Like stated above, Chinese is a tonale language. In modern Chinese, every syllable has four different tone pitches (sisheng 四聲):
high pitch (yinsheng 陰聲),
rising pitch (yangsheng 陽聲),
lower rising pitch (shangsheng 上聲), and
falling pitch (qusheng 去聲).
The quickly falling tone pitch (rusheng 入聲) that once marked a final voiceless stop, disappeared during the end of Song and the Yuan Dynasties. Finally, in two-syllable-words, the second syllable is sometimes unaccented, so to say a pitchless tone (lingsheng 零聲). In Cantonese exist eight different tone pitches: high, upper rising, upper falling, upper entering, low, lower rising, lower falling, and lower entering; in daily use they are reduced to six. The problem in reconstructing old Chinese language is that we do know how words were written, but because Chinese script is not a sound script (at least not in general) but a symbolic script, we do know nothing about the pronunciation of the old words. Only the researches of Bernard Karlgren (1889-1978) and E. G. Pulleyblank (* 1922) helped to reconstruct middle Chinese (Tang to Song Dynasties) and finally old and archaic Chinese. Both used the rime dictionaries of the Tang and Song Dynasties (Qieyun and Guangyun) and rime groups of the oldest poetry book, the Shijing. Frome these studies, we see that the final sound system of old Chinese was much more complex than today. While we have today only open syllables (without consonant: cha, ji, bo, dao) and the two finals -n (fan, lun, jin) and -ng (fang, cheng, qing). In old Chinese there were also finals like -l, -m, -g, -k, -t, and -p, in archaic Chinese even -gs. And there existed sound clusters at the begin of a syllable, like gl-, hl-, tr-, mj-, shw- and so on. Such a sound system makes old Chinese much more similar to Tibetian and Burmese. Compared to this, modern Chinese sounds quite crippled and oversimplified. Even at the begin of the 20th century, there existed not so much vowel-less syllables like in modern Chinese, like the seven syllables [d ][t][][],[dz][ts][s]. Syllables like [dzi] or [tsi] have died out. Southern dialects (or languages?) in China still show final consonants like -m, -p, -t and -k. Chinese loanwords in Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese show the vanished syllable endings. The Chinese loanword "law" (modern Chinese falü, old Chinese something like paplüet) in Korean is pôp, in Japanese a little bit forced to hôritsu, in Vietnamese turned around to luât pháp. Southern Chinese dialects like Cantonese still today show the ancient syllable endings: "law" in Cantonese is faatleuht. The simplification of the language was due to the central administration in a vast empire that allowed people to come around. Different dialects had to near each other and step by step threw away difficult sounds. The classical written language that had developed during the late Zhou and Han Dynasty, had the same importance like Latin in the West. Until the begin of the 20th century, all official documents, and even private essays and letters were written in a 2000 years old monosyllabic language, full of citings of the old books and writings. This language could only be used by scholars and well educated people. The literary form that first used the everyday language were the Yuan Dynasty theatre plays and Ming and Qing novels. Writers of the early 20th century fought for the introduction of everyday language (putonghua 普通話) into the literature. Today, only official letters and documents are written in classic language, but even newspapers and higher literature make use of the short and precise classical written language. People who know to write in classical Chinese (wenyan 文言) are esteemed highly.During the course of centuries, Chinese language did not only make itself free from a rich but complicated sound system, but the tone pitches assimilated in such a way that some sounds like [dji] or [u] can stand for more than one dozen words of very different meaning. In written language, there is no problem with homophony as every word or almost every word has only one character that can barely misunderstood. Reading alound a text in classical written language, the listeners are hardly able to understand a great part of the text.Measurements of the spoken language to encounter this homophony was the development of two-syllable words for nouns, verbs, adjectives and even for conjunctions. Today, most words in Chinese consist of two syllables, composed of two single words, like aiqing "love" from ai 愛 "love, affection" and qing 情 "feeling, sentiment, temperament". The classical word fang 方 can have the meanings of "direction" (modern: fangxiang 方向), "location" (difang 地方), "square" (fangxing 方形; fangmi 方米 fangzhang 铀ܐtion), "aspect, side, party" (fangmian 方面), "mode, manner" (fangshi 方式), "method" (fangfa 方法), "plan, concept" (fanglüe 方略), "stategy" (fangce 方策), "recipe" (fangji 方劑, fangzi 方子, fangr 方ㄦ, "occultism" (fangshu 方術, fangji 方技), "honest, upright" (fangzheng 方正), "just now" (fangcai 方才), and so on; to discern between the different meanings, two-syllable words came up (in brackets). Already in the oldest examples of Chinese literature, we find two-syllable words with rhyming or reduplication character, like yaotiao 窈窕 "lonely, pityful; honest", qingting 蜻蜓 "dragonfly", putao 葡萄 "grapes". Another method to enrich a word are suffixes, like the [dz] in [ba-dz] baozi 包子 "filled dumpling" and [i-dz] yizi 椅子 "chair", or the guttural [r] in [ta-r] char 茶ㄦ "tea" (in Peking dialect).Loanwords, New Words and Foreign NamesLike all people, the Chinese had an intensive contact with neighboring people. They adopted many words from the northern steppe people that used things the Chinese did not know. When the Chinese learned to know and to use these things, they also adopted the foreign word for these objects: 駱駝 lwaktuo "camel" or 酪 lwak "yoghurt" from the nomad people, 蜜 mjit "honey" and 獅子 shejshe "lion" from the Tocharians. Southern China was occupied 2500 years ago by Austro-Asiatic people, different from the Chinese in ethnic, cultural and linguistic means. Still today, south Chinese people look different from the northern people that were stongly mixed with the steppe peoples. But also the non-Chinese people of the south tributed their parts to Chinese language, especially to the southern dialects of Fujian province. In the official language, we find still today traces of the southern peoples' languages: 江 klang "stream, Yangtse river" or 虎 khla "tiger". Words that came with Buddhist religion were either transscribed with sounds (and their respective characters without taking their real meaning) or translated: the Buddhist term nirvâna is called in Chinese 涅磐 niepan (a crippled version of the Sanskrit word) or 寂 ji "serenity" or 智緣滅 zhiyuanmie "destroying the cause of awareness" or simply mie 滅. Even personal names of foreigners were sometimes translated by their meaning, like 竺法護 Zhufahu "Protecor of the Law" for the Indian monk translator Dharmaraksha (transcribed as 曇摩羅察 "Tanmoluoji").During the 19th century many Chinese went to Japan for educational purposes. Like in Europe where scholars created artificial Latin or Greek words, Japanese and Korean scholars created artificial Chinese words that came to China when the foreign Chinese students went back to their country. In our times, when hundreds of new words rush into China, there is also a need either to describe them with sounds or to translate them. Some loanwords use describing syllables that have also a meaning: 黑客 heike "black host = computer hacker", 雷射 leishe "thunder stroke = Laser". A very famous example of marketing is that of Coca-Cola company, in Chinese called 可口可勒 Kekou-kele "tasty and funny". Other examples are 跑車 paoche "racing car = Porsche" or the word for "taxi", 的士 dishi (Cantonese pronunciation: diksi) "targeting Sirs". Other characters of loanwords have no real meaning in that combination, like 考貝 kaobei "copy", 摩登 modeng "modern" or 克隆 kelong "clone". There are much more examples of translated words, for example 電腦 diannao "electric brain = computer" or 光碟 guangdie "gleaming disk = CD". Some items also show the possibility of both translating, like 擴音器 kuoyinqi "sound enlarging tool = microphone", and transscribing 麥克風 maikefeng, or 電子郵件 dianzi youjian "electronical mail" as a translation for e-mail, simply called yimeir 伊妹兒 following the sound of the English word. A special field of adopting loan words and even creating new characters, is the field of chemistry. 氨 an "ammonium" is described with the character for 氣 "gas, air" and the phonetic part 安 an. 碘 dian "iodine" with the radical for 石 "stone" and the phonetic part 典 dian. 汞 gong "quicksilver" is decribed as a liquid thing 水 "water" called 工 gong (from mercurium). 酯 zhi "esters" are described with a bottle 酉 and 旨 zhi "tasty, fragrant", because many esters have a very aromatic perfume. The word for "carbohydrate" 醣 tang (all kinds of sugar) is combined of a bottle 酉 and the abbreviated character and sound for 糖 tang "sugar".Foreign names cannot be translated but must be transscribed with characters that sound like the syllables of the foreign name: Bulaier 布萊爾 for Prime Minister Tony Blair. While there are great differences in how to transscribe a foreign name, the government of mainland China tries to standardize transscriptions. The Soviet ruler Stalin is transscribed in mainland China as 斯大林 Sidalin [sz-da-lin], in Taiwan as 思達林, with different characters. Countries are often abbreviated, like 阿美利加 Ameilijia (southern dialect pronunciation Ameliga) "America" to 美國 Meiguo "beautiful country". But there are examples of translated names like that of the city of San Francisco. During the gold rush, Chinese immigrants called this city 金山 Jinshan "Gold mountain".
Transcriptions: how to write down pronunciationThe old Chinese became aware of the sound system of their own language when they had to translate foreign words with a meaning that could not be expressed in Chinese: Buddhist terms. Dictionaries that tried to express pronunciation came up during the Tang Dynasty. They used the "reverse cutting" system (fanqie 反切), using the initial sound and the final sound of two words/characters to describe the sound of a word/character. For example: 他前切 [ta][tçin]qie "pronounced like [t-] and [-in] ([tjn])". Another possibility to express the pronunciation of a character was to cite a character with an identical pronunciation, like 薪讀若新 "xin (firewood), read like xin (new).".The first transscriptions of Chinese language that have been made by Westerners were all written like the particular travelers, merchants or missionaries heard the words and wrote them down following the writing rules of their own language. French people of course wrote the same words not in the same style like British would have done or people from the Netherlands. There did not exist a standardized style of transscription until the late 19th century. Typically for the early transscriptions was the hard style transscription of the sounds [dj] or [tç] as "k", like "kin" for [djin] or "kü" for [tçy], for instance "King-ting ku-kin t'u-shu ki-ch'eng" for 清定古今圖書集成 (pinyin: Qing ding Gujin tushu jicheng). Many geographic names of China are still known today in their old transscription like the provinces Shan-tung, Fo-kien, Kiang-su, or the cities of Peking and Kanton. Also the names of people like Chiang Kai-shek or Sun Yat-sen are derived from non-standardized transscriptions of non-Mandarin languages or dialects (in standard Mandarin, they are called Jiang Jieshi resp. Sun Yixian - but no Chinese calles the founder of the Republic by this name - the is called Sun Zhongshan).Wade-Giles TranscriptionThe first persons to create a standard transscription of Chinese were T.F. Wade (d. 1895) and H.A. Giles (d. 1935). Their system called Wade-Giles (chin.: Wei Tuoma shi pinyin 威妥瑪式拼音) is quite correct in reflecting the vowels (like "yüen" for [jyn]), but is very complicated in the manner of reflecting consonants. Wade and Giles saw the hard sound "k" as a soft one and added an apostroph to express hard pronunciation: [gan] is written "kuan", [kan] is written k'uan. The sound [] (the french "j") is written "j", the sound [ç] is "hs". A great problem to find a word in an index is that the Wade-Giles system makes no difference between the consonants [tç] and [t] - both "ch'", [d] and [dj], both "ch". Only in their syllable context, these sounds are recognizable as two different sounds: the vowel-less syllables are added by an "ih", like "ch'ih" for [t] and "chih" for [d]. The syllables [tçi] and [dji] are written "ch'i" resp. "chi". The syllables [dz] and [dzu] are written "tzu" resp. "tsu".The tone pitches are marked by one of four numbers added to the transsciption, like hsiao3. In spite of these shortcomings, the transscription system Wade-Giles has been used for a long time and has been very widespread, especially in the United States where it is still used today by Sinologists.The table below gives an overview over the Wade-Giles transscription of the Chinese sounds, the brackets include the pronunciation according to the international sound transscription, after the brackets Wade-Giles.
