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Pinyin is a little more compact (I.e. fewer Roman characters per Chinese characters) than Wades-Giles, so more efficient storage. That makes it easier to input

Pinyin is a little more compact (I.e. fewer Roman characters per Chinese characters) than Wades-Giles, so more efficient storage. That makes it easier to input chinese characters when using an English keyboard (or keypad on a mobile phone).

emodendroket 10y ago
It's also arguably more aligned with the English pronunciation of the letters.
- FabHK 10y ago
  Not for initials (consonants): I find Wade-Giles ch'in more evocative than the Pinyin qin, and similarly hsüan vs xuan, and even tzŭ vs zi and tzʻŭ vs ci. Wade-Giles you basically have to learn not to ignore the apostrophe, Pinyin you have to learn most of the initials. Though the Wade-Giles jih vs Pinyin ri is a bit of a toss-up. For finals, I find Wade-Giles yü more consistent than Pinyin yu, but Wade-Giles to less descriptive than Pinyin duo. But then, it's shorter. So, yeah, "arguably" :-)
- uranusjr 10y ago
  Not a all. As a phonetic enthusiast I can assure you Pinyin is by far the worst representing Chinese sounds with English letters. It is made to represent Chinese phonetic, but its creators are seemingly completely ignorant toward basic phonetic rules, such as voicing and aspiration, and how words actually sound in English. As an example, b in English is called an unaspirated voiced consonant, which means you vibrate your vocal folds, but send only a little breath when you sound it. You can compare it with p, its aspirated voiceless counterpart, for which you do not vibrate the vocal folds (voiceless), but sends a strong breath through your month (aspirated). Chinese does not have most voiced consonants present in English, so Pinyin naively uses b (also d and some others) to represent voiceless aspirated consonants, which does not sound like a b, but more like p in “spade”. This results in most of the foreigners learning Chinese with Pinyin bringing English pronunciation when they speak, and makes them sound way too stiff and thus awkward. Wade-Giles, in comparison, is much more systematic, and does a much better job hinting speakers with European (especially Germanic language) background to sound more correctly. Bopomofo does not have this problem, as it basically invents a new set of scripts. Pinyin probably lets you pick up casual speaking Chinese most quickly, but beyond that, it’s a curse. [Edit]: Voice “folds” not cords, sorry. Also fixed some typos.
  - achou 10y ago
    When I was taught Pinyin, the instructor explained that the phonetics were influenced by the Russian pronunciation of the roman alphabet. Not sure if this is true, or if it explains the issues you're describing. But it seemed plausible that China thought they were going to be closer to the USSR given the shared ideology in the 50's. In any case, as a person who has a decent pronunciation in Chinese but lacking the ability to fully read/write, Pinyin has been absolutely great for being able to type Chinese informally. I can communicate almost anything I can say, and that's truly wonderful. Part of that is the smart prediction software. But Pinyin has a big part in it too: it's not difficult at all to sound out a word and figure out how to spell it in Pinyin. That's the essential feature that Chinese characters lack, and Pinyin nails that essential quality as far as I can tell.
    - uranusjr 10y ago
      I know very little Russian and can’t say for certain, but I think Russian is similar to English in these consonants. I should make it clear I don’t think Pinyin is a bad system, only that it does not map sounds to European languages well. And that is fine, as least for its original purpose. Contrary to common belief, Pinyin was not developed to better educate illiterate people (this does not even make sense if you think carefully), but as the next step after letter simplification (what we know as Simplified Chinese today) towards Chinese Romanisation. The goal was not to represent sounds of Chinese characters, but to outright replace them. The actual reason behind using (for example) b and p instead of p and p' is exactly this—they are optimising for ease to write, not sound accuracy. And in regard to making it easy for people not prolific with Chinese letters to read, be them foreigners or simply illiterate, a phonetic transcription system is indeed important. But although having a standard phonetic transcription is key to the jump in literacy in China, I would argue the same can be achieved with any decent system, and a few of them are already around by the time they started working on Pinyin. All in all, while Pinyin is good for its original purpose, it achieved its current status not because of academical reasons, but political ones. The Chinese Communists government had always have a habit ignoring existing systems and inventing their own. :p
    - hetman 10y ago

emodendroket 10y ago

It's also arguably more aligned with the English pronunciation of the letters.

