Pinyin

[AngryABCGirl]

I want to take accelerated written Chinese in the fall, and I'm assuming nowadays all college use the Pinyin system now, and I learned using Bah Puh Mah Pho system. I'll need to know it since I'm pretty sure I can place out of at least one or two semesters, but I don't want this gap of knowledge because I can't use the system. Does anyone know any good websites teaching Pinyin or materials I can use or if Pinyin matches up to the Taiwanese system?

[SunWuKong]

Originally posted by AzNBuffGrL@Jul 6 2003, 05:21 PM
I want to take accelerated written Chinese in the fall, and I'm assuming nowadays all college use the Pinyin system now, and I learned using Bah Puh Mah Pho system. I'll need to know it since I'm pretty sure I can place out of at least one or two semesters, but I don't want this gap of knowledge because I can't use the system. Does anyone know any good websites teaching Pinyin or materials I can use or if Pinyin matches up to the Taiwanese system?
you can check out http://www.zhongwen.com
that's a really good site.

[AliBabaIncorporated]

Eh, I can't imagine a teacher who would turn down a student from being placed into a higher class only on the basis that he doesn't know pinyin. Since Chinese teachers are always being bombarded with complaints from all the non-ABC students about how they have to compete for attention with ABCs whose speaking abilities completely outclass the rest of the students.

Besides, whatever textbook you use will probably have a conversion table in the back. Here's one chart;
http://seba.ulyssis.org/thesis/docs/pinyin.pdf
(though it's only really useful for going from pinyin to zhuyin fuhao, cuz they put it in alphabetic order).

Even in the 5th-year Chinese class I took last term ... at least half the class couldn't read pinyin. (And some of the ones who couldn't were mainlanders :rolleyes: ) Pinyin sucks anyway. Take the time out to learn the "gwoyeu romatzyh" system and you'll never have to bother with writing tone marks again.

[AngryABCGirl]

Originally posted by AliBabaIncorporated@Jul 7 2003, 12:59 AM
Eh, I can't imagine a teacher who would turn down a student from being placed into a higher class only on the basis that he doesn't know pinyin. Since Chinese teachers are always being bombarded with complaints from all the non-ABC students about how they have to compete for attention with ABCs whose speaking abilities completely outclass the rest of the students.

Besides, whatever textbook you use will probably have a conversion table in the back. Here's one chart;
http://seba.ulyssis.org/thesis/docs/pinyin.pdf
(though it's only really useful for going from pinyin to zhuyin fuhao, cuz they put it in alphabetic order).

Even in the 5th-year Chinese class I took last term ... at least half the class couldn't read pinyin. (And some of the ones who couldn't were mainlanders :rolleyes: ) Pinyin sucks anyway. Take the time out to learn the "gwoyeu romatzyh" system and you'll never have to bother with writing tone marks again.
Thanks for the chart, it was exactly what I needed. I know why when I went to Chinese school went I was little they made us use zhuyin fu hao, probably cause of those nazi-Taiwanese teachers who still wanted to take over the Mainland. I'm hoping to take Accelerated Chinese for native speakers at a UC, so I don't think the professor is gonna cut me slack for not knowing it.