[b] p
[d] t
[g] k
[dj] ch
[d] ch
[dz] ts, tz
[p] p'
[t] t'
[k] k'
[tç] ch'
[t] ch'
[ts] ts', tz'
[m] m
[n] n
[x, h] h
[ç] hs
[] sh
[s] s
[f] f
[l] l
[] j
The vowel-less syllables [d][t][][],[dz][ts][s] are written chih, ch'ih, shih, jih, tzû, tz'û, szû. The simple vowels [i][u][y] are written i, wu, yü. The syllables of two-syllable words are separated by a dash: "Chung-kuo".
[a] a
[o]o
[ə]o
[ε]eh
[ai] ai
[ei] ei
[aω]ao
[ou] ou
[an] an
[ən]en
[aŋ]ang
[əŋ] eng
[uŋ]ung
[ər]erh
[-i]i
[-ja]ia
[-jε]ieh
[-jaω]iao
[-jou]iu
[-jεn]ien
[-in]in
[-iaŋ]iang
[-iŋ]ing
[-juŋ]iung
[-u]u
[-ωa]ua
[-ωo]uo
[-ωai]uai
[-ωei]uei
[-ωan]uan
[-un]un
[-ωaŋ]uang
[-ωəŋ]eng
[-y]ü
[-yε]üeh
[-yεn]üan
[-yn]ün
Pinyin TranscriptionToday, the People's Republic of China uses the transscription system Pinyin «÷µ "Arranged Sounds", a system more coherent in reflecting consonants than the Wade/Giles system, introducing letters of the Roman alphabet that are used for very different sounds in European languages: "h" reflects a sound more similar to the guttural [x], "j" is [dj], "q" is [tç], "x" is [ç]. The vowel-rare sounds are "zh" for [d], "ch" for [t], "sh" is like [] in English, but a little bit more guttural, "r" is the French "j" with an inheriting English "r" [], "z" for [dz], "c" for [ts], and "s" just for [s]. Lexically very useful, this consonantial system is destroyed by a horrible, that means unlogical system for the vowels. [y] is sometimes written "u" like in "qu" for [tçy] or "xuan" for [çyn], sometimes written "ü" like "nü" for [ny] or "lüe" for [ly]. [] is sometimes written "e" like in "lüe" for [ly], sometimes written "a" like "xuan" for [çyn]. [o] is sometimes written "o" like "bo" for [bo], sometimes written "uo" like "luo" for [lo]. [u] is sometimes written "u" like "lu" for [lu], sometimes written "o" like "gong" for [gu]. The letter "a" sometimes stands for [a] like "xia" for [çja], sometimes for [] like "xian" for [çjn]. Redundant are the letters "y" like "yi" for [i], while it is used for [j] in "yao" for [ja], and "w" like "wu" for [u], while it is used for [] in "wo" for [o]. It can be argued that the syllables "gong" and "xuan" are pronunciations of the south: [go] and [çyan]. Tones pitches are markes by accents: an upper dash for the rising tone, a raising accent for the raising tone, an upside down circumflex for the low rising tone, and a falling accent for the falling pitch (b, bá, b, bà). But the Pinyin system claims to be the correct pronunciation of the capital Beijing. In that sense, it should be more coherent to the northern pronunciation. Nevertheless, the Pinyin system should be accepted as an official transscription of Chinese words that becomes more and more common outside of China.The table below gives an overview over the pinyin transscription of the Chinese sounds, the brackets include the pronunciation according to the international sound transscription, after the brackets pinyin transscription.
[b] b
[d] d
[g] g
[dj] j
[d] zh
[dz] z
[p] p
[t] t
[k] k
[tç] q
[t] ch
[ts] c
[m] m
[n] n
[x, h] h
[ç] x
[] ch
[s] s
[f] f
[l] l
[] r
The vowel-less syllables [d][t][][],[dz][ts][s] are written zhi, chi, shi, ri, zi, ci, si. The simple vowels [i][u][y] are written yi, wu, yu. The syllables of two-syllable words are written as one word: "Zhongguo".
[a] a
[o]o
[ə]e
[ε]ê
[ai] ai
[ei] ei
[aω]ao
[ou] ou
[an] an
[ən]en
[aŋ]ang
[əŋ] eng
[uŋ]ong, eng
[ər]er
[-i]i
[-ja]ia
[-jε]ie
[-jaω]iao
[-jou]iu
[-jεn]ian
[-in]in
[-iaŋ]iang
[-iŋ]ing
[-juŋ]iong
[-u]u
[-ωa]ua
[-ωo]uo
[-ωai]uai
[-ωei]ui
[-ωan]uan
[-n]un
[-ωaŋ]uang
[-ωəŋ]eng
[-y]ü
[-yε]ue
[-yεn]uan
[-yn]un
Zhuyin Transcription (Bo-po-mo-fo)A third system that has been in use only in Taiwan (and in mainland dictionaries, but only for completion) is the system called Zhuyin 注音 "Commented Sounds" or simply Bo-po-mo-fo, following the first four sounds of the alphabet. This system is very easy to learn, but it does not use Latin letters. Instead, it relies on simplified or very old forms of characters. In my opinion, it is the best system of transscription that exists, but it is not very widespread and will probably die out after Taiwan has started to use the mainland Pinyin system. The Zhuyin system simply puts together initial and final sound of one syllable, like ㄅㄠ "b+a" for [ba]. Syllables without initial sound are simply written with the final sound, like ㄨ "u" for [u]. Syllables without final vowel are simply written with their inital sound, like ㄓ "dz" for [dz]. Specialities are 1) the use of ㄣ "en" for the final sound [-in], like ㄒㄧㄣ "ç+i+en" for [çin], for the final sound [-un], like ㄍㄨㄣ "g+u+en" for [gun], and for the final sound [-yn], like ㄐㄩㄣ "dj+ü+en" for [djyn]; 2) the use of ㄥ "eng" for the final sound [-ing], like ㄐㄧㄥ "dj+i+e" for [dji] and for the final sound [-ung], like ㄌㄨㄥ "l+u+e" for [lu]; 3) the use of ㄢ "an" for the final sound of [-n], like ㄒㄧㄢ "ç+i+an" for [çin] (causing here the same problem like in the Pinyin transscription system); and 4) the use of "ü+eng" for the final sound of [-iu], like ㄐㄩㄥ "dj+ü+eng" for [dju].The tone pitches are either indicated by accents like in the pinyin transscription - but without the high tone mark - or by points in the corner of the vowel: left upper for the low rising pitch, right upper for the falling pitch, left lower for high and rising pitch.A hyperlinked table shows the Zhuyin alphabet and the characters the particular letters are deriving from, transscribed with the international transscription system.The final sound usage of the zhuyin transscription system is demonstrated in the table below. The vowel-less syllables [d-][t-][-][-],[dz][ts][s] are transscribed by the sole particular consonants: ㄓㄔㄕㄖ,ㄗㄘㄙ. As the zhuyin system is only used by Chinese to have a reading help, there are no rules for word separation.
