Bopomofo

Bopomofo, also called Zhuyin Fuhao, or simply Zhuyin, is a transliteration system for Standard Chinese and other Sinitic languages. It is the principal method of teaching Mandarin pronunciation in Taiwan. It consists of 37 characters and five tone marks, which together can transcribe all possible sounds in Mandarin Chinese.
Bopomofo was first introduced in China during the 1910s by the Beiyang government, where it was used alongside Wade–Giles, a romanization system which used a modified Latin alphabet. Today, Bopomofo is more common in Taiwan than on the mainland, and is used as the primary electronic input method for Taiwanese Mandarin, as well as in dictionaries and other non-official documents.

Terminology

Bopomofo is the name used for the system by the International Organization for Standardization and Unicode. Analogous to how the word alphabet is derived from the names of the first two letters, alpha and beta, the name bopomofo derives from the first four syllabographs in the system's conventional consonant order: ㄅ, ㄆ, ㄇ, and ㄈ.
In Taiwan, the system is commonly known by its official name, or simply as. In official documents, it is occasionally called Mandarin Phonetic Symbols I, abbreviated as, to distinguish it from the Mandarin Phonetic Symbols II system published in 1984. Formerly, the system was named and.

History

Origins

The Commission on the Unification of Pronunciation, led by Wu Zhihui from 1912 to 1913, created a system called Zhuyin Zimu, which was based on Zhang Binglin's shorthand. It was used as the official phonetic script to annotate the sounds of the characters in accordance with the Old National Pronunciation. A draft was released on 11 July 1913, by the Republic of China National Ministry of Education, but it was not officially proclaimed until 23 November 1928. It was first named 'national pronunciation alphabet', but in April 1930 was renamed 'phonetic symbols' to address fears that the alphabetic system might independently replace Chinese characters.

Modern use

Bopomofo is the predominant phonetic system in teaching reading and writing in elementary school in Taiwan. In elementary school, particularly in the lower years, Chinese characters in textbooks are often annotated with Bopomofo as ruby characters as an aid to learning. Additionally, one children's newspaper in Taiwan, the Mandarin Daily News, annotates all articles with Bopomofo ruby characters.
It is also the most popular way for Taiwanese to enter Chinese characters into computers and smartphones and to look up characters in a dictionary.
In teaching Mandarin, Taiwan institutions and some overseas communities, such as Filipino Chinese, use Bopomofo.
Bopomofo is shown in a position secondary to that of Hanyu Pinyin in all editions of Xiandai Hanyu Cidian from the 1960 edition to the current 2016 edition.
Bopomofo is also used to transcribe other Chinese languages, most commonly Taiwanese Hokkien and Cantonese; however, its use can be applied to practically any variety in handwriting. Outside of Chinese, Bopomofo letters are also used in Hmu and Ge languages by a small number of Hmu Christians.

Symbols

The Bopomofo characters were created by Zhang Binglin, taken mainly from "regularized" forms of ancient Chinese characters, the modern readings of which contain the sound that each letter represents. The consonants are listed in order of place of articulation, from the front of the mouth to the back,,,,,,,,, etc.

