The differentvarieties of Chinese have been transcribed into many other writing systems.
General Chinese is adiaphonemic orthography invented byYuen Ren Chao to represent the pronunciations of all major varieties of Chinese simultaneously. It is "the most complete genuine Chinesediasystem yet published". It can also be used for theKorean,Japanese andVietnamesepronunciations of Chinese characters, and challenges the claim thatChinese characters are required for inter-dialectal communication in written Chinese.
General Chinese is not wholly a romanisation system, but consists of two alternative systems: one uses Chinese characters as asyllabary of 2082 glyphs, and the other is aromanisation system with similar spellings toGwoyeu Romatzyh.
官話字母;Guānhuà zìmǔ, developed byWang Zhao (1859–1933), was the first alphabetic writing system for Chinese developed by a Chinese person. This system was modeled on Japanesekatakana, which he learned during a two-year stay in Japan, and consisted of letters that were based on components of Chinese characters. After returning to China in 1900, he taught his system in various parts of North China, but the government banned it in 1901.[1]
One of Wang's contemporaries, Lao Naixuan勞乃宣 (1843–1921), later adaptedGuanhua zimu for use in twoWu dialects, those ofNingbo andSuzhou. In doing this, he raised the issue that was ultimately responsible for the failure of all alphabetic writing systems in China: the notion that people should be introduced to literacy in their own local dialects. Such a proposal would both challenge the unique position of the millennia-old writing system and create more than one literary language, destroying China's linguistic unity in both the historical and geographic senses. Because of this, there was strong opposition from the very beginning to proposals of this kind.[2]
Wu Jingheng, who had developed a "beansprout alphabet", and Wang Zhao, who had developedGuanhua zimu in 1900,[3] andLu Zhuangzhang were part of theCommission on the Unification of Pronunciation (1912–1913), which developed the rudimentary Jiyin Zimu (記音字母) system ofZhang Binglin into the Mandarin-specific phonetic system now known asZhuyin Fuhao or bopomofo, proclaimed on 23 November 1918.
The significant feature of bopomofo is that it is composed entirely ofruby characters which can be written beside any Chinese text whether written vertically, right-to-left, or left-to-right.[4] The characters within the bopomofo system are unique phonetic characters, and are not part of theLatin alphabet. In this way, it is not technically a form of romanisation, but because it is used for phonetic transcription the alphabet is often grouped with the romanisation systems.
WhenTaiwan wasunder Japanese rule, akatakana-based writing system used to writeHolo Taiwanese. It functioned as a phonetic guide to Chinese characters, much likefurigana inJapanese, or bopomofo. There were similar systems for other languages in Taiwan as well, includingHakka andFormosan languages.
Tao pronunciation letters, or Tao HanZi Yin in Chinese, are pronunciation letters invented in 1939 for a Cantonese language dictionary.[5]
ThePhags-pa script was an alphabet designed byDrogön Chögyal Phagpa at the behest ofKublai Khan during theYuan dynasty, to unify the empire's various languages. While Phags-pa has aided in the reconstruction of pre-modern Chinese pronunciation, it totally ignores tone.
TheManchu alphabet was used to write Chinese in theQing dynasty.
In Inner Mongolia theMongolian alphabet is used to transliterate Chinese.
Xiao'erjing uses theArabic alphabet to transliterate Chinese. It is used on occasion by manyethnic minorities who adhere to theIslamic faith in China (mostly theHui, but also theDongxiang, and theSalar), and formerly by theirDungan descendants inCentral Asia. Soviet writing reforms forced the Dungan to replacexiao'erjing with aRoman alphabet and later a Cyrillic alphabet, which they continue to use up until today.
There have been many Chineseromanisation systems throughout history. Recently,Hanyu Pinyin has become prominent since its introduction in 1982. Other well-known systems includeWade-Giles andYale.
The Russian system forCyrillisation of Chinese is thePalladius system. TheDungan language, a variety of Mandarin, was once written in the Latin script, but now employsCyrillic. Some use the Cyrillic alphabet to shorten pinyin—e.g.是;shì as [ш]Error: {{Transliteration}}: transliteration text not Latin script (pos 1: ш) (help).
Various other countries employ bespoke systems for cyrillising Chinese.
A number ofbraille transcriptions have been developed for Chinese. In mainland China, traditionalmainland Chinese Braille andTwo-Cell Chinese Braille are used in parallel to transcribe Standard Chinese.Taiwanese Braille is used in Taiwan forTaiwanese Mandarin.[6]
In traditional Mainland Chinese Braille, consonants and basic finals conform tointernational braille, but additional finals form asemi-syllabary, as in bopomofo. Each syllable is written with up to three Braille cells, representing theinitial,final andtone, respectively. In practice tone is generally omitted.
In Two-Cell Chinese Braille, designed in the 1970s, each syllable is rendered with two braille characters. The first combines the initial andmedial; the second thesyllable rime and tone. The base letters represent the initial and rhyme; these are modified with diacritics for the medial and tone.
Like traditional Mainland Chinese Braille, Taiwanese Braille is a semi-syllabary. Although based marginally on international braille, the majority of consonants have been reassigned.[7]