Talk:Pinyin table

message: Hi,
I just put up this table. Right now it is quite naked. IPA would be a great addition to this article. Additionally, I thought it would be great to add a link on each entry to a Wikicommons sound file that reads out the corresponding syllable in all Mandarin tones. Maybe you're a native speaker that has an hour or two too much time to record these sounds?
Bye, --Abdull 00:27, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

message: I updated the table to more directly reflect how "y" and "w" are used for finals with no initial.  I also put the finals into phonetic groupings.  I tried to provide a bit of info how this works, without going into much explanation.  Some points are pointed out in the Pinyin page, but I felt a brief summary was valuable before the table.
I based my update on my comparison with  BoPoMoFo/Zhuyin and finding equivalencies between them   (using both Pinyin and Zhuyin resources). I hope to add a Zhuyin table page that will show the similarities in pronounciation between Pinyin and Zhuyin quite clearly, using the same format in this table.
--Murdocke 10:42, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: *The Zhuyin table is now added --Murdocke 23:29, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Zero Initial Change and grouping of finals 

message: There seems to be some confusion about  "w" and "y", they don't represent sounds, they are just spelling conventions. Pinyin mentions this but it would be useful here,  "w" and "y" are used purely to avoid ambiguity when writing words in pinyin, eg “wenyan” for “uenian”, is it  “uen-ian”, “uen-i-an” or  “u-en-i-an”?  The same is also for writing eg “liou” as “liu”. LDHan 13:53, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I added a bit based on your suggestion Murdocke 08:18, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Spelling conventions,  "w" and "y"

message: There is not really any information in the cells of the table except whether the combination is valid. It would be much more useful if the IPA pronunciation would be given in each cell. −Woodstone 14:21, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think adding to IPA to this table would reduce its clarity, and adding IPA without context of tones may lead people to think that the combinations are valid without a proper tone attached.  As mentioned under the "Not really a topic" discussion, the purpose of this article is to show how valid pinyin syllables are combined from initials and finals, as well as offer easier comparison between other forms of capturing Mandarin pronunciation.  It does not address tones or specific pronunciation.  IPA pronunciations are discussed in the main Pinyin article. Murdocke 04:46, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

text: In addition to allowing a clearer comparison to other systems, I believe showing the valid combinations of initials and finals as well as showing ones that are not valid helps to add to the understanding of Pinyin itself ,and is information in its own right. That is the purpose of this article: show valid initial-final combinations, and allow for easier comparison between other systems. If this table, along with it's supporting information, fit well into the main Pinyin article, that would be great, but I don't think it does. It is not meant to be a pronunciation guide. Adding or replacing cell information with IPA would require to then address tones in order to represent the true pronunciation. This would move things closer a usage guide. Such a usage guide would be interesting to see (with perhaps a table with valid combinations for each tone, along with IPA), but it probably doesn't belong here, as mentioned in "Not really a topic". Murdocke 08:27, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pronunciation 

message: What are the meaning of the thick borders inside the table?
Especially the vertical one that splits the table into two?
Preroll (talk) 22:41, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Grid Lines 

message: That's rubbish! I can understand that a English speaker made this mistake because English vowels have different pronounciations. Chinese vowels are rather similar to those of Romance languages. "ong" is an own sound and differs from "eng". "w" is the equivalent of "u". That means u+eng=weng, which exists. But you will never find "ong" alone in a dictionary. Moreover, ü is not i nor y! English speakers probably hear somehow a "ee"-sound when it's a ü. However, German (ü) and French (u) people would hear a huge difference between ü and i! ü+eng doesn't exist at all. iong belongs to "group i". ong does not belong to "group u" because the first letter is not u! Why would it be called "group u"? Because the first letter of the sound is u. Besides, there is no "group a". I don't know how US Chinese dictionaries are, but every Chinese dictionary from China contains a table of vowels. There are four columns, each presenting a group: group no-name (empty cell, no heading), group i, group u and group ü. Group no-name consists of a, o, e, ai, ei, ao, ou, an, en, ang, eng, ong. Groups i, u and ü indicate if there's a combination with group no-name, e.g. next to "an" you find "ian" in column i, "uan" in column u and "üan" in column ü. This is the correct grouping.--89.14.118.189 (talk) 00:31, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, u+eng=ong, ü+eng=iong matches how it's written in Zhuyin. :) Double sharp (talk) 06:18, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  u+eng=ong, ü+eng=iong 

message: Likewise the variant sound 孿 (lüán; ㄌㄩㄢˊ) is not recognized in putonghua, or it is folded into (luán; ㄌㄨㄢˊ).
Maybe English logic is different, but as a Chinese born and living in Germany, the "or" sounds to me that 孪 is rarely used in putonghua and more common in guoyu. However, 孪 is neither common in putonghua nor is 孿 common in guoyu. This is a really rare character and mostly used in written language. There are more common characters pronounced luan, which I recommend, if the tone doesn't matter in this case.--89.14.118.189 (talk) 01:03, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  孪 (孿) 

message: You nicely group the finals, but the initials are all lumped together and not broken down into bpmf, dtnl, etc. Jidanni (talk) 11:58, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Divide the intials 

message: I have spotted the following syllables in the chart which simply DO NOT EXIST: 
* yai
* diang
* lo
* nia
* fiao
* nun
* shong
* lün
Do we have any references for these? If not, we should remove them. They certainly don't exist in everyday standard Mandarin. Tooironic (talk) 08:22, 16 January 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: If it counts for anything, my IME gives me 咯 and 囖 for "lo", 覅 for "fiao", and 黁 for "nun". _dk (talk) 14:12, 16 January 2016 (UTC)
replies: text:  Thanks. Lo seems to be supported by many IMEs but is not a standard pinyin syllable AFAIK. Baidu and Moedict confirms the existence of 黁 (here) and 覅 (here), but these are highly obscure. The latter is not even standard Chinese. Tooironic (talk) 05:11, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

text: We have Biang biang noodles. _dk (talk) 02:15, 19 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  syllables that don't exist 

message: Isn't this just wrong? --Backinstadiums (talk) 11:38, 19 November 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Not according to the rules of Hanyu Pinyin! Victionarier (talk) 12:42, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  i + en = in 

message: * diang
* lün
* sei
* shong
I can't think of a single character for them. Yes, there are other italic Pinyin:
* biang (Biangbiang noodles)
* fiao (覅)
* kei (剋)
* lüan (孿; not in any of my dictionaries but it's already explained in the article)
* nia (㖸, according to earlier editions of the 新华字典, but not Wiktionary; 〈方 dial.〉 aux. used at the end of a sentence, expressing anticipation: 来㖸)
...but I know these exist, and can name specific characters for them. If I could have ones for the first list then that would be great. Thanks. Victionarier (talk) 12:41, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Sēi is recognized in CNS, e.g. for 塞, and Wiktionary has shōng in shōngxū :wikt:蚣蝑.  But having sinogram of it is a secondary problem.  The footnote here for the syllables you listed points to Chih-Hao Tsai's cross-reference table which in turn says these were “listed in Wang (1998) but not listed in ISO 7098:1991” where Wang (1998) stands for   I'm not familiar with Simplified Phonetic Alphabet used in that work, so I might be getting something wrong, but what I see is that the table on page 98 contains sei (, 64) and shong (, 377), but I can't find diang (should be  at 15/25?) or lün ( at 18/39?); and in any case they don't explain where their table comes from.  From what I guess diang and lün might be attempts to transcribe non-Mandarin words used in Mandarin, but if anyone knows better I would love to know too.  I previously removed ㄌㄩㄣ (lün) from zhuyin table after verifying it didn't exist in official sources and no one addressed the citation needed request for a long time. (For the record neither do ㄙㄟ sei and ㄕㄨㄥ shong exist in zhuyin table or its only reference.) –MwGamera (talk) 17:11, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Just to add to this: diāng is a variant reading of , seen in terms like  (diāngdiangrchē), and is localised to Beijing and Taiwan. I haven't found anything for lün so far - the table gives , but I can't find any evidence for it. Theknightwho (talk) 15:17, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

text: Found it - lün is localised to Beijing, and found in  (lǘnyǔ). Theknightwho (talk) 16:24, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

text: I have also found "nui" in the Moedict Variant Dictionary and CNS site under nuí for one character 捼 as one of the readings. shinkas (talk) 04:57, 14 August 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Do the following exist? 

message: Occurs as a reading of the Latin letter Q (kiū or kiù) in various borrowings and neologisms, e.g.  /  (kiūtán) ("Q texture"),  /  (kiūrè) ("Q fever"),  (kiùgùn) ("snooker cue") etc.
Theknightwho (talk) 18:14, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: I have also found "nui" in the Moedict Variant Dictionary and CNS site under nuí for one character 捼 as one of the readings. shinkas (talk) 04:57, 14 August 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: kiu

message: "bo", "po" , "mo" and "fo" are contractions of "buo" , "puo" , "muo" , "fuo" respectively, as copied from Zhuyin - should these be shown as -uo finals as a modified combination, as opposed to the current display as -o finals? Is there a need to match the Zhuyin table for this, when those syllables have the "u" glide in Standard Mandarin?
Similarly, "lo" is included under -o, but the computed IPA pronunciation shown for "lo" in the Wiktionary entry for 咯 is equivalent to luo. Others in above discussion mention 囖 as "lo" but the Wiktionary entry for 囖 shows the syllable as "luo".
Zywxn |  06:20, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  bo po mo fo and lo currently under -o 

message: # din
# den
# len
# bou
# chei
# cei
# rua
# nun
# me
# diang
# duang
# biang
# shong
# fiao
# kiang
# gin
1.165.167.222 (talk) 13:58, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Do the following exist?