Talk:Pinyin

Wiki Education assignment: Writing Workshop

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 5 September 2023 and 15 December 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): HaEvNa, Aikeeee, Wwwe123321 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Wwwe123321 (talk) 21:01, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Tones

I'm trying to make the tones in pinyin more clear by mentioning the neutral tone in pinyin. Also, I provide a brief interpretation of how to pronounce the tones.

The pinyin system also uses diacritics to mark the four tones of Mandarin (or it could be five tones when considering the neutral tone).  In the pinyinn system, four main tones of Mandarin are shown by diacritics: ā (tone 1: high-level), á (tone 2: rising), ǎ (tone 3: low-falling-rising), and the last one à (tone 4: high-falling).  And there is no symbol or diacritic for the neutral tone. The diacritic is placed over the letter that represents the syllable nucleus, unless that letter is missing (see below). Tones are used in Hanyu Pinyin symbols, and they don't appear in Chinese characters.

Tones are written on the finals of Chinese pinyin. If the tone mark is written over an i, the tittle above the i is omitted, as in yī.

I have the citation for the part I revised, but it wasn't shown here. One citation is used for the addition of the neutral tone, while the other one is the way of pronouncing tones. If there is any grammar mistake, please point it out, and I'll do my best to revise it. HaEvNa (talk) 03:01, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

I think this is a bit over-written for what it is, if that makes sense. It requires a bit of attention regarding style of the prose. For example, I think it's odd to say the tittle of the i is omitted per se, I would simply say it has been replaced by the macron.

There's a bad habit we have of clustering information together in brackets on articles like these, but it often ends up more confusing for readers than we realize as people familiar with the subject. If you find yourself constantly repeating the same lists of the same types of information, maybe it's best to make it a table and then allow the reader to refer to it as needed. Remsense留 03:21, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Thank you so much for the response, and sorry for the late reply. I looked through both the original article and my revision again and figured out that it's true that my revision could be a little bit wordy. My consideration is that for someone who's in a hurry to look through the article, they would probably just see the first paragraph of each section. And that's why I want to show them the most important things in tones of pinyin. And if they have time to view it in detail, they can see the chart below (I think I would add "see below").

For the section about the tone mark, it's actually from the original article. I think I'll do my best to make it clear. HaEvNa (talk) 20:21, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Your reply was perfectly prompt, don't worry about that. I also want to improve this article—it's very high-traffic, and should probably have my attention more than my other projects frankly. Remsense留 21:00, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Applications of Pinyin

The inclusion of this piece of information can help readers, especially foreigners who don't know pinyin, to have a more comprehensive understanding of the "new concept" of pinyin, and I think this piece of information can be added to the introduction, which will make the Wikipedia article even more helpful.

Pinyin, a vital component of Chinese language education, facilitates language acquisition, particularly for non-native speakers. Widely employed in educational institutions from elementary to university levels, Pinyin serves as a foundational tool for teaching pronunciation and aiding learners in understanding Mandarin phonetics. (Jian, 2017, 553-567)

Pinyin's role extends beyond national borders, emerging as an invaluable asset in the global context of Chinese language education. It has evolved into a universally recognized method for teaching Chinese pronunciation, offering learners a consistent and systematic approach to mastering the nuances of Mandarin tones and sounds. With the burgeoning interest in learning Chinese worldwide, the pragmatic application of Pinyin has gained prominence, particularly in the realm of online language courses and educational materials in recent years. (Jian, 2017, 553-567) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aikeee (talk • contribs) 20:09, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Restructuring

The article's layout presently makes very little sense, which is particularly bad for what is one of the most highly important, and one of the highest trafficked articles that we have concerning the Chinese language. its sections are:

1. History — fine.
2. Initials and finals — describes the important core of Chinese morphology and the internal linguistic model, fine, but tries to do so and properly introduce the topic of the article at the same time?
3. Tones — Maybe shouldn't be its own top-level section.
4. Orthographic rules — Oh dear, huh? Pinyin as a whole is a collection of orthographic rules, that's what a transliteration system is.
   Also has this incredibly long, branching choose-your-own-adventure list that is totally unwieldy in an encyclopedia article, as opposed to a technical manual, say.
5. Comparison with other orthographies — overbroad, should stick to other romanization systems, dawdles about Literary Chinese for unknown reasons.
6. Unicode code points — does not need this huge table for what are pretty ordinary code points not specifically encoded for pinyin (as far as I know.)
7. Usage — this needs to be higher up, some bits merged with history, and about half of it stripped out entirely, it is laden with original research and WP:FANCRUFT. Maybe some of it could find its own article?

Even for the good headings, all are unfocused and unduly overlap/repeat one another. There are generally not clear distinctions made between various phonological, orthographic, syntactic, and pragmatic concepts. That said, I'm not quite sure how to draw the new sections, suggestions are very much appreciated. Remsense留 16:24, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

I've started the rework, and this involves cutting a huge chunk, almost half, of the article out. I am working quickly, and I haven't damaged the article so that a general audience can't find what they're looking for. Normally I would not work this way, but this article was so messy and structurally awry that I really do believe it will be better and quicker to rewrite a lot of content from scratch, and I think its continued presence is a net negative for both reader and editor. Remsense留 01:05, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

(I've put the pre-rework diff at Draft:Pinyin, in case anyone would like to look at it or use it. Remsense留 01:39, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

I might be busy this weekend, so the article may remain in this state for a few days. If anyone wants to revert it to the re-rework state because they feel it is unpresentable—though I don't think so—that's completely understandable and I'd prefer the revert than misgivings. Remsense留 15:54, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

@Remsense Could we please restore the section that maps pinyin to Zhuyin/Bopomofo? It's how the standard is defined, but that information is no longer there for any of the initials. Theknightwho (talk) 10:07, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Theknightwho, please do. — Remsense诉 02:46, 23 January 2024 (UTC)