Jyutping
Jyutping | |||||||||||||
Jyutping Romanization. | |||||||||||||
Traditional Chinese | 粵拼 | ||||||||||||
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Simplified Chinese | 粤拼 | ||||||||||||
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Jyutping (Chinese: 粵拼; Jyutping: jyut6 ping3; Cantonese pronunciation: [jyːt̚˨ pʰɪŋ˧]) is a romanisation system for Cantonese developed by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong (LSHK), an academic group, in 1993. Its formal name is The Linguistic Society of Hong Kong Cantonese Romanisation Scheme. The LSHK promotes the use of this romanisation system.
The name Jyutping (itself the Jyutping romanisation of its Chinese name, 粵拼) is a contraction consisting of the first Chinese characters of the terms jyut6 jyu5 (粵語, meaning "Cantonese speech") and ping3 jam1 (拼音 "phonetic alphabet").
Chinese romanization |
---|
Mandarin |
Wu |
|
Yue |
Southern Min |
Eastern Min |
Northern Min |
Pu-Xian Min |
Hainanese |
Hakka |
Gan |
See also |
History
The Jyutping system[1] marks a departure from all previous Cantonese romanisation systems (approximately, 12 including Robert Morrison's pioneering work of 1828, and the widely used Standard Romanization, Yale and Sidney Lau systems) by introducing z and c initials and the use of eo and oe in finals, as well as replacing the initial y, used in all previous systems, with j.[2]
Initials
b /p/ 巴 |
p /pʰ/ 怕 |
m /m/ 媽 |
f /f/ 花 |
|
d /t/ 打 |
t /tʰ/ 他 |
n /n/ 那 |
l /l/ 啦 | |
g /k/ 家 |
k /kʰ/ 卡 |
ng /ŋ/ 牙 |
h /h/ 蝦 |
|
gw /kʷ/ 瓜 |
kw /kʷʰ/ 誇 |
w /w/ 蛙 | ||
z /ts/ 渣 |
c /tsʰ/ 叉 |
s /s/ 沙 |
j /j/ 也 |
Finals
- Only the finals m and ng can be used as standalone nasal syllables.
- ^ ^ ^ Referring to the colloquial pronunciation of these words.
Tones
There are nine tones in six distinct tone contours in Cantonese. However, as three of the nine are entering tones (入聲, Jyutping: jap6 sing1), which only appear in syllables ending with p, t, and k, they do not have separate tone numbers in Jyutping (though they do in Cantonese Pinyin; these are shown in parentheses in the table below).
Tone name | jam1 ping4 (陰平) | jam1 soeng5 (陰上) | jam1 heoi3 (陰去) |
joeng4 ping4 (陽平) | joeng4 soeng5 (陽上) | joeng4 heoi3 (陽去) |
gou1 jam1 jap6 (高陰入) | dai1 jam1 jap6 (低陰入) | joeng4 jap6 (陽入) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Tone Number | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 1 (7) | 3 (8) | 6 (9) |
The tone name in English | high level or high falling | mid rising | mid level | low falling | low rising | low level | entering high level | entering mid level | entering low level |
Contour[3] | ˥ 55 / ˥˧ 53 | ˧˥ 35 | ˧ 33 | ˨˩ 21 / ˩ 11 | ˩˧ 13 | ˨ 22 | ˥ 5 | ˧ 3 | ˨ 2 |
Character Example | 分 | 粉 | 訓 | 焚 | 奮 | 份 | 忽 | 發 | 佛 |
Example | fan1 | fan2 | fan3 | fan4 | fan5 | fan6 | fat1 | faat3 | fat6 |
Comparison with Yale romanisation
Jyutping and the Yale Romanisation of Cantonese represent Cantonese pronunciations with the same letters in:
- The initials: b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, ng, h, s, gw, kw, w.
- The vowel: aa (except when used alone), a, e, i, o, u, yu.
- The nasal stop: m, ng.
- The coda: i, u, m, n, ng, p, t, k.
But they differ in the following:
- The vowels eo and oe represent /ɵ/ and /œː/ respectively in Jyutping, whereas the eu represents both vowels in Yale.
