Re: Bopomofo and pinyin

FFlores wrote:

> The hanzi in the book are supplemented with Roman
> transliteration (which may be Pinyin, but again it may
> not) and smaller, apparently syllabic characters (quite
> like Japanese furigana), which I took to be Bopomofo.
> These are all guesses, of course. Do you know anything
> about Bopomofo and hanzi transliteration? Any online
> resources?
At charts.unicode.com, but as I remember you can't see
the Web, or is it just that you can't do interactive
lookup?  If the latter, then the relevant page
(graphics-heavy, obviously) is
http://charts.unicode.org/Unicode.charts/normal/U3100.html

Basically, each syllable gets 3 bopomofo characters,
one for the initial consonant, another for the rest
of the syllable (so-called "rhyme"), and a diacritic
mark for the tone.

> So far I've seen two styles: the one used in the book,
> where the name of China is written "Junggwo",
That is probably Yale, a system I don't know.

> and another
> one where it's "Chungkuo" and apparently aspirated stops
> are marked with an apostrophe (as in "T'ang").
Definitely Wade-Giles.

> Which one is Pinyin, and what is the other?
Neither.  Your book probably predates Pinyin:
the Pinyin spelling is Zhong guo.

Mapping Wade-Giles to Pinyin is pretty easy, though:

For initial stops, W-G p,t,k -> Pinyin b,d,g;
W-G p',t',k' -> Pinyin p,t,k.

Pinyin uses sh,zh,ch for retroflex sounds and
x,j,q for the corresponding alveolopalatal ones.
These latter can happen only before an i or i-glide.
The only time they are in opposition is before /i/
itself.

W-G uses zh and ch throughout, and uses "ih" as the
rhyme for retroflex, "i" for alveolopalatal initials.
Oddly, W-G does distinguish between sh retroflex,
hs alveolopalatal, so shih but hsi (Pinyin shi, xi).
This seems pointless, but there it is.

W-G j is Pinyin r.

W-G marks all /y/ vowels as u-diaeresis, whereas
Pinyin omits diaeresis when the vowel
is part of a diphthong or triphthong (no ambiguity
possible).

W-G writes ien (phonetic) for Pinyin ian (structural).
Pinyin omits e /@/ in triphthongs, reducing them
to diphthongs.

Both systems use the same tone marks.

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