly reduced, remaining only in the new character section. School children learn the symbols so that they can decode pronunciations given in a Chinese dictionary, and also so that they can find how to write words for which they know only the sounds.

Pinyin, on the other hand, is dual-purpose. Besides being a pronunciation notation, pinyin is used widely in publications in mainland China. Some books from mainland China are published purely in pinyin with not even a single Chinese character. Those books are targeted to minority tribal groups or Westernersers who know spoken Mandarin but have not yet learned written Chinese characters.

Zhuyin will probably never replace Traditional Chinese just as hiragana has never replaced characters in Japanese texts even though substituting hiragana for characters is always an option. Not only are the characters valued for esthetic and other axiological reasons, but (once they have been learned) reading characters required fewer eye fixations and eliminates the ambiguities in any alphabetic or syllabic writing system caused by the immense number of homonyms in Chinese. (Reading Chinese in a phonetic representation is like trying to understand a spoken English sentence containing a string of homonyms such as: "For afore Forry called four 'Fores!'..." because almost any spelled-out "word" maps to more than one Chinese character. In English, we use different spellings of one sound such as "for" to differentiate the intended meanings. In zhuyin -- minus the word "called" -- that would look something like the following ㄈㄡㄦ ㄚㄈㄡㄦㄈㄡㄦㄧ... ㄈㄡㄦ ㄈㄡㄦㄗ.)

Zhuyin is also used to write some of the aboriginal languages of Taiwan. For these it is a primary writing system, not an ancillary system as it is for Chinese.

Writing

Zhuyin symbols are written like Chinese characters, including the general order of strokes and positioning. They are always placed to the right of the Chinese characters, whether the characters are arranged vertically or horizontally. Technically, these are Ruby characters. Very rarely do they appear on top of Chinese characters when written horizontally as furigana would be written above kanji in a Japanese text. Because a syllable block contains usually two or three Zhuyin symbols (which themselves fit in a square format) stacked on top of each other, the blocks are rectangular.

The tone marks are similar to the later developed Pinyin tone symbols, except that the first tone has no symbolization at all, and the neutral tone appears as a black dot. The neutral dot is the only mark to be placed on top of the vertical Zhuyin syllable block, the remaining three are in a vertical strip to the right of the character.

The tone marks are sometimes given in Regular Script style, matching the associated Chinese characters, and have the same basic shape as do those of the pinyin tone symbols. However, they vary in detail. The thickened end of Zhuyin's second (rising) tone is always at the lower left, whereas the second tone mark in the pinyin system is a straight line of uniform width. The third tone mark displays the greatest variation.

Zhuyin's tone symbolization was used in the ROC-sponsored romanizations created by the Mandarin Promotion Council. The tone symbols in that system were identical with the zhuyin tone symbols, except that they were not in Regular Style calligraphy, but in a Western font face and so resemble the tone symbols used in pinyin.

Zhuyin vs. Tongyong Pinyin & Hanyu Pinyin

【】represents the form used in combination with other symbols.

Dialect letters used to write sounds not found in Standard Mandarin (not many web browsers can display these glyphs, see #External links for PDF pictures.)
The table should be read left-to-right, row-by-row, not column-by-column.

Char	Name		Char	Name		Char	Name
ㄪ	V		ㄫ	Ng		ㄬ	Gn

Extended Bopomofo for Min-nan and Hakka

Char	Name		Char	Name		Char	Name		Char	Name
ㆠ	Bu		ㆦ	Oo		ㆬ	Im		ㆲ	Ong
ㆡ	Zi		ㆧ	Onn		ㆭ	Ngg		ㆳ	Innn
ㆢ	Ji		ㆨ	Ir		ㆮ	Ainn		ㆴ	Final P
ㆣ	Gu		ㆩ	Ann		ㆯ	Aunn		ㆵ	Final T
ㆤ	Ee		ㆪ	Inn		ㆰ	Am		ㆶ	Final K
ㆥ	Enn		ㆫ	Unn		ㆱ	Om		ㆷ	Final H

See also

External links