[a] ㄚ
[o]ㄛ
[ə]ㄜ
[ε]ㄝ
[ai] ㄞ
[ei] ㄟ
[aω]ㄠ
[ou] ㄡ
[an] ㄢ
[ən]ㄣ
[aŋ]ㄤ
[əŋ] ㄥ
[uŋ]ㄩㄥ
[-i]ㄧ
[-ja]ㄧㄚ
[-jε]ㄧㄝ
[-jaω]ㄧㄠ
[-jou]ㄧㄡ
[-jεn]ㄧㄢ
[-in]ㄧㄣ
[-iaŋ]ㄧㄤ
[-iŋ]ㄧㄥ
[-juŋ]ㄧㄩㄥ
[-u]ㄨ
[-ωa]ㄨㄚ
[-ωo]ㄨㄛ
[-ωai]ㄨㄞ
[-ωei]ㄨㄟ
[-ωan]ㄨㄢ
[-un]ㄨㄣ
[-ωaŋ]ㄨㄤ
[-ωəŋ]ㄨㄥ
[-y]ㄩ
[-yε]ㄩㄝ
[-yεn]ㄩㄢ
[-yn]ㄩㄣ
Gwoyeu Rwomaatzyh TranscriptionGwoyeu rwomaatzyh 國語羅馬字 (pinyin: Guoyu Luomazi "National language in Latin letters") is a transscription system published in 1928, but it is not very widespread and slowly dying out because the system is too complicated. It is the only system reflecting the tone pitches not by marking the tones with numbers or accents, but by inserting the tone pitch into the transscription. The high tone is only marked for simple initial sound syllables with an inheriting "h" (mhau 貓, lha 拉), the rising tone is marked by an "r" (char 茶, torng 同; syllables with in initial m, n, l, and r don't change: ren 人) or by changing of "i" and "u" to "y" and "w" (chyn 琴, hwang 黃), the low tone by a doubling of the vowel (chii 起, faan 反, koou 口) and changing "i" to "e" and "u" to "o" (goan 管, sheu 許), and the falling tone by changing "i" to "y" and "u" to "w" (tzay 在, yaw 要) or a doubling or changing of the the final consonant (bann 半, jenq 正).The Yale romanization of Cantonese also expresses the low tone pitches by inserting an "h" into the word: yáuh, fàhn, yeuhn.
[b] b
[d] d
[g] g
[dj] j
[d] j
[dz] tz
[p] p
[t] t
[k] k
[tç] ch
[t] ch
[ts] ts
[m] m
[n] n
[x, h] h
[ç] sh
[] sh
[s] s
[f] f
[l] l
[] r
The vowel-less syllables [d][t][][],[dz][ts][s] are written jy, chy, shy, ry, tzy, tsy, sy. The simple vowels [i][u][y] are written yi, yu, yiu.
[a] a
[o]o
[ə]e
[ε] ê
[ai] ai
[ei] ei
[aω]au
[ou] ou
[an] an
[ən]en
[aŋ] ang
[əŋ]eng
[uŋ]ong
[ər]el
[-i]i
[-ja]ia
[-jε]ie
[-jaω]iau
[-jou]iou
[-jεn]ian
[-in]in
[-iŋ]iang
[-iŋ]ing
[-juŋ]iong
[-u]u
[-ωa]ua
[-ωo]uo
[-ωai]uai
[-ωei]uei
[-ωan]uan
[-n]un
[-ωaŋ]uang
[-ωəŋ]ueng
[-y]iu
[-yε]iue
[-yεn]iuan
[-yn]iun
And there exists an abundancy of free style transscriptions in all places where Chinese people live, all without system and according to the native language of their living place, like "gong shee" for [guŋ çi]. Most oversees Chinese are of Cantonese or at least Southern origin, so the Mandarin Pinyin system could not be applied anyway.Chinese Language and Chinese ScriptEvery language has its own script, but not every script is suitable for a language. As a monosyllabic (one word is one syllable), non-flecting language (there exists no verbal conjugation or noun declination), a character script is very suitable for Chinese language. Korea and Japan had to develop their own writing systems because a character script was not able to reflect grammatical particles and suffixes of these languages. Vietnamese, although also a monosyllabic, non-flecting language, has a grammar that is quite different from Chinese grammar. The Roman alphabet is a better system to write down words in Vietnamese. Cantonese speakers try to write their language although they have some problems because the different grammatical structure and word treasure of Cantonese makes it necessary to create many new characters.In old Chinese, when there was still no systematization of characters, some writers used characters of a totally different word for a word they did not know the character, for example the character 辟 pi or bi that was simply used phonetically, that means as a sound for the words that should be written 僻, 闢, 避 or 劈. Still today, there are many characters that have two or more pronunciations (duoyinzi 多音字), like 便 pian "cheap" or bian "suitable, comfortable", or 重 zhong "heavy" or chong "double". Many characters of verbs can be pronounced with two different tone pitches to indicate a causative meaning, like 聽 ting (high pitch) "to hear", tìng (falling pitch) "to make obey"; or 看 kan (high pitch) "to look after", kàn (falling pitch) "to look"; or 種 zhŏng (low rising pitch) "seed", zhòng (falling pitch) "to sow".
high pitch (yinsheng 陰聲),
rising pitch (yangsheng 陽聲),
lower rising pitch (shangsheng 上聲), and
falling pitch (qusheng 去聲).
