16
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Why is the Pinyin for 波 bo1 not buo1? And why is 多 duo1 instead of do1?
For all practical purposes, you can think of this as a spelling convention. The finals are pronounced the same, even if all finals are to some extent influenced by the preceding initial.
In Pinyin, ...
- 3,000
14
votes
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Why e is pronounced differently in de (的, 地) and ye (也,夜)?
Systems designed to represent pronunciation and to be practical at the same time don't have a 1:1 mapping between spoken sounds and written symbols. Or in other words, each sound can be represented ...
- 3,000
13
votes
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What are the most common Mandarin words for each pinyin syllable?
After a bit of searching I could not find a proper resource to answer this question, so I started compiling compiled a comprehensive list by hand.
Since you say that the most common character for each ...
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11
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Yinwei or Yinvei? 因为
/v/ is not an initial found in MSM.
The initial /v/, though, is often found in Northern Mandarin and its branches. In fact, it can still be found, even, in distant branches like Sichuanese.
If you ...
Mou某♦
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11
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Why the pinyin of 鱼 is yú instead of ǘ?
Under the section Pronunciation of initials for the pinyin page on Wikipedia there is the following:
Note on y and w
Y and w are equivalent to the semivowel medials i, u, and ü (see ...
Mou某♦
- 35.1k
10
votes
API for transliterating a traditional character (writing the pinyin)?
There are several libraries for converting Chinese characters to pinyin. If you are comfortable with programming languages (which you probably are if you are asking for an API), your choice will ...
- 1,144
10
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Why is 台北 spelled Taipei, not Taibei?
From wiki: the spelling "Taipei" derives from the Wade–Giles romanization T'ai-pei. "Taibei" is pinyin, which iOS supports as an input method.
Wade-Giles used to be the standard method of ...
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9
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How to write characters containing the ǚ pinyin symbol in most common Chinese Input Methods?
As pinyin doesn't use the letter v, then words containing the u with umlaut can be written with v key, then combined with the number keys to get different tones.
For example:
v+1 = ǖ
v+2 = ǘ
v+3 = ...
- 645
8
votes
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8
votes
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The max number of characters that map to a single pronunciation
The Phonology of Standard Chinese by San Duanmu (端木三) has a list of the 15 most common syllables, followed by the number of different characters pronounced that way, not including tones.
yi (106)，ji (...
- 180
8
votes
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On Linux, how do I output Chinese Characters (not pinyin) using tones in the input
Try using Terra-Pinyin (地球拼音) which runs on rime (中州韻) which runs on either ibus or fcitx. It allows you to input using "-" to represent 1st tone, "/" to represent 2nd tone, ">" to represent 3rd tone, ...
- 211
8
votes
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-uan pinyin pronunciation
There are several cases in Mandarin of multiple sounds sharing the same symbols in Pinyin, such as -uan as you've noticed, as well as -i which has multiple sounds associated with it. In the case of -...
- 1,482
7
votes
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Zhuyin (bopomofo) vs Pinyin
Zhuyin is commonly encountered in Taiwan and Taiwan-centric overseas communities. Not sure about its prevalence in other overseas communities a la Singapore, but I've found zhuyin easier to use with ...
- 1,949
7
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What is the Socio-linguistic Function of Mixing Pinyin and Characters Together By Adult Native Chinese Writers?
The 训读 (this jargon comes from Japanese) phenomenon is rare in Chinese, but it does exist, e.g. 廿 may be pronounced as èr shí (二十), 圕 as tú shū guǎn (图书馆), 哩 as yīng lǐ (英里). Doesn't that happen in ...
- 6,043
7
votes
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Should names in idiomatic expressions be capitalised?
Pinyin is never an established written language. We have a standard, 《汉语拼音正词法基本规则》, but no one actually bothered to learn it. In short, it treats pinyin as if it is a romanized language. You follow ...
- 4,522
7
votes
What does this mean in English, very few words (Screenshot inside)?
illusional romance
梦幻：梦是睡觉时的妄想，幻是魔术师的表演。二个都是虚假的。
情缘：情通常指男女爱情，缘是缘分(the fate, the lot, the second cause)。
补充：
'梦幻' also means '美好的'(extraordinary, too good to be true)。
For example: 梦幻音乐。 It means ...