Origin of bopomofo symbols

Bopomofo	Origin	IPA	Pinyin	WG	Example
ㄅ	From, the ancient form and current top portion of, "to wrap up; package"		b	p	包
ㄆ	From, a variant form of, "to knock lightly".		p	pʻ	撲
ㄇ	From, the archaic character and current "cover" radical 冖 .		m	m	冞
ㄈ	From the "right open box" radical .		f	f	匪
ㄪ	From, a simplification of, "ten thousand". No longer used in Mandarin transcription.		w	v	尾
ㄉ	From, archaic form of, "blade". Compare the Shuowen seal.		d	t	地
ㄊ	From, an upside-down form of and an ancient form of		t	tʻ	提
ㄋ	From /, ancient form of, "to be".		n	n	你
ㄌ	From, archaic form of, "power".		l	l	利
ㄍ	From the obsolete character /, "ditch".		g	k	告
ㄎ	From the archaic character, now "breath" or "sigh" component .		k	kʻ	考
ㄫ	From, "towering". No longer used in Mandarin transcription.		ng	ng	五
ㄏ	From the archaic character and current radical .	~	h	h	好
ㄐ	From the archaic character .		j	ch	叫
ㄑ	From the archaic character, graphic root of the character chuān, "river".		q	chʻ	巧
ㄬ	From the archaic character, "dotted cliff". Not used in Mandarin anymore.		gn	gn	眼
ㄒ	From, an ancient form of, "under".		x	hs	小
ㄓ	From /, archaic form of, a genitive marker in Classical Chinese.		zhi, zh-	ch	知 ; 主
ㄔ	From the character and radical		chi, ch-	chʻ	吃 ; 出
ㄕ	From, an ancient form of		shi, sh-	sh	是 shì ; 束 shù
ㄖ	Modified from the seal script form of, "day" or "sun".	~	ri, r-	j	日 ; 入
ㄗ	From the archaic character and current radical, dialectically		zi, z-	ts	字 ; 在
ㄘ	From, archaic form of, dialectically . Compare semi-cursive form and seal-script.		ci, c-	tsʻ	詞 ; 才
ㄙ	From the archaic character, which was later replaced by its compound .		si, s-	s	四 ; 塞

Bopomofo	Origin	IPA	Pinyin	WG	Example
ㄚ	From		a	a	大
ㄛ	From the obsolete character, inhalation, the reverse of, which is preserved as a phonetic in the compound .		o	o	多
ㄜ	Derived from its allophone in Standard Chinese,		e	o/ê	得
ㄝ	From, "also". Compare the Warring States bamboo form		-ie/ê	eh	爹
ㄞ	From, archaic form of.		ai	ai	晒
ㄟ	From, an obsolete character meaning, "to move".		ei	ei	誰
ㄠ	From		ao	ao	少
ㄡ	From		ou	ou	收
ㄢ	From the archaic character "to bloom", preserved as a phonetic in the compound 犯		an	an	山
ㄣ	From, archaic variant of or		en	ên	申
ㄤ	From		ang	ang	上
ㄥ	From, archaic form of		eng	êng	生
ㄦ	From, the bottom portion of used as a cursive and simplified form		er	êrh	而
ㄧ	From, "one"		y, yi, -i	i	以 ; 逆 nì
ㄨ	From, ancient form of, "five". Compare the transitory form ?.		w, wu, -u	u/w	努 ; 我ㄨㄛˇ
ㄩ	From the ancient character, which remains as a radical		yu, -ü	ü/yü	雨 ; 女
ㄭ	From the character. It represents the fricative vowel of ㄓ，ㄔ，ㄕ，ㄖ，ㄗ，ㄘ，ㄙ，though it is not used after them in transcription.	~, ~	-i	ih/ŭ	資 ; 知 ; 死

Writing

Stroke order

Bopomofo is written in the same stroke order rule as Chinese characters. ㄖ is written with three strokes, unlike the character from which it is derived, which has four strokes.
ㄧ can be written as a vertical line or a horizontal line ; both are accepted forms. Traditionally, it should be written as a horizontal line in vertical writing, and a vertical line in horizontal writing. The People's Republic of China almost exclusively uses horizontal writing, so the vertical form has become the standard form there. Language education in Taiwan generally uses vertical writing, so most people learn it as a horizontal line, and use a horizontal form even in horizontal writing. In 2008, the Taiwanese Ministry of Education decided that the primary form should always be the horizontal form, but that the vertical form is an accepted alternative. Unicode 8.0.0 published an errata in 2014 that updates the representative glyph to be the horizontal form. Computer fonts may only display one form or the other, or may be able to display both if the font is aware of changes needed for vertical writing.
Bopomofo is occasionally unofficially handwritten as syllable blocks, similar to Hangul, however this is not considered an accepted form by the People's Republic of China nor the Republic of China, and it is unsupported by Unicode.

Tonal marks

As shown in the following table, tone marks for the second, third, and fourth tones are shared between bopomofo and pinyin. In bopomofo, the mark for first tone is usually omitted but can be included, while a dot above indicates the fifth tone. In pinyin, a macron indicates the first tone, and the lack of a marker usually indicates the fifth tone.
Unlike Hanyu Pinyin, Bopomofo aligns well with the Chinese characters in books whose texts are printed vertically, making Bopomofo better suited for annotating the pronunciation of vertically oriented Chinese text.
When used in conjunction with Chinese characters, Bopomofo is typically placed to the right of the Chinese character vertically in both vertical print and horizontal print or to the top of the Chinese character in horizontal print.

