Hello everyone, I’m Grace.
In this video,
I’ll introduce what Bopomofo is and its pros and cons,
and also how to write bopomopo and use it.
Let’s get started!
Some of you have asked me
what these symbols above the traditional characters were in my other videos,
they’re the phonetic symbols used in Taiwan,
in Chinese, we call it 注音符號, or you can simply say 注音.
In English, people often call it “Bopomofo” (Zhuyin),
this name comes from the first four symbols of Zhuyin:ㄅㄆㄇㄈ
In China, they use Pinyin to spell out the pronunciation of Chinese characters,
in Taiwan, we use 注音 bopomofo.
So in Taiwanese children’s books,
you can see there is 注音 along with the text
so children can read how to pronounce them.
Now let’s talk about the pros and cons of 注音,
so you can decide whether you want to learn it or not:
Firstly, I think the best part is that it’s more straightforward
in terms of the sounds that the symbols represent.
In pinyin, one letter can represent different sounds,
for example, this letter represents the “u” sound,
but when it comes after the initial “j q x”,
it’s pronounced as “ü”.
But in Zhuyin, when you see “ㄨ”,
it’s always pronounced as “ㄨ”
and “ㄩ” always pronounced as “ㄩ”.
Also in Pinyin, there are some reductions in the spelling,
like the pinyin of 留 is this: “liú”, it omits the “o” letter.
Originally, it’s like this: “lióu” but it’s shortened into this: “liú”.
However, in 注音 bopomofo, we don’t have these reductions,
so you don’t have to remember these rules.
Another pro is that 注音 is created by simplifying ancient Chinese characters,
so these symbols look pretty similar
and some of them are even the same with components of Chinese characters.
So learning 注音 would have a positive impact on
your learning of Chinese characters.
The last advantage I want to mention is that compared to Pinyin,
which uses Latin alphabets,
the symbols of 注音 look rather unfamiliar,
so when you’re learning it,
you can focus on how to properly pronounce each symbol.
Now let’s move on to the cons of 注音 bopomofo:
Unlike pinyin using Latin based alphabets
Learning Zhuyin will take more time to get used to these new symbols.
Another disadvantage of learning 注音 is that
this system is only used in Taiwan.
Textbooks published outside of Taiwan won't likely include 注音
so they'll be difficult to obtain.
I’d say if you want to learn traditional characters,
注音 is a good learning tool for you,
especially if you have some Taiwanese friends,
and you want to learn Chinese from them, they can use 注音 to help you,
but most Taiwanese people haven’t formally learned Pinyin,
so if you ask them to type pinyin of a character to you,
it wouldn’t be an easy task.
But if you only want to learn simplified characters then Pinyin is the natural choice
since most of the materials in Simplified Chinese only include Pinyin.
OK, now if you’ve decided to learn 注音.
Let’s get started!
In total, there are 37 symbols.
Let’s start with learning the 21 initials:
OK now let’s move on to the 16 finals:
Remember 一、ㄨ、ㄩ
these three sounds can be in the middle of an initial and a final.
Like this:
So they are also called “介音 medials”
After learning the 37 symbols, let’s check out the different tones:
Technically, there are five tone marks,
but the first tone is usually omitted:
This is the mark of the first tone, normally you won’t see it.
When you see a character with the first tone,
its 注音 looks like this without any tone mark.
The marks of the second, third, and fourth tones are the same as the marks in Pinyin,
they look like these:
In 注音, they are marked on the upper right side of the final symbol.
Another tone mark is the neutral tone, it looks like this:
It’s marked on top of the first symbol, like this:
OK, that’s all for today!
I hope this helps you with your Chinese learning!
BTW, if you want to learn the tongue positions and the mouth shapes of these sounds,
check out my pronunciation training videos.
I put the playlist here
and you can also find the link in my description.
Alright then, I hope you learned a lot from today’s video!
I’ll see you next time, bye!