Is there a way to make skritter use zhuyin instead of pinyin? Im going to be studying at a taiwanese university in later in the year and I want to have more experience in zhuyin as I know for a fact that is what the teachers will be using. (Its a 台中 not a 台北 based 大學).

No bopomofo support yet. It's on the radar but sort of at the outer edges, where you're not too concerned yet whether it's a missile or submarine or alien predator. So we're planning on adding it, but later.

Just keep it one the outer edges until it's sunk - just a matter of time (in fact it's already replaced by Pinyin anyway).

by the way: anyone else who always thinks of 猪音 when reading the pinyin "zhuyin" (注音)?

pinyin and zhuyin - True foes!

:Just keep it one the outer edges until it's sunk - just a matter of time (in fact it's already replaced by Pinyin anyway)."

Its attitudes like this that make me really either plain ignorant or purely arrogant, but either way it is just plain incorrect!

Fact: If you study Mandarin in many parts of Taiwan you will be learning from books which have zhuyin and maybe pinyin.

Fact: The teachers of your class grew up learning zhuyin, and dont have much familiarity with pinyin.

Fact: If you buy a childrens book in taiwan to help yourself learn chinese, or to teach your children chinese, it will contain zhuyin not pinyin.

Fact: Last but not least, when my taiwanese friends, relatives and inlaws are speaking a chinese word that I dont quite get the pronunciation, they all know the correct zhuyin for that word, but have NFI what the pinyin is.

I do believe that legislation was passed in Taiwan that required local governments to romanise street signs in pinyin instead of the local taiwanese variants, but apart from that I am not sure what would make you think zhuyin has already been replaced.

This is why skritter needs to allow editing posts, it should read:

Its attitudes like this that make me really agitated. Statements like this are either plain ignorant or purely arrogant, but either way it is just plain incorrect!

I'd sure like to learn zhuyin one day.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2008/09/18/2003423528/1

It just says government agencies. The article isn't clear whether that is just street signs or official documents. If it is official documents as well, then that is a major blow to zhuyin's survival. It also doesn't say what happens at the school level either. It is the ministry of education involved in the news brief, though. Are there public schools in Taiwan?

The older generation undoubtedly only knows zhuyin. Then again, not to long ago in mainland China, the older generation only knew traditional characters. Simplified characters definitely won there, though.

I don't care either way. I am not taking sides saying on what they should do. I am content with Skritter as it is except for one feature request which they already told me they aren't giving me. (I wanted one feature moved to the main practice page.) The belief that zhuyin is in danger isn't unreasonable, though.

I've said this before but I think zhuyin is fundamentally superior to pinyin for native speakers of languages with latin scripts.

Learning the symbols takes no time at all but then avoids countless pain of students mispronouncing the romanisation because they have preconceived ideas about how to pronounce various letters.

Unfortunately it looks like it's going nowhere fast, there's definitely a pushback in taiwan too. I've a Taiwanese elementary text book which is pinyin based.

"Fact: The teachers of your class grew up learning zhuyin" - Nah. zhuyin was replaced by pinyin in mainland china before the 1950s. Every one one my teachers grew up with pinyin although its use is quite limited in native education.

Well I don't really understand all the pinyin-bopomofo discussion. It's basically the same.
While I agree bopomofo is more elegant, I probably won't learn it although I've been studying in Taiwan for some time.
If you just accept that pinyin only gives you clues for the pronunciation (sometimes quite good ones), bopomofo is just more characters to learn...

I agree in the long term zhuyin is in danger of disappearing in the long term, however I am pragmatic about the whole debate. The simple fact remains that right now, in this year/decade, being proficient in zhuyin makes learning in chinese easier.

Regarding the law that was passed in taiwan (by the "pro" china political party) to force local governments to use pinyin, this is purely a practical thing. In most areas of Taiwan, street signs have both chinese characters and a romanisation of those characters. Each regional government seems to have their own method of romanisation, and in some places it seems they just arbitrarily make up the english characters. Same goes for english names on passports, some of them are quite strange and funny. It makes sense that if you are going to attempt to have a standardised system for romanization of chinese characters on street signs or passports, that you use a standard convention.

I believe the law is talking about what method of romanisation should be used when the government is trying to facilitate communication with foreign governments and tourists. No one is going to argue that putting zhuyin characters on street signs does not help white people find the correct train line!

The second issue of the law is that many local regions completely ignore it, so the law is largely irrelevant at this point in time. Using a China/Beijing standard for romanisation is politically unpopular. ie, using pinyin could make you appear as being complicit in the movement towards unification with China. In fact the politically incorrectness of using pinyin, may be the thing that saves zhuyin in the long run. In some parts of Taiwan, a white person suggesting that pinyin is better than zhuyin will result waking up in hospital as a result of being a victim of a late night beating from a mob locals.

Sorry, 董哥, as with all my answers - cum grano salis.

千万别往心里去

I don't think zhuyin makes learning Chinese easier beyond the elementary level to be honest. One you're aware of all the possible initials and finals, it's largely irrelevant what the transliteration scheme is.

