Talk:Pinyin/Archive 1

message: A question: Should we use "Pinyin" or "pinyin" (i.e. capitalize the first letter or not)? I have always thought "Pinyin" was the correct spelling, as it's a name of a Romanization system, but now that I see most people seem to write "pinyin" I'm not so certain anymore.
 - Wintran 11:31 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)
* I second the lowercase idea.  I've always used 'pinyin', and it's not a proper noun as far as I can ascertain! -- prat
: Merriam-Wesbter accepts both, OED lists it as uppercase and offers no explanation.
: The name can be considered as:
:# Abbreviation of the document = uppercase.
:# A common method = lowercase, but in this case, it can literally can hence theoretically refers to all alphabet spelling systems, Latin or Cyrillic.
: --Menchi 00:32 20 Jun 2003 (UTC)
I recommend capping "pinyin" when standing alone only when it's used as a short form for Hanyu Pinyin (note the capping of both H and P). Because the article also discusses the Tongyong Pinyin system, it's especially important to observe the distinction. 
Thus, in the following, pinyin should be capped: Proponents for adopting pinyin maintained that it is a international standard that is already used throughout the world.
And in this example it is already in lower case, as it should be, because the reference is to romanization in general not to Hanyu Pinyin specifically: 
As of 2003, no form of pinyin is used in elementary education on Taiwan to teach pronunciation. Taibeiren 02:50, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds good to me. It's logical. --Menchi 02:53, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Capitalization 

message: ar: IPA [aɹ], like a, but pronounced with the tongue curled up against the palate; like rhotic are in North American English
So far as I know, there is no such vowel "ar" in pinyin, maybe you mean "儿化音", but that's quite "Beijing" or, say, northern, people in the south don't use that. In fact, 'r' here is short for 'er'(a-er--> ar), like "盖儿"(gai-er can be written like "gair"), but 'ar' can't be count as an independent vowel. Otherwise, 'ir', 'ür' etc. should be list too.  --ILovEJPPitoC 10:14, 9 Oct 2003 (UTC)
thread_title:  ar? 

message: Text reads A dieresis or an umlaut is occasionally used over the vowel u. Actually, Hanyu Pinyin does not use the diaeresis, only the umlaut. Although the two look the same, their function is different -- thus the two different words. -- Taibeiren 03:08, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  umlaut vs. diaeresis 

message: Under "Rules given in terms of English pronunciation", change:
i: IPA [i], like English "ee", except when preceded by "c", "ch", "r", "s", "z" or "zh"...
       to
i: IPA [i], like English "ee", except when preceded by "c", "ch", "r", "s", "sh", "z" or "zh"...
This suggestion is based purely on observation of actual usage. For example, pinyin for 适 as in 合适 is "shi".
I'm hesitant to make the change without some input since I'm a new user to Wikipedia & also new to pinyin. However, I'm a native Mandarin speaker, know the actual pronunciation of words & just trying understand pinyin better primarily for word-processing purposes. --Anon
: Done. Next time just change it yourself. ;) -- ran 05:00, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)
: Yes, be bold! --Menchi 05:02, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggested change (minor) 

message: Why is there a middle dot character before the (ma) in the 5th tone in the example?
:It indicates a partial stop. --Taoster 19:04, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Typo or something I don't understand? 

message: For other Wikipedia contributors who need to create Pinyin romanizations of printed Chinese literature (especially proper nouns that usually don't appear in electronic translators), I have started working with the PenPower Chinese Handwriting Recognition System.
My initial experience with this device can be found on my user page.
If anyone has any questions about the PenPower device, please feel free to post either on this talk page, or over on my user talk page. So far, the out-of-the-box experience for this device has been excellent, but I'll post again later, after I see how it holds up to everyday use, to let you know if I highly recommend it or not. --DV 10:17, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Simplified Chinese Input Device (for creating Pinyin) 

