Internet DRAFT - draft-zcao-chinese-pronounce
draft-zcao-chinese-pronounce
Internet Engineering Task Force Z. Cao, Ed.
Internet-Draft H. Deng
Intended status: Informational China Mobile
Expires: January 16, 2014 July 15, 2013
How to Pronounce Chinese Names
draft-zcao-chinese-pronounce-01
Abstract
This document tries to give a brief introduction of how to pronounce
Chinese spelling of names. After reading it, you will find it very
easy to accomplish that.
Status of This Memo
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This Internet-Draft will expire on January 16, 2014.
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Table of Contents
1. Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. The Pinyin system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
3. How to Pronounce Pinyin Words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3.1. How to Pronounce 'Initials' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3.2. How to Pronounce 'Finals' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4. Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
5. Pronunciation Dictionary for Chinese Participants . . . . . . 6
6. Online References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
7. Acknowledgement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
8. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
9. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
10. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1. Background
Many Chinese people are attending IETF meetings and joining mailing
list discussions (around 150 according to IETF Chairman report at
Operation Plenary). Although their names are spelt using English
letters, it is always not easy for English speakers to pronounce
them. The essential problem is that there was not a standard while
translating or mapping the Chinese names to English letters at the
time. This document will not go into the details of the why this is
the fact, but rather would like to serve as a tutorial for English
speakers to pronounce Chinese spellings especially names correctly.
There are several translating systems from Chinese characters to
Latin script, including Pinyin, Webster and Zhuyin. Most people are
using Pinyin now, which is the focus of this document. This document
will not help you if you encounter names spelt in other systems.
Most of the contents are referred to [Pinyin]. This document is not
to accomplish a comprehensive education of pronunciation, but to
educate people to start with some basic knowledge and would like to
serve as a guide that that IETF people can drop by and get the
correct pronounce in a quick way.
We also have submitted a companion document on how to call Chinese
people in an authentic way [I-D.deng-call-chinese-names].
2. The Pinyin system
Pinyin is the official phonetic system for transcribing the sound of
Chinese characters into Latin script in China. It is often used to
teach Standard Chinese and spell Chinese names in foreign
publications and may be used as an input method to enter Chinese
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characters (Hanzi) into computers. 'Pinyin' literally means
"spelled-out sounds."
The pinyin system was developed in the 1950s based on earlier forms
of romanization. It was published by the Chinese government in 1958
and revised several times. The International Organization for
Standardization adopted pinyin as the international standard in 1982.
3. How to Pronounce Pinyin Words
I will describe the simple way to learn the pronouncing system as
below.
1. Divide the Pinyin syllable into one 'Initial' and one 'Final'
2. Learn how to pronounce the 'Initial' per introduction in
Section 3.1
3. Learn how to pronounce the 'Final' per introduction in
Section 3.2
4. Combine what you get from Step 2&3, and speak out (do not be
afraid of making mistakes :))
3.1. How to Pronounce 'Initials'
Query the following table for your convenience.
Pinyin | English approximation
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
b | unaspirated p, as in spit
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
p | strongly aspirated p, as in pit
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
m | as in English mummy
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
f | as in English fun
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
d | unaspirated t, as in stop
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
t | strongly aspirated t, as in top
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
n | as in English nit
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
l | as in English love
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
g | unaspirated k, as in skill
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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k | strongly aspirated k, as in kill
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
h | roughly like the Scots ch. English h as in hay
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
j | No equivalent in English, but similar to 'ge' in garage
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
q | No equivalent in English. Like pun"ch y"ourself
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
x | No equivalent in English. Like -sh y-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
zh | Rather like ch (a sound between choke and drew,
| ~~ ~~
| tongue tip curled more upwards)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ch | as in chin, but with the tongue curled upwards; very similar to nurture
| ~~ ~~
| in American English, but strongly aspirated.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
sh | as in shoe, but with the tongue curled upwards; very similar to marsh in
| ~~ ~~
| American English
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
r | Similar to the English z in azure and r in reduce
| ~ ~
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
z | similar to something between suds and cats
| ~~ ~~
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
c | like the English ts in cats, very similar to the Czech
| ~
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
s | as in sun
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
w | as in water
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
y | as in yes
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Figure 1: How to pronounce Initials
3.2. How to Pronounce 'Finals'
'Finals' come after 'Initials'. Generally they are more difficult to
pronounce than 'Initials'. But the good thing is, unlike English
equivalent, they have only one way to pronounce. Compared to 'ough'
in 'Cough' and 'rough', 'cought', etc., 'Finals' in Chinese are more
stable.