The quickly falling tone pitch (rusheng 入聲) that once marked a final voiceless stop, disappeared during the end of Song and the Yuan Dynasties. Finally, in two-syllable-words, the second syllable is sometimes unaccented, so to say a pitchless tone (lingsheng 零聲). In Cantonese exist eight different tone pitches: high, upper rising, upper falling, upper entering, low, lower rising, lower falling, and lower entering; in daily use they are reduced to six. The problem in reconstructing old Chinese language is that we do know how words were written, but because Chinese script is not a sound script (at least not in general) but a symbolic script, we do know nothing about the pronunciation of the old words. Only the researches of Bernard Karlgren (1889-1978) and E. G. Pulleyblank (* 1922) helped to reconstruct middle Chinese (Tang to Song Dynasties) and finally old and archaic Chinese. Both used the rime dictionaries of the Tang and Song Dynasties (Qieyun and Guangyun) and rime groups of the oldest poetry book, the Shijing. Frome these studies, we see that the final sound system of old Chinese was much more complex than today. While we have today only open syllables (without consonant: cha, ji, bo, dao) and the two finals -n (fan, lun, jin) and -ng (fang, cheng, qing). In old Chinese there were also finals like -l, -m, -g, -k, -t, and -p, in archaic Chinese even -gs. And there existed sound clusters at the begin of a syllable, like gl-, hl-, tr-, mj-, shw- and so on. Such a sound system makes old Chinese much more similar to Tibetian and Burmese. Compared to this, modern Chinese sounds quite crippled and oversimplified. Even at the begin of the 20th century, there existed not so much vowel-less syllables like in modern Chinese, like the seven syllables [d ][t][][],[dz][ts][s]. Syllables like [dzi] or [tsi] have died out. Southern dialects (or languages?) in China still show final consonants like -m, -p, -t and -k. Chinese loanwords in Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese show the vanished syllable endings. The Chinese loanword "law" (modern Chinese falü, old Chinese something like paplüet) in Korean is pôp, in Japanese a little bit forced to hôritsu, in Vietnamese turned around to luât pháp. Southern Chinese dialects like Cantonese still today show the ancient syllable endings: "law" in Cantonese is faatleuht. The simplification of the language was due to the central administration in a vast empire that allowed people to come around. Different dialects had to near each other and step by step threw away difficult sounds. The classical written language that had developed during the late Zhou and Han Dynasty, had the same importance like Latin in the West. Until the begin of the 20th century, all official documents, and even private essays and letters were written in a 2000 years old monosyllabic language, full of citings of the old books and writings. This language could only be used by scholars and well educated people. The literary form that first used the everyday language were the Yuan Dynasty theatre plays and Ming and Qing novels. Writers of the early 20th century fought for the introduction of everyday language (putonghua 普通話) into the literature. Today, only official letters and documents are written in classic language, but even newspapers and higher literature make use of the short and precise classical written language. People who know to write in classical Chinese (wenyan 文言) are esteemed highly.During the course of centuries, Chinese language did not only make itself free from a rich but complicated sound system, but the tone pitches assimilated in such a way that some sounds like [dji] or [u] can stand for more than one dozen words of very different meaning. In written language, there is no problem with homophony as every word or almost every word has only one character that can barely misunderstood. Reading alound a text in classical written language, the listeners are hardly able to understand a great part of the text.Measurements of the spoken language to encounter this homophony was the development of two-syllable words for nouns, verbs, adjectives and even for conjunctions. Today, most words in Chinese consist of two syllables, composed of two single words, like aiqing "love" from ai 愛 "love, affection" and qing 情 "feeling, sentiment, temperament". The classical word fang 方 can have the meanings of "direction" (modern: fangxiang 方向), "location" (difang 地方), "square" (fangxing 方形; fangmi 方米 fangzhang 铀ܐtion), "aspect, side, party" (fangmian 方面), "mode, manner" (fangshi 方式), "method" (fangfa 方法), "plan, concept" (fanglüe 方略), "stategy" (fangce 方策), "recipe" (fangji 方劑, fangzi 方子, fangr 方ㄦ, "occultism" (fangshu 方術, fangji 方技), "honest, upright" (fangzheng 方正), "just now" (fangcai 方才), and so on; to discern between the different meanings, two-syllable words came up (in brackets). Already in the oldest examples of Chinese literature, we find two-syllable words with rhyming or reduplication character, like yaotiao 窈窕 "lonely, pityful; honest", qingting 蜻蜓 "dragonfly", putao 葡萄 "grapes". Another method to enrich a word are suffixes, like the [dz] in [ba-dz] baozi 包子 "filled dumpling" and [i-dz] yizi 椅子 "chair", or the guttural [r] in [ta-r] char 茶ㄦ "tea" (in Peking dialect).Loanwords, New Words and Foreign NamesLike all people, the Chinese had an intensive contact with neighboring people. They adopted many words from the northern steppe people that used things the Chinese did not know. When the Chinese learned to know and to use these things, they also adopted the foreign word for these objects: 駱駝 lwaktuo "camel" or 酪 lwak "yoghurt" from the nomad people, 蜜 mjit "honey" and 獅子 shejshe "lion" from the Tocharians. Southern China was occupied 2500 years ago by Austro-Asiatic people, different from the Chinese in ethnic, cultural and linguistic means. Still today, south Chinese people look different from the northern people that were stongly mixed with the steppe peoples. But also the non-Chinese people of the south tributed their parts to Chinese language, especially to the southern dialects of Fujian province. In the official language, we find still today traces of the southern peoples' languages: 江 klang "stream, Yangtse river" or 虎 khla "tiger". Words that came with Buddhist religion were either transscribed with sounds (and their respective characters without taking their real meaning) or translated: the Buddhist term nirvâna is called in Chinese 涅磐 niepan (a crippled version