message: Computer systems long provided the most convincing argument in favor of pinyin; early computers were able to display nothing but 7-bit ASCII (essentially the 26 letters, the 10 digits, and a handful of punctuation marks). Most contemporary computer systems are now able to readily display characters from not only Chinese, but from many other writing systems as well.  In addition, multiple input method editors exist that use standard keyboards to type them (pinyin being one such method). Now, PDAs and digitizing tablets allow users to write characters with a stylus, which can then be stored and edited like any text. Thus, this justification is no longer as strong as it used to be. 
In what way does computer display capabilities provide "the most convincing argument in favour of pinyin"? The most widespread uses of pinyin - in transliteration, education, dictionaries, computer input - have nothing to do with the capability of computers in displaying Chinese characters. -- ran (talk) 00:29, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)
:I think the logic was that if it were the case that computers continued to be restricted to ASCII only, then the only way the Chinese would be able to continue functioning in an increasingly computer-oriented world would be to write in pinyin only.  However, because of new encoding schemes such as GB, Big5, and later Unicode, this argument no longer became relevant.  The use of the "most convincing" qualifier does sound like peacock strutting though, so it should probably be removed.  --Umofomia 01:30, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Strange paragraph 

message: Someone made an edit modifying many pinyin spellings to contain strange symbols (that do not display in my system). This cannot be right, since pinyin uses only standard latin letters with perhaps an umlaut added.
Anyway, the conception of the finals table escapes me. It seems to be a weird combination of IPA and latin, obscuring any logic to the systrem. Can someoone knowledgable do an overhaul? −Woodstone 13:35, July 10, 2005 (UTC)
:The lower-case letter "a" and "g" in pinyin is supposed to be of the handwritten type with no curl over the top or bottom. --zy26 (Talk) 13:55, July 10, 2005 (UTC)
In normal writing using the latin alphabet, the curls over/under a and g are just font variants. They do not represent any difference in letters. My guess is that no reader of an English encyclopedia would notice any difference between the letter versions. Actually in the default wiki font in my browser the g does not have a curl. The specific symbols do not render well in IE6, used by a very large portion of readership.I would say it's better to go with the standard a and g as they happen to appear in the chosen fonts, than produce a square box for some readers. −Woodstone 15:46, July 10, 2005 (UTC)
:In my browser the letter "g" does not have a curl, too.   a g, can anyone see them? Maybe I need a template of Pinyin just like IPA...--zy26 was here. 13:56, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I replaced the a and g with standard symbols.  What Woodstone says is absolutely correct; the modified a and g are appropriate as IPA symbols *only*. Benwing 02:18, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  strange symbols in pinyin tables 

message: I am very glad that a complete table of finals and their pronunciation is given, since most descriptions in textbooks are incomplete about the various complexities.
But the pronunciation listed for the 'ing' final seems wrong.  The listed pronunciation  but it seems to me that it should be .  The former would sound like English "young", but when I've heard words like "Yingwen" pronounced, the first part sounds like English "ing".  Can a native speaker verify this?
Also, the "exhaustive" list of finals below is obviously not exhaustive, as it leaves out -in, -ing, and probably others.  It's not completely clear we need this table, as it duplicates the table before it; although the nontechnical descriptions are probably useful for readers who don't know IPA. Benwing 02:25, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, the list of finals with informal explanations of their pronunciation does seem to be incomplete, and I agree that the informal definitions are helpful. As for ying, I'm not sure what should be there. The current entry would appear to be prescriptively correct, at least. I also reverted the edit that replaced some of the IPA characters with ASCII characters: in IPA there is a difference between /a/ (front) and /ɑ/ (back), the two are not interchangeable. If they appear "broken", that probably indicates a font problem.  See the IPA notice near the beginning of the article for futher information. --MarkSweep 02:43, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: MarkSweep, your reversion was incorrect.  I am aware of the IPA differences (I am a linguistics grad student), but the changes I made were *not* in IPA representations but in the Latin representation of pinyin, which is a purely alphabetic standard that should not have unusual glyphs in it. Benwing 04:29, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Oops, you are right. I misread your changes. Sorry about that. --MarkSweep 05:01, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

text: It appears that there was a systematic effort to use IPA symbols everywhere that went a bit overboard: see this diff. Benwing is right that IPA symbols should not be used in pinyin. --MarkSweep 05:35, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  mistakes/omissions in table? 

message: What does the use of ɡ in pinyin#Pronunciation and pinyin#Orthographic features mean? Laundrypowder 03:32, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: See the immediately preceding comments: it's an IPA symbol. If you can easily distinguish it, replace it with an ordinary letter g in ordinary text (but not in IPA, of course). --MarkSweep 03:48, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Much appreciated.  I saw the other post but didn't quit put it together with the pronunciation!  As only a casual student of pinyin, I had never seen it used before and apart from reading through the IPA page, there was no explanation of that symbol's use.  Laundrypowder 04:00, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Use of different g-like symbol. 

message: 1. Make GIFs of all IPA symbols (and Chinese characters) -- many users are seeing "??" everywhere.
2. Regarding zh -- is the IPA Retroflex Approximate really the same as the Voiced Retroflex Fricative, or is there some friction missing?
3. The Finals chart is cruel and inscrutible to anyone not familiar with Chinese syllable thinking. It needs explanations of the "zero" sign (which should really not be used as it looks just like an IPA symbol BTW) and schwa used in the Nucleus column, and then explanations of what is happening with those very unexpected and unpredictable phonetic and spelling changes that occur when the elements are combined.
4. In "Rules given in terms of English pronunciation", are these Aveolo-Palatals really getting "passed backwards along my tongue"? Can't I pass them with the dutchy on the lefthand side instead? Is there not something still going on in the aveolar region, and do I need a complete lexicon of Portugese at this moment? And many other complaints about inexactitude and rambling throughout. What is always lacking and always needed in phonetic "description" is specific instructions: "Raise the middle of your tongue to here. Raise the tip of your tongue to here. Do this with your jaw and lips. Do this with your breath and vocal cords." -- 66.81.221.246, 8 November 2005
: ad 1. No GIFs, please. Getting a browser to display Chinese characters and IPA in Unicode is not such a big problem, and GIF's would be a nightmare: people who can input Chinese and IPA can do so fairly quickly, and people who can't won't be able to deal with the GIFs either. Besides that, GIFs take much longer to load and won't fit in with the rest of the text.
: ad 3. I agree, the chart is not perfect. The problem is that the symbols used in the grey boxes are a mixture of Pinyin (ng) and IPA ([y]). That's confusing. 
: ad 4. I'm not a big fan of "rules given in terms of English pronunciation", because without linguistic training, monolingual English speakers won't be able to use them anyways. — Babelfisch 01:27, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  With regards to point 1, I agree that we should not replace the unicode with GIFs.  GIFs are rather unwieldy to handle in this context.  It's also become a very straight forward process to enable the display of East Asian character sets these days. --BenjaminTsai Talk 14:17, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some Thoughts on Content and Usability Issues for Article Revision 

message: The term pinying is sometimes used. Is this incorrect? 
Anyway, I put in a redirect from Pinying. Singkong2005 04:52, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, "Pinying" is absolutely wrong. The difference between -n and -ng is crucial in most Chinese dialects, but not all of them. The source of this mistake is either complete ignorance of non-Chinese speakers, or dialect influence of Chinese speakers. — Babelfisch 05:48, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Finding this page 

message: Should "pinyin" be written in upper case or lower case?  It appears both ways in this article.  Badagnani 03:02, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Pinyin does not need to be capitalized.  However when spelling it out as "Hanyu Pinyin", it needs to be capitalized. --BenjaminTsai Talk 14:10, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Capitalization 

message: To make more explicit that this article is on Hanyu Pinyin and not Tongyong Pinyin and clear any possible confusion, I propose that this page be moved to "Hanyu Pinyin". Comments? --Jiang 07:33, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Move? 

message: Does anyone know what happened to the selection of "Special characters" below the edit screen, for use to insert into articles while editing (including vowels with pinyin tone marks)?  They are mostly not there any more, and nobody responds on the various "help" pages where I have asked about this.  Maybe if more people start to ask, whoever removed these will replace them so we can get back to work.  Badagnani 08:24, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Special characters--where are they? 

message: For the j example, say "as in jingle bells" or just jingle, instead of ajar.
I recall this is closer theoretically.210.200.105.227 21:06, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  say jingle bells, not ajar 

message: Is final -r retroflex? I've heard that its sound is clearly distinct from initial r-, but on this page, the same IPA transcription is used for both sounds. 84.73.159.74 08:51, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  final -r 

message: Hi, we need Chinese language help at Chinese wine.  There's a wine which isn't yet discussed that is sold as "hung-lu" wine.  It is reddish in color, a sharp smell, and a chemically, diesel-like taste, and is sold by the Oriental Mascot brand (which also makes mijiu and formerly also made Shaoxing jiu).  The largest photo of this wine is here, but the characters aren't easily readable.  I think "hung-lu" isn't Hanyu pinyin.  Can someone provide information about this wine, the characters, etc.?  Thank you!
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/B0000DJZ0F/ref=dp_primary-product-display_0/102-4042702-9901704?%5Fencoding=UTF8&n=3370831&s=gourmet-food  Badagnani 19:31, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Question 

message: It is perfectly fine to begin the lead section with the more specific, technical, or official term, like how United States begins with "United States of America" and Bill Clinton begins with "William Jefferson Clinton". I don't see why the article needs to begin with "Pinyin". --Jiang 17:13, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Simply because a great majority of the readers will be suprised to see the well known transcription method suddenly have an unfamiliar name. −Woodstone 17:39, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lead section 

message: "For example, the sounds indicated in pinyin by b and g correspond more closely to the sounds indicated by p and k in Western use of the Latin script. Other letters, like j, q, x or zh indicate sounds that do not correspond to any exact sound in English. Some of the transcriptions in pinyin, such as the ang ending, do not correspond to English pronunciations, either."
While in china, i have never confused b with p, or g with k. J and zh sound like the english j, q is like ch, and x is like sh. Does this section apply to non-Mandarin dialects, or is it just incorrect?
68.197.167.243 23:40, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sure it applies to Mandarin.  Pinyin is designed for standard Mandarin, but my Chinese teacher said that it is really intended for the Beijing accent.  I agree with you about b/p and g/k, so perhaps that is a matter of opinion, or just a way of expressing that although 'b' is similar to an English 'b' it is not the same.  However, the way I say the 'j' 'q' 'x' 'zh', was always either causing words to be misunderstood or just pointed out as being a very poor Chinese accent.  She is right in that the tapes (nor her own native accent) don't sound much like my attempts either.  She also said that Mandarin speakers from some other parts of China don't distinguish those consonants the way northern speakers do.  I am a native English speaker, and I have not travelled to China myself, I am afraid. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 14:54, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  this section does not apply to mandarin..? 

message: There is an excellent non-profit website which specializes in educating the public about Hanyu Pinyin, and it should definitely be in the external links list here, but I don't know how to add it because I don't understand the code for the external links. Here is the info: http://www.pinyin.info/  
I am very well versed in pinyin, so I can vouch for its quality and the fact that it is not spam. Could someone please help add it?  Thanks, Dragonbones 15:41, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Done. −Woodstone 19:14, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  external resource missing 

message: Would someone please take a look at my Talk question "This Phoneme /ɰ/ is Misclassified, and Does it Really Exist?" in the Standard Mandarin article.
They have a mystery phoneme in their chart there that is not present in the Romanization charts in the Pinyin article here:  /ɰ/ —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 75.7.2.131 (talk) 13:26, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mysterious /ɰ/ Phoneme in Standard Mandarin Article 

message: A Good Article review has opened concerning this article concerning these issues at WP:GA/R, please address them in 7 days or the article will be delisted: maintenance of the article has fallen, there are 3 citation needed tags, only one reference, only one note and one spam notice. Rlevse 00:25, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: delisted as a GA, no action taken on above.Rlevse 23:14, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Good Article Review