![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
My problems with pinyin
Mar. 11th, 2007 09:31 pmI realise that pinyin is primarily used by Mandarin speakers to learn the correct values for the sounds they're speaking (since, of course, traditional or modern Chinese characters give no such information). However, the difficult part is the way in which it is now the ISO standard (and has been for a long time) for rendering Chinese words and names into Latin script, and is so used around the world.
Latin script is not a consistent orthography for languages that have traditionally used it for writing, but usually it is the vowels that change (within certain broad parameters). Consonants remain fairly consistent, leaving aside the variations of "j" and "z" in just about any Latin alphabet-based language, and oddments like "th" or "gh" which vary within English as well as outside it.
But reading pinyin-rendered Chinese words in English is an exercise in frustration. There is absolutely no way that you can even vaguely (and that's all it would be for an English speaker) approximate the correct pronunciation of a word given the pinyin form. For example, "d" is an unaspirated "t", "g" is an unaspirated "k", "j" is "q", "q" is like "ch", "x" is like "sh", "c" is like "ts" and so on. Now, while I totally understand that Mandarin has consonant shadings that we don't represent in English, this makes it totally impossible for an English (or French, or German, or Spanish) person to read Chinese words with any facility at all. Of course, if you make the effort, you can remember some of the variations, but I think the finer shadings are useless for the lay reader.
In short, why didn't they adopt a system like the Vietnamese one? The values of the letters are approximations of the general Latinate (I think from Portuguese) pronunciations, with a myriad of diacritics added to the letters to give "true" values for those who learn to write the language correctly. It seems like a win/win situation, in terms of not completely leaving behind the poor foreign punter, as well as retaining enough flexibility and uniqueness for the native writer and students.
Latin script is not a consistent orthography for languages that have traditionally used it for writing, but usually it is the vowels that change (within certain broad parameters). Consonants remain fairly consistent, leaving aside the variations of "j" and "z" in just about any Latin alphabet-based language, and oddments like "th" or "gh" which vary within English as well as outside it.
But reading pinyin-rendered Chinese words in English is an exercise in frustration. There is absolutely no way that you can even vaguely (and that's all it would be for an English speaker) approximate the correct pronunciation of a word given the pinyin form. For example, "d" is an unaspirated "t", "g" is an unaspirated "k", "j" is "q", "q" is like "ch", "x" is like "sh", "c" is like "ts" and so on. Now, while I totally understand that Mandarin has consonant shadings that we don't represent in English, this makes it totally impossible for an English (or French, or German, or Spanish) person to read Chinese words with any facility at all. Of course, if you make the effort, you can remember some of the variations, but I think the finer shadings are useless for the lay reader.
In short, why didn't they adopt a system like the Vietnamese one? The values of the letters are approximations of the general Latinate (I think from Portuguese) pronunciations, with a myriad of diacritics added to the letters to give "true" values for those who learn to write the language correctly. It seems like a win/win situation, in terms of not completely leaving behind the poor foreign punter, as well as retaining enough flexibility and uniqueness for the native writer and students.