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The Yale romanization of Mandarin is a system for Beijing dialect developed in 1943 by the Yale sinologist George Kennedy to help prepare American soldiers to communicate with their Chinese allies on the battlefield.

One advantage of the system, as compared to the popular the Wade–Giles system, for example, was that it did not use the spiritus asper (which looks like an apostrophe) to distinguish non-aspirated from aspirated initial sounds, such as jee from chee. In Wade–Giles, the first of those would be written chi and the second would be written ch'i. In the Yale romanization they were written ji and chi.

The Yale system also avoids the difficulties faced by the beginner trying to read pinyin romanization, which uses certain Roman letters and combinations of letters in such a way that they no longer carry their expected values. For instance, q in pinyin is pronounced something like the ch in chicken and is written as ch in Yale Romanization. Xi in pinyin is pronounced something like the sh in sheep, but in Yale it is written as syi. Zhi in pinyin sounds something like the ger in gerbil, and is written as jr in Yale romanization. For example: in Wade–Giles, "knowledge" (知識) is chih-shih; in pinyin, zhishi; but in Yale romanization it is written jr-shr—only the last will elicit a near-correct pronunciation from an unprepared English speaker.

The Yale romanization was widely used in Western textbooks until the late 1970s; in fact, during the height of the Cold War, preferring the Communist pinyin system over Yale romanization was something of a political statement.^[1] The situation was reversed once the relations between the People's Republic of China and the West had improved. Communist China (PRC) became a member of the United Nations in 1971 by replacing Nationalist China (ROC). By 1979, much of the world adopted pinyin as the standard romanization for Chinese geographical names. In 1982, pinyin became an ISO standard. Interest in Yale Mandarin declined rapidly thereafter.

Initials and finals

The tables below show the Yale Mandarin representation of each Chinese sound (in bold type), together with the corresponding IPA phonetic symbol (in square brackets), and equivalent representations in Zhùyīn Fúhào (Bōpōmōfō) and Hànyǔ Pīnyīn.

Initials

		Bilabial		Labiodental	Alveolar		Retroflex		Alveolo-palatal	Velar
		Voiceless	Voiced	Voiceless	Voiceless	Voiced	Voiceless	Voiced	Voiceless	Voiceless
Nasal			m [m] ㄇ m			n [n] ㄋ n
Plosive	Unaspirated	b [p] ㄅ b			d [t] ㄉ d					g [k] ㄍ g
Plosive	Aspirated	p [pʰ] ㄆ p			t [tʰ] ㄊ t					k [kʰ] ㄎ k
Affricate	Unaspirated				dz [ts] ㄗ z		j [ʈʂ] ㄓ zh		j [tɕ] ㄐ j
Affricate	Aspirated				ts [tsʰ] ㄘ c		ch [ʈʂʰ] ㄔ ch		ch [tɕʰ] ㄑ q
Fricative				f [f] ㄈ f	s [s] ㄙ s		sh [ʂ] ㄕ sh		sy [ɕ] ㄒ x	h [x] ㄏ h
Liquid						l [l] ㄌ l		r [ɻ~ʐ] ㄖ r

Finals

Nucleus		a					ə						∅
Coda		∅	i	u	n	ŋ	∅	i	u	n	ŋ	ɻ	∅
Medial	∅	a [a] ㄚ a	ai [ai] ㄞ ai	au [au] ㄠ ao	an [an] ㄢ an	ang [aŋ] ㄤ ang	e [ɤ] ㄜ e	ei [ei] ㄟ ei	ou [ou] ㄡ ou	en [ən] ㄣ en	eng [əŋ] ㄥ eng	er [aɚ] ㄦ er	r/z [ɨ] ㄭ -i
	i	ya [ja] ㄧㄚ ia		yau [jau] ㄧㄠ iao	yan [jɛn] ㄧㄢ ian	yang [jaŋ] ㄧㄤ iang	ye [je] ㄧㄝ ie		you [jou] ㄧㄡ iu	in [in] ㄧㄣ in	ing [iŋ] ㄧㄥ ing		i [i] ㄧ i
	u	wa [wa] ㄨㄚ ua	wai [wai] ㄨㄞ uai		wan [wan] ㄨㄢ uan	wang [waŋ] ㄨㄤ uang	wo [wo] ㄨㄛ uo	wei [wei] ㄨㄟ ui		wun [wən] ㄨㄣ un	ung [ʊŋ] ㄨㄥ ong		u [u] ㄨ u
	y				ywan [ɥɛn] ㄩㄢ üan		ywe [ɥe] ㄩㄝ üe			yun [yn] ㄩㄣ ün	yung [jʊŋ] ㄩㄥ iong		yu [y] ㄩ ü

Other rules

Syllabic consonants are spelled as follows: jr (ㄓ zhi), chr (ㄔ chi), shr (ㄕ shi), r (ㄖ ri), dz (ㄗ zi), tsz (ㄘ ci), sz (ㄙ si).
A y should be placed before i if: 1. there is no initial in the syllable, ex: yin, ying like pinyin; 2. coupled with alveolo-palatal consonant sy (ㄒ x), ex: syi (ㄒㄧ xi), syin (ㄒㄧㄣ xin).

Tones

Tones are indicated with tone marks over the medial letter, the same as used in pinyin:

Tone	Diacritic marker
1	¯
2	ˊ
3	ˇ
4	ˋ
neutral	none

References

^ Wiedenhof, Jeroen (Leiden University) (2004). "Purpose and effect in the transcription of Mandarin". Proceedings of the International Conference on Chinese Studies 2004 (漢學研究國際學術研討會論文集). National Yunlin University of Science and Technology. pp. 387–402. ISBN 9860040117. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-05-01. Retrieved 2009-07-18. In the Cold War era, the use of this system outside China was typically regarded as a political statement, or a deliberate identification with the Chinese communist regime. (p390) {{cite conference}}: Unknown parameter |booktitle= ignored (|book-title= suggested) (help)

External links

"Comparison chart of Yale Romanization for Mandarin with Hanyu Pinyin and Zhuyin Fuhao". Archived from the original on July 16, 2014.

[1] Wiedenhof, Jeroen (Leiden University) (2004). "Purpose and effect in the transcription of Mandarin". Proceedings of the International Conference on Chinese Studies 2004 (漢學研究國際學術研討會論文集). National Yunlin University of Science and Technology. pp. 387–402. ISBN 9860040117. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-05-01. Retrieved 2009-07-18. In the Cold War era, the use of this system outside China was typically regarded as a political statement, or a deliberate identification with the Chinese communist regime. (p390) {{cite conference}}: Unknown parameter |booktitle= ignored (|book-title= suggested) (help)

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