- 1,328
6
votes
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Braille and Chinese Input
I had a student in Taiwan who was blind, so I've had a chance to work with this.
There are articles on Chinese Braille in both the English and Chinese Wikipedias if you haven't read them yet. It is ...
- 4,335
6
votes
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Pinyin to Chinese characters
I suggest that you shouldn't do this.
Chinese characters cannot be faithfully constructed backwards from a tone+syllable combination -- the mapping only goes one way (and even then, sometimes ...
- 880
6
votes
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What are the advantages / disadvantages for learning tones with Pinyin vs with Gwoyeu Romatzyh?
In general, I think too much importance is ascribed to which transcription system is used. Students' ability to distinguish, pronounce and remember tones depends on many factors and the way the tones ...
- 3,000
6
votes
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Is Pinyin recommended for Mandarin Chinese?
Hanyu pinyin (or pinyin) is the de facto standard for transliteration of Standard Chinese, especially for materials using simplified Chinese characters. In the last ten years, I have used or browsed ...
- 1,144
6
votes
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Why does "Lüzhijiang" or "Lvzhijiang" Bridge (绿汁江大桥) look so strange to me?
"Lü" is the hanyu pinyin (汉语拼音，below abbreviated as pinyin) of 绿, and pinyin is the current standard way of romanizing mandarin Chinese。It's standard in the sense that it's the standard in ...
- 408
5
votes
Should Pinyin be written as it is (collectively) pronounced or in terms of the individual syllables?
I want to emphasize what @user3306356 says in a comment. Hanyu Pinyin (漢語拼音) is an officially established system and has explicit rules which you can see here. As @jdods remarks in a comment to this ...
- 3,261
5
votes
API for transliterating a traditional character (writing the pinyin)?
if you have programming knowledge, you may download the 國語辭典 (of taiwan), which is under creative commons 3.0
http://resources.publicense.moe.edu.tw/dict_reviseddict_download.html
basically, it's 3 ...
- 14k
5
votes
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How to enter pinyin itself under Windows?
Usual IME's won't have that feature... so I think you have two approaches here.
Use a special IME or IME scheme, for example 地球拼音 from 中州韵输入法引擎(RIME). Reference: this Chinese post
Type Chinese first, ...
- 369
5
votes
Can Chinese words start with a vowel?
There are some Mandarin Chinese Pinyin sequences which consistently start with a vowel. As mentioned in the comments, these have a Pinyin representation which starts with y or w:
義, Pinyin yì, IPA /i⁵...
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5
votes
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Can Chinese words start with a vowel?
The only cases I can think about are:
安 an
饿 e
耳 er
啊 a
o 哦
ou 欧
ai 爱
ao 奥
en 恩
All examples may have multiple cases under different tones
- 2,430
5
votes
Difference between j, q, x sounds and z, c, s sounds?
most of the time you don't need to distinguish them. JQX are always followed by i or ü, which never happens with ZCS. In fact, in many dialects, JQX are pronounced as ZCS. People will understand you ...
- 319
5
votes
What's the difference in pronunciation between "yo" and "you" in pinyin?
There is a difference.
唷 (Toneless IPA: /jɔ/) rhymes with 波. The rhyme is the open-mid back rounded vowel, and is the ough in American English thought.
優 (/joʊ̯/) rhymes with 秋. The rhyme is the ...
- 21.4k
5
votes
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Bù kèqi or Bú kèqi: In PinYin, do I write the fourth or second tone with 不客气?
That depends on why you are writing it. The standard, normal way of writing it is to disregard the changed tone and write the original tone, i.e. bù kèqi. The same goes for tone changes of 一 (yī). ...
- 3,000
5
votes
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What is this modified version of Hanyu Pinyin called?
Isn't this just an informal romanisation method to make it easier for Malay/Indonesian speakers?
In those languages:
c is pronounced /c/, so it can be used to approximate z/zh
k/t/p are unaspirated,...
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