Hey guys, I just stumbled upon something that I think is really cool.
In my last year of Japanese study, I’ve developed a healthy interest in Chinese as well. I have a couple of friends that speak different variants of Chinese but one friend in-particular pushed me into learning a little Mandarin.
Today, while surfing wikipedia about writing systems, (Yeah, I’m a linguistic nerd) I discovered bopomofo.

According to Wikipedia:
“Bopomofo or Zhuyin Fuhao, often abbreviated zhuyin, is a phonetic system for transcribing Chinese, especially Mandarin, for people learning to read, write or speak Mandarin.”

Well, I love learning new writing systems (I was originally planning to tackle Cyrillic over the next week) but my interest in Chinese has me thinking this might be fun. It has been noted on the pages I visited that it’s not in widespread use in mainland China and is mainly used in Taiwan.

Does anybody else know anything else about Bopomofo? Do you know it? Use it?

Whoa. I’m a Mandarin-student, I’ve never seen those symbol-things before. Can you speak Mandarin, Graham?

Only a tiny tiny bit, but I want to learn more. I’m just too concentrated on other things right now.

Bopomofo surprisingly (or not) looks like the Japanese Kana. I haven’t a clue how to use them since I’ve only used Pinyin, but I guess it would be used similarly to the Kana.

The best link I have found for understanding / for learning about Bopomofo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bopomofo

I haven’t learned it as pinyin is the method used in the PRC.

Each transcription method of Mandarin (there are many) has its limitations in describing the sounds of the language. For example Pinyin seems to describe the sounds quite well for Mandarin speakers but only partially transfers the sounds to English.

I am a native Mandarin speaker. I know BoPoMoFo very well. There are only 37 phonetic symbols in Mandarin. It is easier to learn BoPoMoFo than Pinyin, in my opinion.

Hi Graham,

When I came to Taiwan and started learning Mandarin I first learned ZhuYin (注音符號). It represents the sounds of Chinese language a bit more accurately than pinyin, however, it’s more difficult to learn because we westerners aren’t used to non-latin writing systems. Chinese students in Taiwan learn it to help them learn Chinese reading – the ZhuYin is usually put to the right of the Chinese character in children’s storybooks. It was essential for me to learn because I teach young students English, and sometimes they can’t read Chinese characters yet, so I will use it to write translations on the board. Also, it works great for typing on computers in Chinese, as the computers in Taiwan have ZhuYin on the keyboards.

- Kenny

I was a Chinese person and bopomofo in Chinese was called bupumufu

Bopomofo is more commonly used in Taiwan, I believe. Anyway, I only ever found in textbooks that came from Taiwan. It’s cool indeed, but pinyin does an awesome job all the same. I can’t imagine why one would be more efficient than the other, except perhaps for the possibility of annotating characters when written vertically, as you would with furigana.

@Kenny — How is it more accurate than pinyin? When you learn to read pinyin correctly, it kinds a perfect representation of the pronunciation.

PinYin are made of bopomofo. Bopomofo is the part of PinYin.
If you know bopomofo, after that you can study PinYin.
If you know PinYin, okay, you can speak chinese.
you can study Chinese characters next.

Hi, Graham!
When I learned Chinese at Latvian University one of our teachers used bopomofo when he taught us Wenyan(文言). if you use bopomofo and understand it, it is very easy.

Hi, everybody in here. Below weblink for your reference about Chinese PinYin http://english.cri.cn/chinese2007/chinese/english/lesson01/Phonetics.html. also you can know more about Chinese in here.

I am Chinese. it is my pleasure to help you on your Chinese if you need

This is a very useful website for Chinese learners. I am sure many students will benefit from it. Thanks Kalvin.
谢谢您提供以上网址！

Hi Claire! Nice write up about Mainland Mandarin Chinese, indeed.