Example

Below is an example for the word "bottle" :

Erhua transcription

Words rhotacized as a result of erhua are spelled with ㄦ attached to the syllable. In case the syllable uses other tones than the 1st tone, the tone mark is attached to the penultimate letter standing for syllable nucleus, but not to ㄦ.

Comparison

Pinyin

Bopomofo and pinyin are based on the same Mandarin pronunciations; hence there is a one-to-one correspondence between the two systems:
¹ Not written.
² is written as after,,, or.
³ / is written as / after /, /, /, /.
⁴ is pronounced when it follows an initial.

Use outside Standard Mandarin

Bopomofo symbols for non-Mandarin Chinese varieties are added to Unicode in the Bopomofo Extended block.
Three letters no longer used for Mandarin are carried over from Old National Pronunciation:

Bopomofo	IPA	GR	Pinyin
ㄪ		v	v
ㄫ		ng	ng
ㄬ		gn	gn

Taiwanese Hokkien

In Taiwan, Bopomofo is used to teach Taiwanese Hokkien, and it is also used to transcribe it phonetically in contexts such as on storefront signs, karaoke lyrics, and film subtitles.
23 more letters were added specifically for Taiwanese Hokkien:

Bopomofo	IPA	TL	Derivation
ㆠ		b	ㄅ with voicing circle
ㆣ		g	ㄍ with voicing circle
ㆢ		ji	ㄐ with voicing circle
ㆡ		j	ㄗ with voicing circle
ㆨ		ir	ㄨ and ㄧ combined
ㆦ		oo	from ㄛ
ㆤ		e	from ㄝ
ㆩ		ann	ㄚ with nasal curl
ㆧ		onn	ㆦ with nasal curl
ㆥ		enn	ㆤ with nasal curl
ㆪ/ㆳ		inn	ㄧ with nasal curl
ㆫ		unn	ㄨ with nasal curl
ㆮ		ainn	ㄞ with nasal curl
ㆯ		aunn	ㄠ with nasal curl
ㆰ		am	ㄚ and ㄇ combined
ㆱ		om	ㆦ and ㄇ combined
ㆲ		ong
ㆬ		m	ㄇ with syllabic stroke
ㆭ		ng	ㄫ with syllabic stroke
ㆴ		-p	small ㄅ
ㆵ		-t	small ㄉ
ㆻ/ㆶ		-k	small ㄍ
ㆷ		-h	small ㄏ

Two tone marks were added for the additional tones: ˪, ˫

Cantonese

The following letters are used in Cantonese.

Bopomofo	IPA	Jyutping
ㆼ		gw
ㆽ		kw
ㆾ		eo
ㆿ		a

If a syllable ends with a consonant other than or, the consonant's letter is added, then followed by a final middle dot.
-ㄞ is used for .
-ㄣ is used for, and -ㄢ is used for . Other vowels that end with use -ㄋ· for the final ㄋ..
-ㄡ is used for . To transcribe, it is written as ㄛㄨ.
ㄫ is used for both initial and final .
ㄐ is used for and ㄑ is used for .
During the time when Bopomofo was proposed for Cantonese, tones were not marked.

Computer uses

Input method

Bopomofo can be used as an input method for Chinese characters. It is one of the few input methods that can be found on most modern personal computers without having to download or install any additional software. It is also one of the few input methods that can be used for inputting Chinese characters on certain cell phones.. On the QWERTY keyboard, the symbols are ordered column-wise top-down

Unicode

Bopomofo was added to the Unicode Standard in October 1991 with the release of version 1.0.
The Unicode block for Bopomofo is U+3100–U+312F:
Additional characters were added in September 1999 with the release of version 3.0.
The Unicode block for these additional characters, called Bopomofo Extended, is U+31A0–U+31BF:
Unicode 3.0 also added the characters and, in the Spacing Modifier Letters block. These two characters are now classified as Bopomofo characters.