of the Sanskrit word) or 寂 ji "serenity" or 智緣滅 zhiyuanmie "destroying the cause of awareness" or simply mie 滅. Even personal names of foreigners were sometimes translated by their meaning, like 竺法護 Zhufahu "Protecor of the Law" for the Indian monk translator Dharmaraksha (transcribed as 曇摩羅察 "Tanmoluoji").During the 19th century many Chinese went to Japan for educational purposes. Like in Europe where scholars created artificial Latin or Greek words, Japanese and Korean scholars created artificial Chinese words that came to China when the foreign Chinese students went back to their country. In our times, when hundreds of new words rush into China, there is also a need either to describe them with sounds or to translate them. Some loanwords use describing syllables that have also a meaning: 黑客 heike "black host = computer hacker", 雷射 leishe "thunder stroke = Laser". A very famous example of marketing is that of Coca-Cola company, in Chinese called 可口可勒 Kekou-kele "tasty and funny". Other examples are 跑車 paoche "racing car = Porsche" or the word for "taxi", 的士 dishi (Cantonese pronunciation: diksi) "targeting Sirs". Other characters of loanwords have no real meaning in that combination, like 考貝 kaobei "copy", 摩登 modeng "modern" or 克隆 kelong "clone". There are much more examples of translated words, for example 電腦 diannao "electric brain = computer" or 光碟 guangdie "gleaming disk = CD". Some items also show the possibility of both translating, like 擴音器 kuoyinqi "sound enlarging tool = microphone", and transscribing 麥克風 maikefeng, or 電子郵件 dianzi youjian "electronical mail" as a translation for e-mail, simply called yimeir 伊妹兒 following the sound of the English word. A special field of adopting loan words and even creating new characters, is the field of chemistry. 氨 an "ammonium" is described with the character for 氣 "gas, air" and the phonetic part 安 an. 碘 dian "iodine" with the radical for 石 "stone" and the phonetic part 典 dian. 汞 gong "quicksilver" is decribed as a liquid thing 水 "water" called 工 gong (from mercurium). 酯 zhi "esters" are described with a bottle 酉 and 旨 zhi "tasty, fragrant", because many esters have a very aromatic perfume. The word for "carbohydrate" 醣 tang (all kinds of sugar) is combined of a bottle 酉 and the abbreviated character and sound for 糖 tang "sugar".Foreign names cannot be translated but must be transscribed with characters that sound like the syllables of the foreign name: Bulaier 布萊爾 for Prime Minister Tony Blair. While there are great differences in how to transscribe a foreign name, the government of mainland China tries to standardize transscriptions. The Soviet ruler Stalin is transscribed in mainland China as 斯大林 Sidalin [sz-da-lin], in Taiwan as 思達林, with different characters. Countries are often abbreviated, like 阿美利加 Ameilijia (southern dialect pronunciation Ameliga) "America" to 美國 Meiguo "beautiful country". But there are examples of translated names like that of the city of San Francisco. During the gold rush, Chinese immigrants called this city 金山 Jinshan "Gold mountain".
Transcriptions: how to write down pronunciationThe old Chinese became aware of the sound system of their own language when they had to translate foreign words with a meaning that could not be expressed in Chinese: Buddhist terms. Dictionaries that tried to express pronunciation came up during the Tang Dynasty. They used the "reverse cutting" system (fanqie 反切), using the initial sound and the final sound of two words/characters to describe the sound of a word/character. For example: 他前切 [ta][tçin]qie "pronounced like [t-] and [-in] ([tjn])". Another possibility to express the pronunciation of a character was to cite a character with an identical pronunciation, like 薪讀若新 "xin (firewood), read like xin (new).".The first transscriptions of Chinese language that have been made by Westerners were all written like the particular travelers, merchants or missionaries heard the words and wrote them down following the writing rules of their own language. French people of course wrote the same words not in the same style like British would have done or people from the Netherlands. There did not exist a standardized style of transscription until the late 19th century. Typically for the early transscriptions was the hard style transscription of the sounds [dj] or [tç] as "k", like "kin" for [djin] or "kü" for [tçy], for instance "King-ting ku-kin t'u-shu ki-ch'eng" for 清定古今圖書集成 (pinyin: Qing ding Gujin tushu jicheng). Many geographic names of China are still known today in their old transscription like the provinces Shan-tung, Fo-kien, Kiang-su, or the cities of Peking and Kanton. Also the names of people like Chiang Kai-shek or Sun Yat-sen are derived from non-standardized transscriptions of non-Mandarin languages or dialects (in standard Mandarin, they are called Jiang Jieshi resp. Sun Yixian - but no Chinese calles the founder of the Republic by this name - the is called Sun Zhongshan).Wade-Giles TranscriptionThe first persons to create a standard transscription of Chinese were T.F. Wade (d. 1895) and H.A. Giles (d. 1935). Their system called Wade-Giles (chin.: Wei Tuoma shi pinyin 威妥瑪式拼音) is quite correct in reflecting the vowels (like "yüen" for [jyn]), but is very complicated in the manner of reflecting consonants. Wade and Giles saw the hard sound "k" as a soft one and added an apostroph to express hard pronunciation: [gan] is written "kuan", [kan] is written k'uan. The sound [] (the french "j") is written "j", the sound [ç] is "hs". A great problem to find a word in an index is that the Wade-Giles system makes no difference between the consonants [tç] and [t] - both "ch'", [d] and [dj], both "ch". Only in their syllable context, these sounds are recognizable as two different sounds: the vowel-less syllables are added by an "ih", like "ch'ih" for [t] and "chih" for [d]. The syllables [tçi] and [dji] are written "ch'i" resp. "chi". The syllables [dz] and [dzu] are written "tzu" resp. "tsu".The tone pitches are marked by one of four numbers added to the transsciption, like hsiao3. In spite of these shortcomings, the transscription system Wade-Giles has been used for a long time and has been very widespread, especially in the United States where it is still used today by Sinologists.The table below gives an overview over the Wade-Giles transscription of the Chinese sounds, the brackets include the pronunciation according to the international sound transscription, after the brackets Wade-Giles.
[b] p
[d] t
[g] k
[dj] ch
[d] ch
[dz] ts, tz
[p] p'
[t] t'
[k] k'
[tç] ch'
[t] ch'
[ts] ts', tz'
[m] m
[n] n
[x, h] h
[ç] hs
[] sh
[s] s
[f] f
[l] l
[] j
The vowel-less syllables [d][t][][],[dz][ts][s] are written chih, ch'ih, shih, jih, tzû, tz'û, szû. The simple vowels [i][u][y] are written i, wu, yü. The syllables of two-syllable words are separated by a dash: "Chung-kuo".
[a] a
[o]o
[ə]o
[ε]eh
[ai] ai
[ei] ei
[aω]ao
[ou] ou
[an] an
[ən]en
[aŋ]ang
[əŋ] eng
[uŋ]ung
[ər]erh
[-i]i
[-ja]ia
[-jε]ieh
[-jaω]iao
[-jou]iu
[-jεn]ien
[-in]in
[-iaŋ]iang
[-iŋ]ing
[-juŋ]iung
[-u]u
[-ωa]ua
[-ωo]uo
[-ωai]uai
[-ωei]uei
[-ωan]uan
[-un]un
[-ωaŋ]uang
[-ωəŋ]eng
[-y]ü
[-yε]üeh
[-yεn]üan
[-yn]ün
Pinyin TranscriptionToday, the People's Republic of China uses the transscription system Pinyin «÷µ "Arranged Sounds", a system more coherent in reflecting consonants than the Wade/Giles system, introducing letters of the Roman alphabet that are used for very different sounds in European languages: "h" reflects a sound more similar to the guttural [x], "j" is [dj], "q" is [tç], "x" is [ç]. The vowel-rare sounds are "zh" for [d], "ch" for [t], "sh" is like [] in English, but a little bit more guttural, "r" is the French "j" with an inheriting English "r" [], "z" for [dz], "c" for [ts], and "s" just for [s]. Lexically very useful, this consonantial system is destroyed by a horrible, that means unlogical system for the vowels. [y] is sometimes written "u" like in "qu" for [tçy] or "xuan" for [çyn], sometimes written "ü" like "nü" for [ny] or "lüe" for [ly]. [] is sometimes written "e" like in "lüe" for [ly], sometimes written "a" like "xuan" for [çyn]. [o] is sometimes written "o" like "bo" for [bo], sometimes written "uo" like "luo" for [lo]. [u] is sometimes written "u" like "lu" for [lu], sometimes written "o" like "gong" for [gu]. The letter "a" sometimes stands for [a] like "xia" for [çja], sometimes for [] like "xian" for [çjn]. Redundant are the letters "y" like "yi" for [i], while it is used for [j] in "yao" for [ja], and "w" like "wu" for [u], while it is used for [] in "wo" for [o]. It can be argued that the syllables "gong" and "xuan" are pronunciations of the south: [go] and [çyan]. Tones pitches are markes by accents: an upper dash for the rising tone, a raising accent for the raising tone, an upside down circumflex for the low rising tone, and a falling accent for the falling pitch (b, bá, b, bà). But the Pinyin system claims to be the correct pronunciation of the capital Beijing. In that sense, it should be more coherent to the northern pronunciation. Nevertheless, the Pinyin system should be accepted as an official transscription of Chinese words that becomes more and more common outside of China.The table below gives an overview over the pinyin transscription of the Chinese sounds, the brackets include the pronunciation according to the international sound transscription, after the brackets pinyin transscription.
[b] b
[d] d
[g] g
[dj] j
[d] zh
[dz] z
[p] p
[t] t
[k] k
[tç] q
[t] ch
[ts] c
[m] m
[n] n
[x, h] h
[ç] x
[] ch
[s] s
[f] f
[l] l
[] r
The vowel-less syllables [d][t][][],[dz][ts][s] are written zhi, chi, shi, ri, zi, ci, si. The simple vowels [i][u][y] are written yi, wu, yu. The syllables of two-syllable words are written as one word: "Zhongguo".
[a] a
[o]o
[ə]e
[ε]ê
[ai] ai
[ei] ei
[aω]ao
[ou] ou
[an] an
[ən]en
[aŋ]ang
[əŋ] eng
[uŋ]ong, eng
[ər]er
[-i]i
[-ja]ia
[-jε]ie
[-jaω]iao
[-jou]iu
[-jεn]ian
[-in]in
[-iaŋ]iang
[-iŋ]ing
[-juŋ]iong
[-u]u
[-ωa]ua
[-ωo]uo
[-ωai]uai
[-ωei]ui
[-ωan]uan
[-n]un
[-ωaŋ]uang
[-ωəŋ]eng
[-y]ü
[-yε]ue
[-yεn]uan
[-yn]un
Zhuyin Transcription (Bo-po-mo-fo)A third system that has been in use only in Taiwan (and in mainland dictionaries, but only for completion) is the system called Zhuyin 注音 "Commented Sounds" or simply Bo-po-mo-fo, following the first four sounds of the alphabet. This system is very easy to learn, but it does not use Latin letters. Instead, it relies on simplified or very old forms of characters. In my opinion, it is the best system of transscription that exists, but it is not very widespread and will probably die out after Taiwan has started to use the mainland Pinyin system. The Zhuyin system simply puts together initial and final sound of one syllable, like ㄅㄠ "b+a" for [ba]. Syllables without initial sound are simply written with the final sound, like ㄨ "u" for [u]. Syllables without final vowel are simply written with their inital sound, like ㄓ "dz" for [dz]. Specialities are 1) the use of ㄣ "en" for the final sound [-in], like ㄒㄧㄣ "ç+i+en" for [çin], for the final sound [-un], like ㄍㄨㄣ "g+u+en" for [gun], and for the final sound [-yn], like ㄐㄩㄣ "dj+ü+en" for [djyn]; 2) the use of ㄥ "eng" for the final sound [-ing], like ㄐㄧㄥ "dj+i+e" for [dji] and for the final sound [-ung], like ㄌㄨㄥ "l+u+e" for [lu]; 3) the use of ㄢ "an" for the final sound of [-n], like ㄒㄧㄢ "ç+i+an" for [çin] (causing here the same problem like in the Pinyin transscription system); and 4) the use of "ü+eng" for the final sound of [-iu], like ㄐㄩㄥ "dj+ü+eng" for [dju].The tone pitches are either indicated by accents like in the pinyin transscription - but without the high tone mark - or by points in the corner of the vowel: left upper for the low rising pitch, right upper for the falling pitch, left lower for high and rising pitch.A hyperlinked table shows the Zhuyin alphabet and the characters the particular letters are deriving from, transscribed with the international transscription system.The final sound usage of the zhuyin transscription system is demonstrated in the table below. The vowel-less syllables [d-][t-][-][-],[dz][ts][s] are transscribed by the sole particular consonants: ㄓㄔㄕㄖ,ㄗㄘㄙ. As the zhuyin system is only used by Chinese to have a reading help, there are no rules for word separation.
