Talk:邊

元音弱化 biān

The 'a' sound in biān is rarely used- it actually becomes more like 'biēn' ㄅㄧㄣ. If you listen to the recording we have, you can hear the 'biēn' pronunciation. Should there be some note about this on this page? --Geographyinitiative (talk) 23:56, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative: No, a in pinyin is not always pronounced as the rime a. The rime ian is pronounced as [i̯ɛn]. Pinyin is not meant to be read letter by letter. It is not biēn, which is invalid pinyin, and if we were to force a pronunciation out of it, it would probably be [i̯ən]. ㄅㄧㄣ is valid zhuyin, but it's would correspond to bīn in pinyin. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 09:26, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

@Justinrleung: I messed up with matching the Bopomofo form 'ㄅㄧㄣ' to the made-up biēn pinyin form- you are of course right that 'ㄅㄧㄣ' is bīn. I added the Bopomofo at the last second and didn't think clearly about it. But what I'm trying to say here is that the pronunciation of the character '煙' sounds different to me from the final of the character '邊' (both of which are ㄧㄢ).

If I could make up a pinyin-like form to describe the different sound of 邊, I might tentatively use the non-existent form biēn to describe it (but I guess I don't know how to write it in Bopomofo).

Is there any explanation for this difference I'm detecting? I understand it be 元音弱化. (Also, you say 'Pinyin is not meant to be read letter by letter', but is Bopomofo meant to be read 'fuhao by fuhao'?)

Also, we currently label the Zhuyin Fuhao provided in zh-pron as "Zhuyin", but what about changing that to 'Bopomofo', which is the term that English speakers would be more likely to recognize the concept by? As a basis for my assertion that 'Bopomofo' is more well known as the name for the Zhuyin Fuhao system in some other languages, I give you "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bopomofo" "https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bopomofo" "https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bopomofo" etc.--Geographyinitiative (talk) 10:52, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

You may say "oh, but the word 'Bopomofo' is childish"- but is the word "Alphabet" childish just because it's the first two letters of the 'Greco-Roman Pronunciation Symbols'? Maybe it is childish. But whatever the actual usage is is whatever the usage is. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 11:05, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative: I don't hear a difference between the ian in biān and yān. There shouldn't be a difference AFAIK. Mandarin vowels are complicated, but I wouldn't say this is 元音弱化 (vowel reduction). (If you want to dig deeper into this, I would recommend you reading Standard Chinese phonology.)

About Zhuyin, I wouldn't say it should be read symbol by symbol either - you run into the same problem with ㄧㄢ. As for how we should name it, I'm ok with changing it to Bopomofo, although I would still prefer Zhuyin as the more traditional term. @Suzukaze-c, Dokurrat, Tooironic, any comments on how we should refer to this system? — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 03:49, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

I wouldn't describe this pronunciation-orthography disparity as "vowel reduction". As for how we should refer to 注音符號, I don't have an opinion. Dokurrat (talk) 04:11, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

Zhuyin, maybe? What does the scholarly world use? —Suzukaze-c◇◇ 06:46, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

I am (preliminarily) thinking that the system is formally called 注音符號 and informally called bopomofo in Chinese leading us to believe that it should be called Zhuyin in formal English, but I think that in English there is no 'Zhuyin' as such and there is only Bopomofo unless discussed in extremely high-brow China studies type publications where 'Zhuyin' would probably be italicized to indicate foreign origin. Examples:

Constructing Chinese characters: keypad design for mobile phones M Lin, A Sears - Behaviour & Information Technology, 2007 - Taylor & Francis "Figure 1. Examples of Bopomofo and Pinyin systems."

Dictionary mechanism for Chinese word segmentation: Initial Bopomofo of secondcharacter Hash mechanism [J] (2010) "a new dictionary word segmentation mechanism is proposed for Chinese word segmentation—the initial Bopomofo of the second-character"

Third Annual Foreign Acquisitions Workshop: Improving Access to Foreign Gray Literature (1993/4) https://archive.org/details/NASA_NTRS_Archive_19940020286/page/n47?q=bopomofo "Hiragana Katakana Bopomofo Chinese/Japanese/Korean Unified Ideographs Page"

Byte Magazine Volume 10 Number 05 - Multiprocessing (1983) https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1985-05?q=bopomofo "This product employs a "descriptor" input method, using one of three Chinese phonetic systems (pinyin, Wade-Giles, or Bopomofo)."

I am still interested in the bian and yan question if anyone is still interested in that.

--Geographyinitiative (talk) 07:13, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative: Although it is a common name in English, I'm still a little reluctant to use Bopomofo because even Pinyin uses b(o), p(o), m(o), f(o) as the first four letters, so there could be ambiguity. I do see your point that Zhuyin and Zhuyin Fuhao are far less common than Bopomofo.

Now about bian and yan, as I said above, there should be no difference at all between the rimes. Could you describe how they are different a little better (not just using a tentative spelling in pinyin)? — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 07:27, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

I just realized that the examples you pointed out are all from computer-related sources, which may not necessarily reflect how it's used in other circles. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 07:38, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

@Justinrleung, Suzukaze-c, Dokurrat, Tooironic Unicode and ISO use the term Bopomofo, which is very important. I'm just trying to help our readers understand what they are looking at. Yeah, Pinyin starts with bo po mo fo too. But Pinyin is not called Bopomofo in English, and therefore can not be confused with Bopomofo in English. I feel that 'Zhuyin' is a foreign language, but that 'Bopomofo' is an English language word.

Government of Taiwan uses 'Bopomofo' on this page: http://stroke-order.learningweb.moe.edu.tw/home.do "With Stroke Order of Bopomofo Symbols"

Tranßcripting: playful subversion with Chinese characters (2019) L Wei, Z Hua - International Journal of Multilingualism. "Moreover, there are at least two main transliteration systems for Chinese: pinyin and bopomofo."

The influence on cortical brainwaves in relation to word intelligibility and ASW in room (2019) CY Chen - Human Auditory System, 2019 "Test results related to this group of monosyllabic sounds are characterized by the largest disparity in error rates because most related sounds belong to “fricative sounds” (ie, apical vowels, such as “zh,” “ch,” “sh,” “r,” “z,” “ci,” and “si” in Bopomofo system)"

The role of language and linguistic devices in literary and artistic expressions (2019) "Upon entering first grade at the age of six years old, all children are taught a phonetic alphabet using Bopomofo (or 注音 符号 zhùyīnfúhào), which is a phonetic information system based on symbols."

I'm interested in hearing if anyone thinks there is a difference in pronunciation between 'yan' and final in 'bian'. To me there's more of an 'a' in 'yan' than there is in 'bian'.

--Geographyinitiative (talk) 08:02, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative: I guess we could follow Wikipedia's decision (w:Talk:Bopomofo#Requested move (2008)). I think we should bring this up at Beer Parlour though.

Back to bian and yan, you might want to listen to the audio at 煙 and compare it to 邊. They sound the same to me. In standard Mandarin, they should be the same. However, in certain accents and often in singing, it may perhaps sound a bit more like 'a'. Interestingly, the same person (from Liaoning) saying 煙 seems to pronounce 沿 with a wider mouth, but it does not sound standard to me. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 08:19, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

Added discussion to Beer Parlor. Interesting example there with the two yan's. I do hear some kind of difference. I will get back to you on the yan/bian thing later. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 08:45, 5 May 2019 (UTC)