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Pinyin | English approximation
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
a | as 'a' in father
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
i | as 'ee' in 'Lee'
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
e | as 'er' in 'her'
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ai | like English "eye", but a bit lighter
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ei | as in "hey"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ao | approximately as 'ow' in "cow"; a is much more audible than the o
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ou | as in "so"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
an | as 'an' in "ban" in British Englis
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
en | as 'en' in "taken"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ang | as in German Angst
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
eng | like e in en above but with ng added to it at the back
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
er | similar to the sound of 'ar'in "bar" in American English
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ia | as i + a; like 'yar' in "yard"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ie |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
iao | as i + ao
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
iu | as i + ou
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ian | like English yen
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
iang | as i + ang
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ing | as in
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
in | as i + n
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
u | like English "oo"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
v | like iu
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ua | as u + a
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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uo | as u + o where the o is much lighter
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
uai | as u + ai like as in why
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ui | as u + ei;
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
uan | as u + an;
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
un | as u + en; like the 'on' in the English won;
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
uang | as u + ang;
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ong | starts with the vowel sound in book and ends with the velar nasal
| sound in sing
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Figure 2: How to pronounce Finals in Pinyin
4. Examples
For example, how to pronounce my first name Zhen and last name Cao.
For 'zhen', we can divide it into initial 'zh' and final 'en', and
then go and find them in Figure 1 and Figure 2. Okay, you will find
them in the tables, 'zh' pronounces like 'ch', and 'en' follows its
pronunciation in 'taken', so you will know how to pronounce it in a
combination. For 'Cao', it will be similar, you can take it as an
exercise and confirm with me on future IETF meetings :).
Take Hui Deng as another example, 'Hui' can be divided into
'h'(initial) and 'ui' (final), and you can speak out. 'Deng' can be
devided into 'd' and 'eng'. As in Figure 2, 'g' is silent.
5. Pronunciation Dictionary for Chinese Participants
This section intends to serve as a pronunciation dictionary for
Chinese participants in IETF.
Note: please advise an efficient way to accomplish this task, to
benefit communication between working group chairs and working group
participants from China.
6. Online References
After posting the 00 version draft to the IETF mailing list, we have
received many feedback to improve this document. Many people suggest
to list the available WWW resources with more interactive tutorial of
how to pronounce. We list some of them here.
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1. Confucius Institute Online Pinyin: http://kid.chinese.cn/pinyin/
(introduced by Haibin Song) [Confucius]
2. Pronunciation Dictionary with Audio Clips, http://
mandarin.about.com/od/pronunciation/a/How-To-Pronounce-Mandarin-
Chinese.htm (introduced by Wes George) [Mandarin]
7. Acknowledgement
Authors would like to thank Margaret Wasserman for encouraging
western people to learn how to call Chinese names, and thank Fred
baker, Jari Arkko, Ted Lemmon, and Sri Gundave to call our name in
Chinese way.
Thanks ALL for initiating, promoting and executing the 'IETF
Diversify' program. Thanks ALL for your willingness to improve
communication ways with IETF Chinese participants.
Thanks ALL for reviewing early versions of this draft and posting
comments and suggestions to improve it, an non-exhaustive list
including: Yuanchen Ma, Vero Zheng, Haibin Song, Aaron Ding. (Sorry
if I miss any names)
8. IANA Considerations
NO IANA Requests.
9. Security Considerations
N/A.
10. Informative References
[Confucius]
Confucius Institute, ., "Confucius Institute Online
Pinyin: http://kid.chinese.cn/pinyin/", May 2013.
[I-D.deng-call-chinese-names]
Deng, H. and Z. Cao, "How to Call Chinese People's Names",
draft-deng-call-chinese-names-00 (work in progress), July
2013.
[Mandarin]
Unknown, ., "ronunciation Dictionary with Audio Clips,
http://mandarin.about.com/od/pronunciation/a/How-To-
Pronounce-Mandarin-Chinese.htm", May 2013.
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[Pinyin] Wikipedia, ., "Pinyin,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin", May 2013.
Authors' Addresses
Zhen Cao (editor)
China Mobile
Xuanwumenxi Ave. No.32
Beijing, Beijing 100053
China
Email: zehn.cao@gmail.com, caozhen@chinamobile.com
Hui Deng
China Mobile
Xuanwumenxi Ave. No.32
Beijing 100053
China
Email: denghui@chinamobile.com
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