10. Writing Chinese in IPA and
the International Phonetic Association
Writing Mandarin, Taiwanese, Hakka and
Cantonese in IPA
In this course, we
concentrate on the IPA symbols needed to represent the
sounds of English, but you should also learn the symbols
used to represent Mandarin. One problem you will find as
soon as you try to find solid information on writing
Mandarin in IPA is that different sources use different
symbols for the same sounds. We suggest familiarizing
yourself with the various schemes, and then make your own
choices after careful thought and consultation. Make sure
you are ready to defend your particular choices!
Here is one set of options:
http://www.zdic.net/appendix/f10.htm
Wikipedia
offers this scheme:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandarin_phonology
Go to this page to
see how tone is represented in IPA:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_letter
Also
for your reference, here is a tutorial to help you learn
Hanyu Pinyin 漢語拼音 if you don't already know it, or would
like a review:
http://www.svcs-us.org/docs/academics/2012-2013/HanYuPinYin.pdf
local copy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwanese_Hokkien#Phonology
The IPA symbols for the 梅縣 Moiyan dialect of Hakka 客家話 on
Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakka_Chinese#Moiyen
How to write Cantonese 粵語/廣東話 in
Romanization and IPA:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyutping
Entering tone syllables 入聲字 in Chinese
You may have noticed that
many dialects of Chinese, including Southern Min, Hakka and
Cantonese, have syllables ending in the final stops /p/, /t/, /k/
or /ʔ/, something
Mandarin no longer has. In Chinese these are called 'entering
tone' words 入聲字ru4sheng1zi4. You may someday want to
cite examples of entering tone words to illustrate a phonetic
point. But how can you identify 'entering tone' words if you
don't speak one of these dialects? Actually, words that once
ended in a consonant stop generally have a distinctive
syllable structure in Mandarin. By finding syllables with this
distinctive structure, you can in a large number of cases
identify syllables that once belonged to the 'entering tone'
category, although the original consonant finals themselves
are now gone. Here is a page in Chinese (html .doc) based on notes from a
Chinese historical phonology class that tells you how to do
it! (With thanks to Prof. Chen Hsin-hsiung 陳新雄教授 of National
Taiwan Normal University)
The International Phonetic Association
(IPA)
You've already visited the International Phonetic Association (IPA; the 'A' can mean both 'Association' and 'Alphabet') site for the Mandarin tone symbols; you should have a look at some of the other things they offer. The IPA (Association) sets the standards for phonetic transcription in IPA (Alphabet), among other things:
https://www.internationalphoneticassociation.org/
You will find full and partial charts of
the IPA alphabet, IPA computer fonts, and recordings of the
IPA sounds, which can be downloaded by language. You can also
link to the homepages of IPA Council members; these are mostly
rather famous phoneticians, and their sites are good resources
to tap.
The IPA is designed for use by
linguists and language learners, not the general public. A
simpler transcription system 轉寫系統 is needed so non-Chinese can
read and write, for example, Chinese personal and place names
they see in the news or while traveling. Ideally this
transcription system should avoid the use of a lot of special
characters. Romanization is
the use of Latin letters to create such a system. Many efforts
have been made to come up with a good way to Romanize standard
Chinese or Mandarin; but people (especially in Taiwan) are
having a good bit of difficulty deciding what 'a good way' to
Romanize Chinese is. You can read all
about it, in English and Chinese, in the next three pages.
Next: Romanization
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