[a] ㄚ
[o]ㄛ
[ə]ㄜ
[ε]ㄝ
[ai] ㄞ
[ei] ㄟ
[aω]ㄠ
[ou] ㄡ
[an] ㄢ
[ən]ㄣ
[aŋ]ㄤ
[əŋ] ㄥ
[uŋ]ㄩㄥ
[-i]ㄧ
[-ja]ㄧㄚ
[-jε]ㄧㄝ
[-jaω]ㄧㄠ
[-jou]ㄧㄡ
[-jεn]ㄧㄢ
[-in]ㄧㄣ
[-iaŋ]ㄧㄤ
[-iŋ]ㄧㄥ
[-juŋ]ㄧㄩㄥ
[-u]ㄨ
[-ωa]ㄨㄚ
[-ωo]ㄨㄛ
[-ωai]ㄨㄞ
[-ωei]ㄨㄟ
[-ωan]ㄨㄢ
[-un]ㄨㄣ
[-ωaŋ]ㄨㄤ
[-ωəŋ]ㄨㄥ
[-y]ㄩ
[-yε]ㄩㄝ
[-yεn]ㄩㄢ
[-yn]ㄩㄣ
Gwoyeu Rwomaatzyh TranscriptionGwoyeu rwomaatzyh 國語羅馬字 (pinyin: Guoyu Luomazi "National language in Latin letters") is a transscription system published in 1928, but it is not very widespread and slowly dying out because the system is too complicated. It is the only system reflecting the tone pitches not by marking the tones with numbers or accents, but by inserting the tone pitch into the transscription. The high tone is only marked for simple initial sound syllables with an inheriting "h" (mhau 貓, lha 拉), the rising tone is marked by an "r" (char 茶, torng 同; syllables with in initial m, n, l, and r don't change: ren 人) or by changing of "i" and "u" to "y" and "w" (chyn 琴, hwang 黃), the low tone by a doubling of the vowel (chii 起, faan 反, koou 口) and changing "i" to "e" and "u" to "o" (goan 管, sheu 許), and the falling tone by changing "i" to "y" and "u" to "w" (tzay 在, yaw 要) or a doubling or changing of the the final consonant (bann 半, jenq 正).The Yale romanization of Cantonese also expresses the low tone pitches by inserting an "h" into the word: yáuh, fàhn, yeuhn.
[b] b
[d] d
[g] g
[dj] j
[d] j
[dz] tz
[p] p
[t] t
[k] k
[tç] ch
[t] ch
[ts] ts
[m] m
[n] n
[x, h] h
[ç] sh
[] sh
[s] s
[f] f
[l] l
[] r
The vowel-less syllables [d][t][][],[dz][ts][s] are written jy, chy, shy, ry, tzy, tsy, sy. The simple vowels [i][u][y] are written yi, yu, yiu.
[a] a
[o]o
[ə]e
[ε] ê
[ai] ai
[ei] ei
[aω]au
[ou] ou
[an] an
[ən]en
[aŋ] ang
[əŋ]eng
[uŋ]ong
[ər]el
[-i]i
[-ja]ia
[-jε]ie
[-jaω]iau
[-jou]iou
[-jεn]ian
[-in]in
[-iŋ]iang
[-iŋ]ing
[-juŋ]iong
[-u]u
[-ωa]ua
[-ωo]uo
[-ωai]uai
[-ωei]uei
[-ωan]uan
[-n]un
[-ωaŋ]uang
[-ωəŋ]ueng
[-y]iu
[-yε]iue
[-yεn]iuan
[-yn]iun
And there exists an abundancy of free style transscriptions in all places where Chinese people live, all without system and according to the native language of their living place, like "gong shee" for [guŋ çi]. Most oversees Chinese are of Cantonese or at least Southern origin, so the Mandarin Pinyin system could not be applied anyway.Chinese Language and Chinese ScriptEvery language has its own script, but not every script is suitable for a language. As a monosyllabic (one word is one syllable), non-flecting language (there exists no verbal conjugation or noun declination), a character script is very suitable for Chinese language. Korea and Japan had to develop their own writing systems because a character script was not able to reflect grammatical particles and suffixes of these languages. Vietnamese, although also a monosyllabic, non-flecting language, has a grammar that is quite different from Chinese grammar. The Roman alphabet is a better system to write down words in Vietnamese. Cantonese speakers try to write their language although they have some problems because the different grammatical structure and word treasure of Cantonese makes it necessary to create many new characters.In old Chinese, when there was still no systematization of characters, some writers used characters of a totally different word for a word they did not know the character, for example the character 辟 pi or bi that was simply used phonetically, that means as a sound for the words that should be written 僻, 闢, 避 or 劈. Still today, there are many characters that have two or more pronunciations (duoyinzi 多音字), like 便 pian "cheap" or bian "suitable, comfortable", or 重 zhong "heavy" or chong "double". Many characters of verbs can be pronounced with two different tone pitches to indicate a causative meaning, like 聽 ting (high pitch) "to hear", tìng (falling pitch) "to make obey"; or 看 kan (high pitch) "to look after", kàn (falling pitch) "to look"; or 種 zhŏng (low rising pitch) "seed", zhòng (falling pitch) "to sow".
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