Have you ever heard of Pinyin? Pinyin is the official system used in China to Romanize the Chinese language (i.e., Roman letters represent the spoken pronunciation of a word). Pinyin is used both in schools in China and as one of the most common keyboard inputs for Chinese. However, pinyin is for Mandarin Chinese. A few different systems have been created for Cantonese, but there is no official system for Cantonese like there is for Mandarin (pinyin). In this post, we will talk a little bit about some of the most common systems used and what I will be using going forward.
As mentioned, there are several Romanization systems: Meyer-Wempe, Yale, Jyutping, Hong Kong Government Cantonese Romanization, etc. When I was younger, we used the Yale Romanization system in Chinese school. It is also commonly used in 'Learning Cantonese' books. In particular, this system is used in the Cantonese phrase book I have by Berlitz. My Uncle gave me this book, and will use it to help start my journey. Since it is a phrasebook, it is mainly used for vocabulary and possible common dialogues. This book, in particular, also has an app, though it can only be used for 6 months. So, I will also be using the app Drops. I started using this app a while ago, and it is one of the few apps I have found that have Cantonese Chinese. However, this app uses Jyutping. So far, the two resources I have (the phrasebook & Drops) mostly cover vocabulary, so I will also need resources for grammar. Since I don't have the time to dedicate to a program, nor do I want to spend money on this particular endeavor, I will mostly use different online resources and teach myself. Many online resources use Jyutping since it is faster to type numbers than the Yale system, which uses accents to represent tone. For this reason, I also want to use Jyutping as my main Romanization system, though I will need to be somewhat familiar with the Yale system to use some of the available resources.
While I could learn to speak Cantonese without learning the Chinese characters, I actually find it easier to remember the characters. As I mentioned in the last post, I can still write Chinese characters that I learned when I was 7. I am also incentivized to learn to read Chinese due to my family. I want to learn to speak Cantonese to communicate with my family, but I also want to learn to read Chinese to read old family documents and learn about my heritage. Along with reading characters, to dig into my family genealogy, I also want to learn how to type Chinese characters into the computer. So far, I have just used my phone to write the characters. However, this takes a long time, and since I don't have the best penmanship in Chinese, I often have to rewrite the characters and try again. As I mentioned previously, pinyin is the most common keyboard input system, but it is still in Mandarin, so learning it would make it much more confusing.
Generally, there are two types of keyboard input methods: phonetic-based and shape-based. As I mentioned, pinyin is the most common input method in mainland China, but it is phonetically based on Mandarin pronunciation so it won't be very helpful for my endeavors. Similar methods exist for other Chinese dialects, such as Zhuyin/Bopomofo for Taiwanese Mandarin or Jyutping for Cantonese. Unfortunately, the Google Keyboard on your phone does not have a Jyutping input. Instead, it has a Cantonese IME (Input Method Editor), which uses the Yale system, Jyutping, and Cantonese Pinyin to try to interpret the phonetic user input, though according to the internet, this may have changed. This is likely the easiest way to input Chinese characters but requires me to know the pronunciation of the characters I want to type, so it won't be helpful in a Google Translate scenario. Don't get me wrong, the best bet there is to take a picture or use the 'draw the character yourself' input. So, while I can get by with those two input methods, I would like to learn Cangjie, a shape-based keyboard input.
There are several reasons why I think it will be beneficial for me to learn another, potentially unnecessary, input method. First, Cangjie is based on radicals so it will help me learn characters. In the past, I learned characters stroke by stroke, but with more complex characters, this is unnecessary as I can focus on radicals. In all honesty, when I was younger and learning to write Chinese, I was only learning the radicals themselves, so I had to learn them by stroke. Overall, it will help me learn and remember characters by breaking them down into parts. Additionally, it means that after I understand the input method, I should be able to type any character, even if I do not know its pronunciation or meaning. Second, Cangjie was built for traditional characters. While there is a Cangjie method for simplified characters, I would prefer learning the traditional characters as I see them more often as an overseas Chinese, and my family and family documents are all written in traditional characters. Third, the creator, Chu Bong-Foo, released the patent for the input method back in the 80s. This means it is open-source software and should be available on any device I use (including Google Keyboard on my Android). Given its wide accessibility, Cangjie is still taught in most schools in Hong Kong.
The last system I want to learn to help facilitate my learning of Cantonese is IPA, the International Phonetic Alphabet. This is not a requirement to learn Cantonese, nor is Cantonese the only reason I am learning IPA. I knew about IPA before, but I first became interested in learning about it when I was taking singing lessons. IPA is how most vocal instructors write vowels when they want to use a vowel shape that is different from how you would normally form the word. IPA came up again when I was talking to my linguist friend because it is just important for analyzing languages. Which is why it also came up in my Teaching English as a Foreign Language course. Ultimately, most languages are more consistently phonetic than English. This might be an overgeneralization, but I find English to have a lot of "exceptions," whether for pronunciation or just grammar as a whole.
In summary, I made a whole checklist of prerequisites for learning Cantonese, yikes. However, I also isolated important tools that should help facilitate my learning. Below is a quick summary of my learning goals (i.e. the systems I want to learn), some resources I already have, and Wikipedia links for further reading on some of the things I talked about. Unfortunately, information about the Chinese language is difficult to find in English, so I rely on Wikipedia more than I should. Though I will not be using it for learning grammar so there's something.
- International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)
- Jyutping
- Radicals
- Cangjie
- Yale Romanization system
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