Cantonese Romanization

Penkyamp (拼音 in Jyutping[?]: ping1 jam1) or Cantonese pinyin, is a transliteration system for writing Cantonese Chinese with the Latin alphabet. This system of Cantonese Romanization serves as the standard in Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Vancouver and San Francisco. On the other hand, the Linguistic Society Hong Kong adopts another Cantonese Romanization called Jyutping[?] (sometimes spelled Jyutpin) (粵拼), that is used in some recently published Cantonese-English or English-Cantonese dictionaries.

The two systems are improvements from previous systems. The features of Penkyamp includes:

• reflects the vowel system of Cantonese more systematically than Jyutping by recognizing all long-short vowel contrasts,
  • whereas Jyutping only recognizes short a and long a.
• indicates long and short vowels using the unique orthographic feature of altering the ending consonant of the shengmu[?].
• does not have the ambiguous distinction between "oe" and "eu" (as in Jyutping).
• treats the two (not three) front-round vowels using the same silent vowel letter "e", placed before the substantial vowel
• categorizes the other front-round vowel (an underdeveloped one) as a short "o".
• does not use the consonant "j", which is used in traditional Cantonese anglicization as "z" instead of "y" (as in Jyutping).

In terms of practicality and visual esthetics Jyutping is not a clumsy or ugly system.

Drawing a parallel between Cantonese and Japanese, Penkyamp is analogous to the Nihon system, whereas Jyutping to the Hepburn system.

The following descriptions applies to Penkyamp.

Alphabet

A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P (q) S T U W Y Z

Shengmus[?] (Consonants aided by International Phonetic Alphabets. In order to see proper display of IPA, you must download a Unicode font)

• B [p] unaspirated
• C [ts'] aspirated
• D [t] un...
• F [f]
• G [k] un...
• H [h]
• K [k'] asp...
• L [l]
• M [m]
• N [n]
• P [p'] asp...
• S [s]
• T [t'] asp...
• W [w]
• Y [j]
• Z [ts] un...

• C is [ts'] as "tz" in Politzer.
• Z [tz] is the unaspirated form of C.
• q is a glottal stop, Arabic "hamsa", as it appears in Cantonese interjection lâq, which is interchangeable with lâg.

Yunmus

Vowels:

• long: A E I O U Eo Eu
• short: Ah Eh Oh
• diphthongs1: Ai Oi Ui Au Iu Ay Ey Oy Aw Ow
• diphthongs2: single vowels and diphthongs1 preceded by semi-vowel u, such as uay as in guây (expensive)

Yunmus aided by International Phonetic Symbols

long

• A [a] ("a" alone or followed by "g", "b", "d", "ng", "m", "n", "i", "u")
• E [ɛ] open-mid front unrounded
• I [i]
• O [ɔ]open-mid back rounded
• U [u]
• Eo [ɶ] open-mid front rounded
• Eu [y]

short

• Ah [ɠ]open-mid back unrounded ("a" followed by "h", "k", "p", "t", "nk", "mp", "nt", "y", "w")
• Eh [e] close-mid front unrounded ("e" followed by above)
• Oh [o] close-mid back rounded ("o" followed by above)

diphthongs

• Ai [ai]
• Oi [ɔy]
• Ui [uy]
• Au [au]
• Iu [iw]
• Ay [ɠj]
• Ey [ej]
• Oy [øy] (ø is mid-close front rounded)
• Aw [ɠu]
• Ow [ow]

Short vowels are those in short yunmus, and long vowels in long yunmus. All short vowels are pronounced with tighter, smaller enclosure of lips than are their long counterparts.

Orthography Long yunmus followed by consonants:

• Ru:
  • Ab Ad Ag
• Ping/shang/qu:
  • Am An Ang
  • Eg Eng
  • Ib Id Im In
  • Od Og On Ong
  • Ud Un

Short yunmus followed by consonants:

• Ru:
  • Ap At Ak
• P/S/Q:
  • Amp Ant Ank
  • Ek Enk
  • Ot Ok Ont Onk

Tones

1. Yin1Ping2 or high Yin1Ru4 (Yamp1Penk4 cum high Yamp1Yap6): a1, ä (umlaut)
2. Yin1Shang3(Yamp1Seong5): a2, ã (tilde)
3. Yin1Qu4 or low Yin1Ru4 (Yamp1Hoy3 cum low Yamp1Yap6): a3, â (circumflex)
4. Yang2Ping2(Yeong4Penk4): a4, a (plain)
5. Yang2Shang3(Yeong4Seong5): a5, á (acute)
6. Yang2Qu4(Yeong4Hoy3): a6, à (grave)

6 tones represented by numerical scales of pitch, "1" being the lowest, "6" the highest"

• First: "Zäw" tone, scale= 66
• Second: "Hãw" tone, scale= 35
• Third: "Dîm" tone, scale= 44
• Fourth: "Ho" tone, scale= 11
• Fifth: "Mów", scale=24
• Sixth: "Dòw", scale=22

Either the tone numbers 1-6 or the diacritic marks may be used

• note: a shortcut for memorizing all 6 of them is a couplet:

Zaw1 Haw2 Dim3, Ho4 Mow2 Dow6

Zhou1 Kou3 Dian4, He2 Mu3 Du4 (Mandarin)

(周口店, 河姆渡)

Zhoukoudian is an archeological site near Beijing containing a 500,000 year old Homo Erectus habitat; Hemudu is a Zhejiang archeological site of Neolithic human activities

Sample Text sample in the Standard Cantonese Penk3yamp1 (simplified chinese text are place holders for now):

External Links

• Jyutping scheme (http://www.hku.hk/linguist/lshk/Jyutping/scheme)
• Jyutping (http://www.chinalanguage.com/CCDICT/Support/jyutpin.php)