"As far as I know, pinyin is used in China to teach young students how to read. In Taiwan, we tend to use bu-pu-mu-fu, but that's far from being an international standard. "
Pinyin certainly is the phonetic system used on the Chinese mainland, but I would question whether it is an "international standard". Undoubtedly the diplomatic and economic clout of China has forced most of the world to pay homage to pinyin. However, there are several other romanization methods that had considerable currency before the creation of Pinyin. So that scholars and intermediate and advanced students need to learn those too. Add to this confusion the fact that Pinyin is both inconsistent and completely at odds with Western use of the same alphabetic symbols ( "Q" and "C", for example), and the zhuyin system used in Taiwan, with which I'm equally familiar, strikes me as a much more deserving international standard, so long as we lack an alphabetic system consistent across the range of world languages which is capable of representing Mandarin. I haven't heard of the name "bu-pu-mu-fu" before. Is it different from zhuyin, or simply a synonym for it? On Aug 24, 1:18 am, Terensque wrote: > Basically, learning might be pushing it a little far, more like > "trying to learn" . > > But far from simply being a tool for learning, pinyin is essentially > the Chinese phonetic alphabet, right? As far as I know, pinyin is used > in China to teach young students how to read. In Taiwan, we tend to > use bu-pu-mu-fu, but that's far from being an international standard. > > I just feel that as an English speaker, when I look to Google > translate, I want to know what the words ARE as well as what they > mean. I could tell you that أمريكا means "America" in Arabic, now tell > me, how do you say "America" in Arabic? > Without the phonetic pronunciation of "ʼMrykā" who knows? > > It's slightly less important for phonetic languages like English or > Japanese Kana or even Russian, but I would hope that ultimately all > languages would provide a phonetic guide for people who are unfamiliar > with the sound made by the characters they've copied in. > > Thanks for the quick response, sorry it took me so long to reply. > > On Aug 2, 12:52 pm, Xi Cheng (Google employee) wrote:> thanks for your > feedback. > > > guess you are interested because you are learning Chinese? you want > > romanization for source language, right? > > > cheers, > > Xi > > > On Jul 30, 11:40 pm,Terensquewrote: > > > > It would be great, when translating Chinese into English, if it could > > > also put up a romanization of what the Chinese is. It can already do > > > it for translating INTO chinese, so it shouldn't be too hard, and it > > > would be awesome :) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "General" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-translate-general?hl=en.
