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Jyutping

This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

The Linguistic Society of Hong Kong Cantonese Romanization Scheme,[note 1] also known as Jyutping, is a romanisation system for Cantonese developed in 1993 by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong (LSHK).

The name Jyutping (itself the Jyutping romanisation of its Chinese name, 粵拼) is a contraction of the official name, and it consists of the first Chinese characters of the terms jyut6 jyu5 (粵語, meaning "Yue language") and ping3 jam1 (拼音 "phonetic alphabet", also pronounced as "pinyin" in Mandarin).

Despite being intended as a system to indicate pronunciation, it has also been employed in writing Cantonese as an alphabetic language—in effect, elevating Jyutping from its assistive status to a written language.

History

The Jyutping system[1] departs from all previous Cantonese romanisation systems (approximately 12, including Robert Morrison's pioneering work of 1828, and the widely used Standard Romanization, Yale and Sidney Lau systems) by introducing z and c initials and the use of eo and oe in finals, as well as replacing the initial y, used in all previous systems, with j.[2]

In 2018, it was updated to include the -a and -oet finals, to reflect syllables recognized as part of Cantonese phonology in 1997 by the Jyutping Work Group of the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong.[3]

Initials

Finals

Tones

There are nine tones in six distinct tone contours in Cantonese. However, as three of the nine are entering tones (入聲; jap6 sing1), which only appear in syllables ending with p, t, and k, they do not have separate tone numbers in Jyutping (though they do in Cantonese Pinyin; these are shown in parentheses in the table below). A mnemonic which some use to remember this is 「風水到時我哋必發達」; fung1 seoi2 dou3 si4 ngo5 dei6 bit1 faat3 daat6 or "Feng Shui [dictates that] we will be lucky."

Comparison with Yale romanisation

Jyutping and the Yale Romanisation of Cantonese represent Cantonese pronunciations with the same letters in:

But they differ in the following:

Comparison with Cantonese pinyin

Jyutping and Cantonese Pinyin represent Cantonese pronunciations with the same letters in:

But they have some differences:

Examples

Sample transcription of one of the 300 Tang Poems:

Jyutping input method

The Jyutping method (Chinese: 粵拼輸入法) refers to a family of input methods based on the Jyutping romanization system.

The Jyutping method allows a user to input Chinese characters by entering the Jyutping romanization of a Chinese character (with or without tone, depending on the system) and then presenting the user with a list of possible characters with that pronunciation.

As of macOS Ventura, Jyutping input with Traditional Chinese now comes standard on macOS under the name "Phonetic – Cantonese".

List of Jyutping keyboard input utilities

See also

Footnotes

  1. ^ Chinese: 香港語言學學會粵語拼音方案; Jyutping: hoeng1 gong2 jyu5 jin4 hok6 hok6 wui2 jyut6 jyu5 ping3 jam1 fong1 on3

References

  1. ^ "The Jyutping Scheme". The Linguistic Society of Hong Kong. Archived from the original on 26 April 2013. Retrieved 3 January 2016.
  2. ^ Kataoka, Shin; Lee, Cream (2008). "A System without a System: Cantonese Romanization Used in Hong Kong Place and Personal Names". Hong Kong Journal of Applied Linguistics: 94–98.
  3. ^ a b Linguistic Society of Hong Kong. "Jyutping Cantonese Romanization Scheme 粵拼方案制定的背景". Archived from the original on 2024-03-16. Retrieved 2024-04-03.
  4. ^ Matthews, S.; Yip, V. Cantonese: A Comprehensive Grammar; London: Routledge, 1994
  5. ^ FAQ: How to select Cantonese Phonetic IME (CPIME) in Windows 10

Further reading

External links