Zhuyin: Encyclopedia II - Zhuyin - Uses

Zhuyin - Uses

These phonetic symbols sometimes appear as ruby characters printed next to the Chinese characters in young children's books, and in editions of classical texts (which frequently use characters that appear at very low frequency rates in newspapers and other such daily fare). In advertisements, these phonetic symbols are sometimes used to write certain particles (e.g., ㄉ instead of 的); other than this, one seldom sees these symbols used in mass media adult publications except as a pronunciation guide (or index system) in dictionary entries. Bopomofo symbols are also mapped to the ordinary Roman character keyboard (1 = bo, q = po, a = mo, and so forth) used in one method for inputting Chinese text when using the computer.

Unlike pinyin, the sole purpose for zhuyin in elementary education is to teach Standard Mandarin pronunciation to children. Grade one textbooks of all subjects (including Mandarin) are entirely in zhuyin. After that year, Chinese character texts are given in annotated form. Around grade four, presence of zhuyin annotation is greatly reduced, remaining only in the new character section. School children learn the symbols so that they can decode pronunciations given in a Chinese dictionary, and also so that they can find how to write words for which they know only the sounds.

Pinyin, on the other hand, is dual-purpose. Besides being a pronunciation notation, pinyin is used widely in publications in mainland China. Some books from mainland China are published purely in pinyin with not even a single Chinese character. Those books are targeted to minority tribal groups or Westerners who know spoken Mandarin but have not yet learned written Chinese characters.

Zhuyin will probably never replace Traditional Chinese just as hiragana has never replaced characters in Japanese texts even though substituting hiragana for characters is always an option. Not only are the characters valued for esthetic and other axiological reasons, but (once they have been learned) reading characters required fewer eye fixations and eliminates the ambiguities in any alphabetic or syllabic writing system caused by the immense number of homonyms in Chinese.

Zhuyin is also used to write some of the aboriginal languages of Taiwan. For these it is a primary writing system, not an ancillary system as it is for Chinese.

For non-native speakers of Mandarin Chinese, Zhuyin can be useful as a learning tool. Because it does not use romanization, confusion over "Latin alphabet" sounds and "Chinese" sounds is not an issue. As well Zhuyin's formation of initials and finals to form syllables is more straightforward than Pinyin's. However, for one not familiar with Zhuyin, it can be more difficult to first understand the proper pronounciations. With its own keyboard layout, it is also less easily used to enter Chinese by people using a standard latin-based keyboard.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Uses", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki