Bopomofo
Bopomofo (Chinese: 注音符號; pinyin: zhùyīn fúhào; Wade–Giles: chu4yin1 fu2hao4), also called Zhuyin (zhùyīn), occasionally Mandarin Phonetic Symbols, is a Chinese transliteration and writing system for Mandarin Chinese and other related languages and dialects. More commonly used in Taiwanese Mandarin, it may also be used to transcribe other varieties of Chinese, particularly other varieties of Mandarin Chinese dialects, as well as Taiwanese Hokkien. Consisting of 37 characters and five tone marks, it transcribes all possible sounds in Mandarin.
| Bopomofo 注音符號; 注音符号 | |
|---|---|
ㄅㄞˇ ㄎㄜ ㄑㄩㄢˊ ㄕㄨ 百科全书; 百科全書; 'encyclopedia' in bopomofo | |
| Script type | with diacritics for tones |
| Creator | Commission on the Unification of Pronunciation Introduced by the Beiyang government of the Republic of China |
Time period | 1918 to 1958 in mainland China (used supplement Hanyu Pinyin in all editions of Xiandai Hanyu Cidian from 1960 to present 2016 edition); 1945 to the present in Taiwan |
| Direction | Left-to-right, right-to-left script |
| Related scripts | |
Parent systems | Oracle bone script
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Child systems | Cantonese bopomofo, Taiwanese Phonetic Symbols, Suzhou Phonetic Symbols, Hmu Phonetic Symbols, Matsu Fuchounese Bopomofo |
| ISO 15924 | |
| ISO 15924 | Bopo (285), Bopomofo |
| Unicode | |
Unicode alias | Bopomofo |
| |
| Mandarin Phonetic Symbol | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Traditional Chinese | 注音符號 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 注音符号 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Romanization of Chinese |
|---|
| Mandarin |
| Wu |
| Yue |
| Min |
| Gan |
| Hakka |
| Xiang |
| Polylectal |
| See also |
Bopomofo was first introduced in China by the Beiyang government in the 1910s and was used alongside the Wade–Giles system for romanization purposes, which used a modified Latin alphabet. Today, Bopomofo is now more common in Taiwan than on the mainland, and is after Hanyu Pinyin used as a secondary electronic input method for writing Mandarin Chinese in Taiwan as well as in dictionaries or other non-official documents.