1. Pronunciation
Zhuyin (注音)
Zhùyīn Fúhào (注音符號), or "The Notation of Annotated Sounds", often abbreviated as Zhuyin, or known as Bopomofo (ㄅㄆㄇㄈ) for the first four syllables in this Chinese phonetic symbols, is the national phonetic system of the Republic of China (based on Taiwan) for teaching the Chinese languages, especially Mandarin to illiterate Mandarin-speaking children (See Uses). The system uses 37 special symbols to represent the Mandarin sounds: 21 consonants and 16 vowels. There is a one symbol-one sound correspondence.
Pinyin (拼音)
Pinyin (拼音 pīnyīn) literally means "join together sounds" (a less literal translation being "phoneticize", "spell" or "transcription") in Chinese and usually refers to Hanyu pinyin (漢語拼音, literal meaning: "Han language pinyin"), which is a system of romanization (phonetic notation and transliteration to roman script) for Mandarin Chinese used in the People's Republic of China. Pinyin was approved in 1958 and adopted in 1979 by its government. It superseded older transcriptions like the Wade-Giles system (1859; modified 1912) or Bopomofo. Similar systems have been designed for Chinese dialects and non-Han minority languages in the PRC. Cantonese also has a pinyin-type system called Penkyamp, whose name derives from the same word as pinyin, albeit articulated in the Cantonese dialect.
Since then, pinyin has been accepted by the Library of Congress, The American Library Association, and most international institutions as the transcription system for Mandarin. In 1979 the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) adopted pinyin as the standard romanization for Modern Chinese.
Cantonese Pinyin (粤语拼音)
Penkyamp (拼音; Yale: ping1 yam1, Jyutping: ping1 jam1) or Cantonese pinyin, is a romanization system for transliterating Cantonese Chinese. A series of romanization efforts of Cantonese seek to standardize the language spoken by large number of residents in
2. Character Structure
Wubi method (五笔字型)
Wubi, short for Wubizixing (五笔字型 pinyin wu3 bi3 zi4 xing2), is an input method for writing Chinese text on a computer.
The Wubi method is based on the structure of characters rather than their pronunciation, making it possible to input unfamiliar characters, as well as not being too closely linked to any particular Chinese dialect.
Cangjie method (仓颉)
The Cangjie method (仓颉输入法) is a system by which Chinese characters may be entered into the computer. Invented in 1979 by Chu Bang Fu (朱邦復), the method is named after Cangjie, the man usually attributed with the invention of the first writing system of China.
Unlike pinyin, Cangjie is based on the morphological aspect of the characters wherein each basic, graphical unit is represented by a letter from the Roman alphabet. Within the letters-to-characters representations, there also exists four subsections of characters: the Philosophical Set (comprised of the letters 'A' to 'G' and representing the elements), the Strokes Set (comprised of the letters 'H' to 'N' and representing the brief and subtle strokes), the Body-related Set (comprised of the letters 'O' to 'R' and representing various parts of the human anatomy), and the Shapes Set (comprised of the letters 'S' to 'Y' and representing complex and encompassing character forms).
In order to input using Cangjie, one must be learned in the construction of each character and its basic mnemonics. A lead character serves as an anchor by which other mnemonics will attach themselves to (in most instances these are radicals). For example, in order to enter the character "车" (Che1), meaning "vehicle", one would input 十 田 十 (the second, "Tian2", is based off the Traditional method of writing this character.
Five Stroke method (五笔划)
The Wubi Hua (五笔划), or Five Stroke method, is a Chinese input method for writing text on a computer. It is based on the stroke order of a word, and can be input using only a numerical keypad. Although it is possible to input Traditional Chinese characters with this method, this method is often associated with Simplified Chinese characters.
Each of the five keys from 1 to 5 are assigned a certain type of stroke: 1 for horizontal strokes, 2 for vertical strokes, 3 for downwards right-to-left strokes, 4 for dot strokes or downwards left-to-right strokes, and 5 for all other strokes. To input any character, simply press the keys corresponding to the first four strokes of a character and the key corresponding to the last stroke of a character. For characters four strokes or less, press 0 after the last stroke.
Wubi Hua is one of the easiest to learn methods, but it tends to be vague (a Wubi Hua code will normally match tens or hundreds of characters), and each character has a unique code (thus, characters whose stroke order are frequently transposed due to a person's writing style cannot easily be found).
Four corner method (四角码)
The Four corner method is a method of encoding Chinese characters using four numerical digits per character (in some situations, an additional digit is used). It began as a method of indexing Chinese characters in dictionaries, and was popular before the wide spread use of pinyin. It was then developed as an input method for computer.
The four digits used to encode each character are chosen according to the "shape" of the four corners of each character, i.e. the upper left, upper right, lower left and lower right corners. The shapes can be memorized using a Chinese poem:
横一垂二三点捺
叉四插五方框六
七角八八九是小
点下有横变零头
