Whenleaning Chinese, the learners will face many problems. Among these problems, the Bopomofo alphabet in Chinese is a major one. Then what is it and why it is difficult to learn?

 

The Bopomofo alphabet, like the English alphabet, is a phonetic alphabet. That is to say, each character is a sound. Students use the Bopomofo to learn how to read traditional Chinese characters in Taiwan. Also, it is a common way to type traditional Chinese characters into a computer keyboard, and is used to look up words in dictionaries.

 

The other main alphabet used for learning Chinese is the pinyin system. The pinyin system, adopted by mainland China in 1958, is just another phonetic alphabet used for sounding out mandarin words. Unlike the Bopomofo, however, it uses roman characters to sound out the words. The pinyin system has been adopted by the United Nations and is increasingly the standard system worldwide for transcribing mandarin into a roman alphabet. However, many agree that the Bopomofo is much better suited for capturing the phonetic structure of the Chinese language than the pinyin system.

 

The Bopomofo alphabet consists of 37 symbols, which are derived from Chinese characters. Just like in pinyin, there are 21 initials (consonants which start syllables), and 16 finals (kind of like vowels that end syllables). Pinyin has additional "compound finals", which the Bopomofo doesn't feel like it needs because it so accurately captures the sound of Chinese pronunciation.

 

In the Bopomofo alphabet, there are 37 Bopomofo symbols, with approximate English spellings and a link to a practice card. If you are using internet explorer for windows, you should be able to hear a pronunciation of the character when you click on the symbol.

 

The Bopomofo alphabet has its origins in China, while it was still part of the Republic of China. In 1913, at the government-sponsored Commission on the Unification of Pronunciation, delegates, led by Woo Tsin-hang, decided to adopt a standard phonetic alphabet, called initially zhùyin zìmu (phonetic alphabet), but later it was renamed to gúoyin zìmu (national phonetic alphabet). It was renamed yet again in 1930, to its current name, zhùyin fúhào (注音符號, or phonetic symbols), but is commonly referred to simply as the Bopomofo today. The funny thing about the Bopomofo is that it has about four different names.Bopomofo is the most common name, and then there is zhùyin fúhào, zhùyin fo, or just zhùyin.