Jyutping
Template:Short description Template:More citations needed Template:Use Hong Kong English Template:Infobox Chinese Template:Cantonese language Template:IPA notice
The Linguistic Society of Hong Kong Cantonese Romanization Scheme,Template:NoteTag also known as Jyutping, is a romanisation system for Cantonese developed in 1993 by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong (LSHK).
The name Jyutping (itself the Jyutping romanisation of its Chinese name, Template:Lang) is a contraction of the official name, and it consists of the first Chinese characters of the terms jyut6 jyu5 (Template:Zh) and ping3 jam1 (Template:Zh; pronounced pīnyīn in Mandarin).
Despite being intended as a system to indicate pronunciation, it has also been employed in Template:Ill—in effect, elevating Jyutping from its assistive status to a written language. Template:RCL
History
The Jyutping system<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> departs 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.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
In 2018, it was updated to include the -a and -oet finals, to reflect syllables recognized as part of Cantonese phonology in 1997 by the Jyutping Work Group of the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong.<ref name=lshkjyutping/>
Initials
Finals
- Only the finals m and ng can be used as standalone nasal syllables.
- Template:Note Used for elided words in casual speech such as a6 in 四十四 (sei3 a6 sei3), elided from sei3 sap6 sei3.<ref name="lshkjyutping">Template:Cite web</ref>
- Template:NoteTemplate:NoteTemplate:Note Referring to the colloquial pronunciation of these words.
- Template:Note Used for onomatopoeias such as oet6 for belching or goet4 for snoring.
Tones
Template:Main There are nine tones in six distinct tone contours in Cantonese. However, as three of the nine are entering tones (Template:Zh), which only appear in syllables ending with p, t, and k, they do not have separate tone numbers in Jyutping (though they do in the ILE romanization of Cantonese; these are shown in parentheses in the table below). A mnemonic which some use to remember this is Template:Lang-zh or "Feng Shui [dictates that] we will be lucky."
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 Template:IPA and Template:IPA respectively in Jyutping, whereas the eu represents both vowels in Yale.
- The initial j represents Template:IPA in Jyutping whereas y is used instead in Yale.
- The initial z represents Template:IPA in Jyutping whereas j is used instead in Yale.
- The initial c represents Template:IPA 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 five finals not in Yale: a Template:IPA, eu Template:IPA, em Template:IPA, ep Template:IPA, oet Template:IPA. These finals are used in colloquial Cantonese words, such as deu6 (Template:Lang), lem2 (Template:Lang), and gep6 (Template:Lang).
- 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 ILE romanisation
Jyutping and ILE romanisation 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 Template:IPA in Jyutping; see below), u, m, n, ng, p, t, k.
But they have some differences:
- The vowel oe represents both Template:IPA and Template:IPA in ILE whereas eo and oe represent Template:IPA and Template:IPA respectively in Jyutping.
- The vowel y represents Template:IPA in ILE 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 Template:IPA in ILE whereas z is used instead in Jyutping.
- The initial ts represents Template:IPA in ILE whereas c is used instead in Jyutping.
- To represent tones, the numbers 1 to 9 are usually used in ILE, 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Template:Lang | Template:Lang | gwong2 zau1 waa2 |
| Template:Lang | Template:Lang | jyut6 jyu5 |
| Template:Lang | Template:Lang | nei5 hou2 |
Sample transcription of one of the 300 Tang Poems:
| Template:Lang | ceon1 hiu2 maang6 hou6 jin4 |
|
|---|---|---|
| Template:Lang | ceon1 min4 bat1 gok3 hiu2, | Sleeping past sunrise in springtime. |
| Template:Lang | cyu3 cyu3 man4 tai4 niu5. | Everywhere one hears birdsong. |
| Template:Lang | je6 loi4 fung1 jyu5 sing1, | Night brings the sound of wind and rain, |
| Template:Lang | faa1 lok6 zi1 do1 siu2? | I wonder how many flowers fell? |
Jyutping input method
The Jyutping method (Template:Zh) 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 romanization 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.
As of macOS Ventura, Jyutping input with Traditional Chinese now comes standard on macOS under the name "Phonetic – Cantonese".
List of Jyutping keyboard input utilities
- TypeDuck (Template:Lang)
- Online Jyutping Input Method (Template:Lang)
- MDBG Type Chinese
- LSHK Jyutping for Mac (Mac OS 9 and macOS) (The page also includes Yale input version 0.2)
- Hong Kong Cantonese 2010 (via Microsoft Office IME 2010)
- Cantonese Phonetic IME (Template:Lang) (also called 'Cantonese Phonetic IME (CPIME) Jyutping' in Windows 10<ref>FAQ: How to select Cantonese Phonetic IME (CPIME) in Windows 10</ref>)
- RIME (Template:Lang)
- Gboard
See also
Footnotes
References
Further reading
External links
- Official website, from the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong
- Jyutping Pronunciation Guide
- Template:Lang: 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)