- The initial j represents /j/ in Jyutping whereas y is used instead in Yale.
- The initial z represents /ts/ in Jyutping whereas j is used instead in Yale.
- The initial c represents /tsʰ/ in Jyutping whereas ch is used instead in Yale.
- In Jyutping, if no consonant precedes the vowel yu, then the initial j is appended before the vowel. In Yale, the corresponding initial y is never appended before yu under any circumstances.
- Jyutping defines three finals not in Yale: eu /ɛːu/, em /ɛːm/, and ep /ɛːp/. These three finals are used in colloquial Cantonese words, such as deu6 (掉), lem2 (舐), and gep6 (夾).
- To represent tones, only tone numbers are used in Jyutping whereas Yale traditionally uses tone marks together with the letter h (though tone numbers can be used in Yale as well).
Comparison with Cantonese pinyin
Jyutping and Cantonese Pinyin represent Cantonese pronunciations with the same letters in:
- The initials: b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, ng, h, s, gw, kw, j, w.
- The vowel: aa, a, e, i, o, u.
- The nasal stop: m, ng.
- The coda: i (except for its use in the coda /y/ in Jyutping; see below), u, m, n, ng, p, t, k.
But they have some differences:
- The vowel oe represents both /ɵ/ and /œː/ in Cantonese Pinyin whereas eo and oe represent /ɵ/ and /œː/ respectively in Jyutping.
- The vowel y represents /y/ in Cantonese Pinyin whereas both yu (used in the nucleus) and i (used in the coda of the final -eoi) are used in Jyutping.
- The initial dz represents /ts/ in Cantonese Pinyin whereas z is used instead in Jyutping.
- The initial ts represents /tsʰ/ in Cantonese Pinyin whereas c is used instead in Jyutping.
- To represent tones, the numbers 1 to 9 are usually used in Cantonese Pinyin, although the use of 1, 3, 6 to replace 7, 8, 9 for the checked tones is acceptable. However, only the numbers 1 to 6 are used in Jyutping.
Examples
Traditional | Simplified | Romanization |
---|---|---|
廣州話 | 广州话 | gwong2 zau1 waa2 |
粵語 | 粤语 | jyut6 jyu5 |
你好 | 你好 | nei5 hou2 |
Sample transcription of one of the 300 Tang Poems:
春曉 孟浩然 | Ceon1 Hiu2 Maang6 Hou6 Jin4 |
---|---|
春眠不覺曉, | Ceon1 min4 bat1 gok3 hiu2, |
處處聞啼鳥。 | cyu3 cyu3 man4 tai4 niu5. |
夜來風雨聲, | Je6 loi4 fung1 jyu5 sing1, |
花落知多少? | faa1 lok6 zi1 do1 siu2? |
Jyutping input method
The Jyutping method (Chinese: 粵拼輸入法) refers to a family of input methods based on the Jyutping romanization system.
The Jyutping method allows a user to input Chinese characters by entering the jyutping of a Chinese character (with or without tone, depending on the system) and then presenting the user with a list of possible characters with that pronunciation.
List of Jyutping keyboard input utilities
- Online Jyutping Input Method (網上粵拼輸入法)
- MDBG
- Red Dragonfly
- LSHK Jyutping for Macintosh Mac OS X and OS 9 (The page also includes Yale input version 0.2)
See also
Footnotes
- ↑ "The Jyutping Scheme". The Linguistic Society of Hong Kong. Retrieved 3 January 2016.
- ↑ Kataoka, Shin; Lee, Cream (2008). "A System without a System: Cantonese Romanization Used in Hong Kong Place and Personal Names". Hong Kong Journal of Applied Linguistics: 94–98.
- ↑ MATTHEWS, S.; YIP, V. Cantonese: A Comprehensive Grammar; London: Routledge, 1994
External links
- Jyutping Pronunciation Guide
- 粵語拼盤: Learning the phonetic system of Cantonese
- Chinese Character Database (Phonologically Disambiguated According to the Cantonese Dialect)
- The CantoDict Project is a dedicated Cantonese-Mandarin-English online dictionary which uses Jyutping by default
- MDBG free online Chinese-English dictionary (supports both Jyutping and Yale romanization)