Bopomofo

About the Bopomofo

The bopomofo (pronounced buh puh muh fuh, for the first four symbols of it) is, like the english alphabet, a phonetic alphabet. That is to say, each character is a sound. In Taiwan, students use the bopomofo to learn how to read traditional Chinese characters. It is also a common way to type traditional chinese characters into a computer keyboard, and is used to look up words in dictionaries.

The other main alphabet used for learning mandarin is the pinyin system. The pinyin system, adopted by mainland China in 1958, is just another phonetic alphabet used for sounding out mandarin words. Unlike the bopomofo, however, it uses roman characters to sound out the words. The pinyin system has been adopted by the United Nations and is increasingly the standard system worldwide for transcribing mandarin into a roman alphabet. However, many agree that the bopomofo is much better suited for capturing the phonetic structure of the mandarin language than the pinyin system.

The bopomofo consists of 37 symbols, which were derived from Chinese characters. Just like in pinyin, there are 21 initials (consonants which start syllables), and 16 finals (kind of like vowels that end syllables). Pinyin has additional "compound finals", which the bopomofo doesn't feel like it needs because it so accurately captures the sound of Chinese pronunciation.

Bopomofo Pronunciations

Listed below are the 37 bopomofo symbols, with approximate english spellings and a link to a practice card. If you are using internet explorer for windows, you should be able to hear a pronunciation of the character when you click on the symbol.

1) buh card	2) puh card	3) muh card	4) fuh card
5) duh card	6) tuh card	7) nuh card	8) luh card
9) guh card	10) kuh card	11) huh card	12) jee card
13) chee card	14) shee card	15) jzer card	16) chzer card
17) shzer card	18) zhe card	19) dze card	20) tze card
21) sze card	22) ee card	23) oo card	24) euu card
25) ah card	26) oh card	27) uh card	28) ey card
29) ay card	30) eh card	31) aow card	32) owe card
33) ahn card	34) uhn card	35) ang card	36) ong card
37) ur card

History of Bopomofo

The bopomofo alphabet has its origins in China, while it was still part of the Republic of China. In 1913, at the government-sponsored Commission on the Unification of Pronunciation, delegates, led by Woo Tsin-hang, decided to adopt a standard phonetic alphabet, called initially zhùyin zìmu (phonetic alphabet), but later was renamed to gúoyin zìmu (national phonetic alphabet). It was renamed yet again in 1930, to its current name, zhùyin fúhào (注音符號, or phonetic symbols), but is commonly refered to simply as the bopomofo today, after the first four letters ㄅㄆㄇㄈ.

The funny thing about the bopomofo is that it has about four different names. Bopomofo is the most common name, and then there is zhùyin fúhào, zhùyin fo, or just zhùyin.

Bopomofo HTML table

And below are the html unicode literals for the Bopomofo: