Pinyin confusions

Pinyin is a system for transcribing the sounds of Mandarin Chinese into the Roman alphabet. It is used wherever a transcription of Chinese is needed (street signs, city names, people’s names) and also but not exclusively as an input method for Chinese in computers and other devices.

Since the pronunciation of Roman letters in the many languages that use them differs from language to language, when Pinyin was created, it wasn't possible to design a system that would be universal for every language using Roman letters. Pinyin, even though slightly based on the English pronunciation of Roman letters, is an artificial and a fairly neutral system of Mandarin transcription.

However, this neutrality also causes confusion. There are only approximately 400 syllables in Mandarin Chinese. They consist of two main sections – initials and finals. When using Zhuyin, another system for Mandarin Chinese transcription, these sections are represented accurately, with most initials and finals having their own unique symbols. In Pinyin however, this is not the case when it comes to syllable finals. Sometimes the same finals are written in a completely different way and sometimes two different finals are written in the same way. This can cause confusion, because students might not initially realize that syllables like wo, shuo and po for instance share exactly the same sound.  

Finals that are written in a different way, but represent the same sound*:

Wo, Shuo, Po - rhyme with 我 (Wo)
Dui, Hui, Wei, Shei - rhyme with 累 (Lei)
Wen, Dun, Shun - rhyme with 文 (Wen)

Finals written using the same letter but represent different sounds:

Ci, Shi - rhyme with 日 (Ri)

VS

Bi, Li - rhyme with 一 (Yi)

Xun, Jun- rhyme with 雲/云 (Yun)

VS      

Shun, Dun – rhyme with 文 (Wen)


Shu, Chu, Zhu - rhyme with 五 (Wu)

VS

Xu, Qu, Ju - rhyme with 語 (Yu)

Inspired by mnmlist.com. I tried to write this post in no more than 4 paragraphs :)

* as pronounced in Taiwan