I think that people who use pinyin(both non-native and native) often dislike zhuyin because they can't read it and it irritates them because of that.
A Chinese teacher (from Shanghai) once saw that I was using zhuyin whilst studying and he seemed a bit displeased.

So, yeah, I've definitely noticed that people who can't read zhuyin aren't just indifferent towards it, but dislike it

I don't think zhuyin is that hard to learn, and its really a drop in the bucket for anyone already committed to learning Chinese characters.

I agree that it had an advantage in the sense that it does not interfere with pre-conceived ideas about what the pronunciation of alphabetic characters is supposed to sound like. Zhuyin would also be preferable for young school children in environments where they are being taught literacy in English and Chinese at the same time. Trying to teach them pinyin and English at the same time would really be confusing.

Familiarity with zhuyin is useful in Taiwan. And as for @xkfowboa, that's what his program uses, so he certainly needs it.

Ways I practice:

Make Anki flashcards for the zhuyin symbols

I use zhongwen for character decomposition, and for a quick reference for looking up Mainland vs. Taiwan pronunciations of characters, so I started using zhuyin to look up characters on zhongwen.com.

Children's books. I know that Taiwanese children's books with zhuyin are quite easy to find in the San Francisco Bay Area, if not in a book store, you might send an email to www.chinasprout.com or similar online bookstores, and tell them what you're looking for.

Iphone or other smart phone. You can use zhuyin as an input method for taking brief notes in Chinese or texting your Taiwanese friends (MSN, Facebook). If you have Pleco or something like, you can change your settings to zhuyin instead of pinyin, for both the dictionary and the reader. Once you're in Taiwan, if you don't have a smart phone, zhuyin is an easy way to enter Chinese characters using cell phones designed for the Taiwanese market.

@lurks The argument about which method is largely irrelevant if your teaches, friends, and relatives all use zhuyin (:

@chrisclark I have also purchased a taiwanese zhuyin keyboard for my mac which is very neat. It feels strange, but somewhat very cool to be typing with a keyboard where 41 of the keys are used for letters of the "alphabet" so to speak. (:

@xkfowboa
I personally have never been interested in the zhuyin keyboard layout - pinyin input methods leverage my existing QWERTY typing skills. But more power to ya!

雅各, I'd be happy to use both if I was exposed to zhuyin a lot. I'm not really sure I'd see pinyin as a problem though? They're only pronunciation aids. It's quite clear that the ability to read pinyin fluently is a vital skill for a student of Chinese, if only to access the best dictionaries available.

I would have thought so long as you can read zhuyin you're fine. Writing in pinyin is *rather* more practical to say the least. I bet you can find a little plug in to output zhuyin after typing pinyin?

Same sort of thing with traditional. I'm happy to switch my IME to traditional and write traditional for people in Taiwan. Makes no difference to me, I'm typing the same.

For learners of Chinese, the Zhuyin phonetic IMEs (at least microsoft, don't know about others) is superior compared to pinyin IMEs because it forces you to memorize the tones. For pinyin methods, it shows candidates for all tones of a syllable. But when using Zhuyin, it only shows candidates for the syllable AND tone one inputted. If one puts in the wrong tone, then the desired character won't be in the candidate list. Pinyin does nothing to reinforce tone, which is just as important as pronunciation.

@Samanosuke, how hard did you find it to learn the zhuyin keyboard layout? Do you just hunt-and-peck?

My primary IME is "Chinese (Traditional) - New Phonetic," and that is a pinyin IME the requires input of tones. It uses the Guoyu pronunciation standards, which I really like. Even though I live in Taiwan, I've kept to the Beijing standard in my speech (for instance I pronounce 究竟 as jiu1jing4 not jiu4jing4), just to make things easier for myself, having first learned Chinese on the Mainland. But I still want to learn what the Guoyu pronunciations are, and this IME helps me to gradually do that.

On the other hand, I use Microsoft New Pinyin Experience for typing simplified characters, and that doesn't use tones.

I actually think Bopomofo is better... Why would I want to learn another language, with my own alphabet?
Once I've learned pronunciation then I'll just use their alphabet to learn the language.
These examples y'all brought up are just another example of losing ones heritage. As, Mainland China has burned most of it's history in the 60's. Zhuyin is actually the original alphabet for learning northern Chinese (I think). It's plenty easier to learn the way they've been doing it for years. Just apply a few study methods to it, that's all. I'm able to read Hiragana, Katakana, Hangul, Zhuyin, English (alphabet), Spanish (alphabet), and Italian (alphabet).
I have never applied any European alphabets to learn kanji, hanja, or hanzi. I've only learned to read the phonetics through European (approximations). In learning another language without actually learning the "basics" will cripple you from "actually" knowing it. You'd not be able to think the same way they do, in it. I'm referring to the older generations, as they are ever wiser than the present. Traditional (quality) methods in any language gives you the upper-hand over the vaguely other (quantity).