15
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 using many symbols, or perhaps more commonly, each symbol is used to represent more than one sound. There are countless examples of this in other languages, of ...
15
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, there is (almost) no overlap between these two spellings, so any given initial that can be followed by -uo can never be followed by -o and vice versa.
The actual ...
13
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 initial+final+tone combination is enough for you, the answer is rather easy: we can cross-reference the pinyin and tone combinations with a list of character ...
12
Dictionaries, in general, will not incorporate tone sandhi rules into their pronunciations (of which Mandarin has quite a few)
Wikipedia says the following:
Mandarin Chinese
Mandarin features several sandhi tone rules.
When there are two 3rd tones in a row, the first one becomes 2nd tone,
and the second one becomes a half-3rd tone. E.g. 你好 (nǐ + hǎo = ní
...
12
/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 ever saw the 马蜂窝 commercial that aired, ever single night, during the World Cup, you'd certainly notice that 唐僧's "为" is very /v/'d.
You can also refer ...
11
The correct one should be bu2 zai4 hu. Unless there is an emphasis for "NOT" CARE, a 4th tone bu4 is then used, but I rarely hear that as a native speaker.
Let's review the tone change rule for 不，
A second tone bu2 is used only when the tone of next character is a 4th tone, i.e. bu2 shi4.
A forth tone bu4 is used if the tone of next character is 1st, 2nd ...
11
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 below). They are spelled differently when there is no initial consonant in order to mark a new syllable: fanguan is fan-guan, while fangwan is fang-wan (and ...
10
It seems that Pinyin does this to conform to a former phonetic transcription system 注音符号, which drops u (ㄨ) before o (ㄛ) after b p m f.
注音符号 was originally designed to reflect some old (perhaps not even real) phonetic rules and symbols like uo (ㄨㄛ) uan (ㄨㄢ) were used. However, in most Chinese dialects there's no contrast between rounded and unrounded vowels ...
10
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 depend on the programming languages you know, the quality of the library and the licence under which it is available. If you need a user interface, you should ...
10
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 romanization so it shows up in a lot of older Chinese names like "Chiang Ching-kuo".
Pinyin has its own disadvantages, especially when spoken by English speakers. ...
9
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 = ǚ
v+4 = ǜ
v+5 = ü
8
In standard Mandarin, the pinyin h is pronounced as [x] in IPA, like ch in Scottish English loch -- yes, you're right that there's a tiny g, because [x] is a velar consonant. However, in south China, many simply say [h], although some natural assimilation may happen. For instance, for those speakers, pinyin ha is [ha] while pinyin he becomes [xɤ] (if you get ...
8
nvren
'v' replaces 'ü' in Chinese input.
8
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 (93), yu (90),
fu (73),
zhi (72),
li (71),
qi (66),
yuan (64),
xi (64),
jian (61),
shi (58),
wu (55),
wei (53),
ju (51), pi (51）
Tones distribution should be ...
7
There is no radical, but the left part of 那 can be
冄 rǎn (the same as 冉)
U+5184
Seal Script
That's because in the seal script, 那 is written as
The left part is 冄, and the right part (radical) is 邑. So in 說文解字, it is described as
从邑，冄聲。
But it is better not to call 冄 a "radical", because modern dictionaries and older dictionaries haven't ...
7
All the consonants in the first group are bilabials (articulated with the two lips).
The reason can't be phonemic, since there are no such Pinyin syllables *do, *so, *lo etc. -- as you correctly note Pinyin could be simplified by replacing all -uo syllables with -o.
I expect the reason for the spelling is perceptual -- from the perspective of phonetics, ...
7
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 what's correct in English. However, 成语 is so special that it has individual chapters for it:
结构上可以分为两个双音节的，中间加连接号。 例如： fēnɡpínɡ-lànɡjìnɡ（风平浪静） àizēnɡ-fēnmínɡ（...
7
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 English? Many people pronounce "etc." as "and so on", "i.e." as "that is", "e.g." as "for example". Traditionally, the function of 训读 in Chinese is to make ...
7
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 wonderful music instead of fake music.
So, it depends on the whole story.
'梦幻情缘' may be a beautiful love when the story is real and good.
7
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 -uan, this final behaves differently when prefaced with the initials y-, j-, q-, and x-. As a general rule, -u, -ue, -uan, and -un behave differently when ...
6
It's Mandarin transliteration by Portuguese Jesuit Fr. Inácio da Costa (17th century).
Partial text:
“大学之道，在明明德，在亲民，在止于至善”
Ta hio chi dao, cai min min te, cai cin min, cai chi yu chi xen
6
I think I know one.
扥
dèn
This means "pull with a little brutal force".
6
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 vertical text Chinese as is printed commonly in Taiwan and elsewhere, and suspect Zhuyin/bopomofo/bpmf would be more popular in those regions due to the better ...
6
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 characters have multiple pronunciations).
For example, as you know, 馬 is generally pronounced ma3.
However, ma3 could also reference the characters 碼 (number), or 獁 (...
6
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 a spelling (phonetic) method, not character based. Blind Chinese students are not taught regular character forms. Braille in Taiwan is basically zhuyinfuhao; ...
6
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 are written is just a very small part of it. Even if there was a difference between systems, it would probably drown in other factors.
The question of tonal ...
6
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 textbooks, dictionaries and other learning materials; some of them were entirely in Chinese, others were for native speakers of English, German, French or Dutch. ...
6
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, "\" to represent 4th tone.
I honestly don't remember the entire install process, but I give an outline as best as I can remember (but I may be wrong in some ...
5
Here are my two favorite browser-based pinyin cheat-sheets:
https://chinese.yabla.com/chinese-pinyin-chart.php
http://www.quickmandarin.com/chinesepinyintable/pinyintable_vertical.php
Whereas the site linked to in the currently top-ranked answer (lost-theory.org - a nice, new find for me, BTW) uses big, lossless .wav files (which also unfortunately seem to ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible