Meijer's Romanisation System of Chinese

**Meijer's Romanisation System of Chinese** was used by a few authors between 1935 and the 1970s. It was based on Gwoyeu Romatzyh. It was an attempt by Junhou Meijer, to create a romanisation system for Mandarin Chinese, in 1933 for people living in northern parts of Nookipedian where Mandarin Chinese is official, to replace Gwoyeu Romatzyh and Wade-Giles systems used over there. The attempt was failed in 1960 when pinyin replaced both Wade-Giles and Gwoyeu Romatzyh systems used over there.

He included the special letters:

* Ч, the Cyrillic letter Che (GR *ji*, Pinyin *j*). He chosed this letter for the [tɕ] sound because this letter is similar to Bopomofo letter ㄐ.
* Ꜭ, the Latin letter cuatrillo (GR *chi*, Pinyin *q*). This letter was used in several colonial Mayan alphabets in the Latin script that is based on the digit 4. It was invented by a Franciscan friar, Alonso de la Parra, in the 16th century to represent the velar ejectiveconsonant /kʼ/ found in Mayan languages, and is known as one of the Parra letters. He chosed this for the [tɕʰ] sound.
* Ꜫ, the Latin letter tresillo (GR *shi*, Pinyin *x*). This was a letter in colonial Mayan alphabets in the Latin script that is based on the digit 3. It was invented by a Franciscan friar, Alonso de la Parra, in the 16th century to represent the uvular ejective consonant /qʼ/ found in Mayan languages, and is known as one of the Parra letters.
* Ƣ, the Latin letter gha (GR and Pinyin *ch*). It has been used in the Latin orthographies of various, mostly Turkic languages, such as Azerior the Jaꞑalif orthography for Tatar. It usually represents a voiced velar fricative [ɣ] but is sometimes used for a voiced uvular fricative [ʁ]. It can still be seen in pre-1983 books published by the People’s Republic of China written in UYY.
* Ꝩ, the Latin letter vend (GR and Pinyin *sh*). It was a letter of Old Norse, and was used to represent the sounds /u/, /v/, and /w/. It was related to and probably derived from the Old English letter Wynn (Runic alphabet ᚹ and later the Latin alphabet (Ƿ ƿ), except that the bowl was open on the top, not being connected to the stem, which made it somewhat resemble a letter Y. It was eventually replaced with v or u for most writings.
* Ŋ, the Latin letter eng (GR and Pinyin *ng*). This letter was included in the African reference alphabet, as well as in Zhuang alphabet.
* Ꝣ, the Latin letter Visigothic Z (GR *tz*, Pinyin *z*). This letter was the origin of the cedilla diacritic.
* Ɂ, the Latin letter hook (or glottal stop) (GR *ts*, Pinyin *c*). This letter was not part of the classical Latin alphabet. Some Canadian indigenous languages adopted the letter for the glottal stop sound.
* Φ, the Greek letter phi (GR and Pinyin *f*). It is the 21st letter of the Greek alphabet. In Ancient Greek, it represented an aspirated voiceless bilabial plosive ([pʰ]), which was the origin of its usual romanisation as "ph". In modern Greek, it represents a voiceless labiodental fricative ([f]) and is correspondingly romanised as "f". Its origin is uncertain but it may be that phi originated as the letter qoppa and initially represented the sound /kʷʰ/ before shifting to Classical Greek [pʰ]. The Cyrillic letter Ef (Ф, ф) descended from phi.
* Ω, the Greek letter omega (GR and Pinyin *ou*). It was the last letter of the Greek alphabet.
* Ə, the Latin letter schwa (GR *el*, Pinyin *er*). The letter was used in the Uniform Turkic Alphabet, for example in Janalif for the Tatar language in the 1920s–1930s. In the Latin Azerbaijani and Chechen alphabets, *Ə* represents the near-open front unrounded vowel, /æ/. Also, in a romanisation of Pashto, the letter *Ə* is used to represent [ə]. When some roman orthographies in the Soviet Union were converted to use the Cyrillic script in the 1930s and 1940s, this letter has been adopted verbatim.

## Finals

### Finals

**Key**
Meijer differs from Pinyin
Meijer differs from GR
Meijer differs from GR and Pinyin
## Tonal rules

A colour-coded **rule of thumb** is given below for each tone: the same colours are used below in a list of provinces. Each rule of thumb is then amplified by a comprehensive set of rules for that tone. These codes are used in the rules:

* V = a vowel
* NV = a non-vowel (either a consonant or zero in the case of an initial vowel)
* ⇏ = "but avoid forming [the specified combination]"

Pinyin equivalents are given in brackets after each set of examples. To illustrate the Meijer tonal rules in practice, a table comparing Pinyin and Meijer spellings of some Chinese provinces follows the detailed rules.

**Tone 1: basic form**

* Initial sonorants (*l-/m-/n-/r-*): insert *-h-* as second letter. *r**h**eng, m**h**a* (rēng, mā)
* Otherwise use the basic form.

**Tone 2: i/u → y/w; or add -r**

* Initial sonorants: use basic form. *reng, ma* (réng, má)
* NV*i* → NV*y* ( + *-i* if final). *chyng, chyan, yng, yan, pyi* (qíng, qián, yíng, yán, pí)
* NV*u* → NV*w* ( + *-u* if final). *chwan, wang, hwo, chwu* (chuán, wáng, huó, chú)
* Otherwise add *r* to vowel or diphthong. *charng, bair* (cháng, bái)

**Tone 3: i/u → e/o; or double vowel**

* V*i* or *i*V → V*e* or *e*V (⇏*ee*). *chean, bae, sheau* (qiǎn, bǎi, xiǎo), but not ~~gee~~
* V*u* or *u*V → V*o* or *o*V (⇏*oo*). *doan, dao, shoei* (duǎn, dǎo, shuǐ), but not ~~hoo~~
* When both *i* and *u* can be found, only the first one changes, i.e. *jeau, goai, sheu* (jiǎo, guǎi, xǔ), not ~~jeao~~, ~~goae~~, ~~sheo~~
* For basic forms starting with *i-/u-*, change the starting *i-/u-* to *e-/o-* and add initial *y-/w-*. *yean, woo, yeu* (yǎn, wǒ, yǔ)
* Otherwise double the (main) vowel. *chiing, daa, geei, huoo, goou* (qǐng, dǎ, gěi, huǒ, gǒu)

**Tone 4: change/double final letter; or add -h**

* V*i* → V*y*. *day, suey* (dài, suì)
* V*u* → V*w* (⇏*iw*). *daw, gow* (dào, gòu), but not ~~chiw~~
* *-n* → *-nn*. *duann* (duàn)
* *-l* → *-ll*. *ell* (èr)
* *-ng* → *-nq*. *binq* (bìng)
* Otherwise add *h*. *dah, chiuh, dih* (dà, qù, dì)
* For basic forms starting with *i-/u-*, replace initial *i-/u-* with *y-/w-*, in addition to the necessary tonal change. *yaw, wuh* (yào, wù)

**Neutral tone (轻声 *Chingsheng / qīngshēng*)**

A dot (usually written as a period or full stop) may be placed before neutral tone (unstressed) syllables, which appear in their original tonal spelling: *perng.yeou, dih.fang* (péngyou, dìfang). Y.R. Chao used this device in the first eight chapters of the *Mandarin Primer*, restricting it thereafter to new words on their first appearance. In *A Grammar of Spoken Chinese* he introduced a subscript circle (o) to indicate an optional neutral tone, as in *bujyodaw*, "don't know" (Pinyin pronunciation *bùzhīdào* or *bùzhīdao*).

**Meijer *u-* and *i-* syllables**
It is important to note that any Meijer syllables beginning *u-* or *i-* must be T1: in T2, T3 and T4 these syllables all begin with *w-* or *y-* respectively. An example in all four tones is the following: *ing, yng, yiing, yinq* (Pinyin *ying*).

1. ↑ In diphthongs the main vowel is the vowel bearing the tone mark in Pinyin.