FabHK 10y ago
Not for initials (consonants): I find Wade-Giles ch'in more evocative than the Pinyin qin, and similarly hsüan vs xuan, and even tzŭ vs zi and tzʻŭ vs ci. Wade-Giles you basically have to learn not to ignore the apostrophe, Pinyin you have to learn most of the initials. Though the Wade-Giles jih vs Pinyin ri is a bit of a toss-up. For finals, I find Wade-Giles yü more consistent than Pinyin yu, but Wade-Giles to less descriptive than Pinyin duo. But then, it's shorter. So, yeah, "arguably" :-)
uranusjr 10y ago
Not a all. As a phonetic enthusiast I can assure you Pinyin is by far the worst representing Chinese sounds with English letters. It is made to represent Chinese phonetic, but its creators are seemingly completely ignorant toward basic phonetic rules, such as voicing and aspiration, and how words actually sound in English. As an example, b in English is called an unaspirated voiced consonant, which means you vibrate your vocal folds, but send only a little breath when you sound it. You can compare it with p, its aspirated voiceless counterpart, for which you do not vibrate the vocal folds (voiceless), but sends a strong breath through your month (aspirated). Chinese does not have most voiced consonants present in English, so Pinyin naively uses b (also d and some others) to represent voiceless aspirated consonants, which does not sound like a b, but more like p in “spade”. This results in most of the foreigners learning Chinese with Pinyin bringing English pronunciation when they speak, and makes them sound way too stiff and thus awkward. Wade-Giles, in comparison, is much more systematic, and does a much better job hinting speakers with European (especially Germanic language) background to sound more correctly. Bopomofo does not have this problem, as it basically invents a new set of scripts. Pinyin probably lets you pick up casual speaking Chinese most quickly, but beyond that, it’s a curse. [Edit]: Voice “folds” not cords, sorry. Also fixed some typos.
- achou 10y ago
  When I was taught Pinyin, the instructor explained that the phonetics were influenced by the Russian pronunciation of the roman alphabet. Not sure if this is true, or if it explains the issues you're describing. But it seemed plausible that China thought they were going to be closer to the USSR given the shared ideology in the 50's. In any case, as a person who has a decent pronunciation in Chinese but lacking the ability to fully read/write, Pinyin has been absolutely great for being able to type Chinese informally. I can communicate almost anything I can say, and that's truly wonderful. Part of that is the smart prediction software. But Pinyin has a big part in it too: it's not difficult at all to sound out a word and figure out how to spell it in Pinyin. That's the essential feature that Chinese characters lack, and Pinyin nails that essential quality as far as I can tell.
  - uranusjr 10y ago
    I know very little Russian and can’t say for certain, but I think Russian is similar to English in these consonants. I should make it clear I don’t think Pinyin is a bad system, only that it does not map sounds to European languages well. And that is fine, as least for its original purpose. Contrary to common belief, Pinyin was not developed to better educate illiterate people (this does not even make sense if you think carefully), but as the next step after letter simplification (what we know as Simplified Chinese today) towards Chinese Romanisation. The goal was not to represent sounds of Chinese characters, but to outright replace them. The actual reason behind using (for example) b and p instead of p and p' is exactly this—they are optimising for ease to write, not sound accuracy. And in regard to making it easy for people not prolific with Chinese letters to read, be them foreigners or simply illiterate, a phonetic transcription system is indeed important. But although having a standard phonetic transcription is key to the jump in literacy in China, I would argue the same can be achieved with any decent system, and a few of them are already around by the time they started working on Pinyin. All in all, while Pinyin is good for its original purpose, it achieved its current status not because of academical reasons, but political ones. The Chinese Communists government had always have a habit ignoring existing systems and inventing their own. :p
  - hetman 10y ago