Internet Engineering Task Force Z. Cao, Ed. Internet-Draft H. Deng Intended status: Informational China Mobile Expires: January 11, 2014 July 10, 2013 How to Pronounce Chinese Names draft-zcao-chinese-pronounce-00 Abstract This document tries to give a brief introduction of how to pronounce Chinese spelling of names. After reading it, you will find it very easy to accomplish that. Status of This Memo This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet- Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." This Internet-Draft will expire on January 11, 2014. Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2013 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved. This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License. Cao & Deng Expires January 11, 2014 [Page 1] Internet-Draft Chinese-Pronounce July 2013 Table of Contents 1. Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2. The Pinyin system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 3. How to Pronounce Pinyin Words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 3.1. How to Pronounce 'Initials' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 3.2. How to Pronounce 'Finals' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 4. Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 5. Pronounciation Dictionary for Chinese Participants . . . . . 6 6. Acknowledgement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 7. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 8. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 9. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 1. Background Many Chinese people are attending IETF meetings and joining mailing list discussions (around 150 according to IETF Chairman report at Operation Plenary). Although their names are spelt using English letters, it is always not easy for English speakers to pronounce them. The essential problem is that there was not a standard while translating or mapping the Chinese names to English letters at the time. This document will not go into the details of the why this is the fact, but rather would like to serve as a tutorial for English speakers to pronounce Chinese spellings especially names correctly. There are several translating systems from Chinese characters to Latin script, including Pinyin, Webster and Zhuyin. Most people are using Pinyin now, which is the focus of this document. This document will not help you if you encounter names spelt in other systems. Most of the contents are referred to [Pinyin]. This document is not to accomplish a comprehensive eduation of pronunciation, but to eduate people to start with some basic knowledge and would like to serve as a guide that that IETF people can drop by and get the correct pronounce in a quick way. We also have submitted a companion document on how to call Chinese people in an authentic way, i.e. http://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-deng- call-chinese-names. 2. The Pinyin system Pinyin is the official phonetic system for transcribing the sound of Chinese characters into Latin script in China. It is often used to teach Standard Chinese and spell Chinese names in foreign publications and may be used as an input method to enter Chinese Cao & Deng Expires January 11, 2014 [Page 2] Internet-Draft Chinese-Pronounce July 2013 characters (Hanzi) into computers. 'Pinyin' literally means "spelled-out sounds." The pinyin system was developed in the 1950s based on earlier forms of romanization. It was published by the Chinese government in 1958 and revised several times. The International Organization for Standardization adopted pinyin as the international standard in 1982. 3. How to Pronounce Pinyin Words I will describe the simple way to learn the pronouncing system as below. 1. Divide the Pinyin syllable into one 'Initial' and one 'Final' 2. Learn how to pronounce the 'Initial' per introduction in Section 3.1 3. Learn how to pronounce the 'Final' per introduction in Section 3.2 4. Combine what you get from Step 2&3, and speak out (do not be afraid of making mistakes :)) 3.1. How to Pronounce 'Initials' Query the following table for your convenience. Pinyin | English approximation -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- b | unaspirated p, as in spit -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- p | strongly aspirated p, as in pit -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- m | as in English mummy -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- f | as in English fun -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- d | unaspirated t, as in stop -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- t | strongly aspirated t, as in top -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- n | as in English nit -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- l | as in English love -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- g | unaspirated k, as in skill -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cao & Deng Expires January 11, 2014 [Page 3] Internet-Draft Chinese-Pronounce July 2013 k | strongly aspirated k, as in kill -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- h | roughly like the Scots ch. English h as in hay -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- j | No equivalent in English, but similar to 'ge' in garage -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- q | No equivalent in English. Like pun"ch y"ourself -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- x | No equivalent in English. Like -sh y- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- zh | Rather like ch (a sound between choke and drew, | ~~ ~~ | tongue tip curled more upwards) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ch | as in chin, but with the tongue curled upwards; very similar to nurture | ~~ ~~ | in American English, but strongly aspirated. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- sh | as in shoe, but with the tongue curled upwards; very similar to marsh in | ~~ ~~ | American English -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- r | Similar to the English z in azure and r in reduce | ~ ~ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- z | similar to something between suds and cats | ~~ ~~ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- c | like the English ts in cats, very similar to the Czech | ~ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- s | as in sun -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- w | as in water -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- y | as in yes -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Figure 1: How to pronounce Initials 3.2. How to Pronounce 'Finals' 'Finals' come after 'Initials'. Generally they are more difficult to pronounce than 'Initials'. But the good thing is, unlike English equivalent, they have only one way to pronounce. Compared to 'ough' in 'Cough' and 'rough', 'cought', etc., 'Finals' are more stable. Pinyin | Explanation Cao & Deng Expires January 11, 2014 [Page 4] Internet-Draft Chinese-Pronounce July 2013 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- a | as 'a' in father -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- e | as 'er' in 'her' -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ai | like English "eye", but a bit lighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ei | as in "hey" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ao | approximately as 'ow' in "cow"; a is much more audible than the o -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ou | as in "so" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- an | as 'an' in "ban" in British Englis -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- en | as 'en' in "taken" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ang | as in German Angst -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- eng | like e in en above but with ng added to it at the back -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- er | similar to the sound of 'ar'in "bar" in American English -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ia | as i + a; like 'yar' in "yard" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ie | [i?] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- iao | as i + ao -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- iu | as i + ou -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ian | like English yen -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- iang | as i + ang -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- in | as i + n -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- u | like English "oo" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ua | as u + a -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- uo | as u + o where the o is much lighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- uai | as u + ai like as in why -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ui | as u + ei; -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- uan | as u + an; Cao & Deng Expires January 11, 2014 [Page 5] Internet-Draft Chinese-Pronounce July 2013 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- un | as u + en; like the 'on' in the English won; -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- uang | as u + ang; -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ong | starts with the vowel sound in book and ends with the velar nasal | sound in sing -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Figure 2: How to pronounce Finals in Pinyin 4. Examples For example, how to pronounce my first name Zhen and last name Cao. For 'zhen', we can divide it into initial 'zh' and final 'en', and then go and find them in Figure 1 and Figure 2. Okay, you will find them in the tables, 'zh' pronounces like 'ch', and 'en' follows its pronunciation in 'taken', so you will know how to pronounce it in a combination. For 'Cao', it will be similar, you can take it as an execise and confirm with me on future IETF meetings :). Take Hui Deng as another example, 'Hui' can be devided into 'h'(initial) and 'ui' (final), and you can speak out. 'Deng' can be devided into 'd' and 'eng'. As in Figure 2, 'g' is silent. 5. Pronounciation Dictionary for Chinese Participants This section intends to serve as a pronounciation dictionary for Chinese participants in IETF. Note: please advise an efficient way to accomplish this task, to benifit communication between working group chairs and working group participants from China. 6. Acknowledgement Authors would like to thank Magaret Wasserman for encouraging western people to learn how to call Chinese names, and thank Fred baker, Jari Arkko, Ted Lemmon, and Sri Gundave to call our name in Chinese way . Thanks ALL for initiating, promoting and executing the 'IETF Diversify' program. Thanks ALL for your willingness to improve communication ways with IETF Chinese participants. 7. IANA Considerations NO IANA Requests. Cao & Deng Expires January 11, 2014 [Page 6] Internet-Draft Chinese-Pronounce July 2013 8. Security Considerations N/A. 9. Informative References [Pinyin] Wikipedia, ., "Pinyin, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin", May 2013. Authors' Addresses Zhen Cao (editor) China Mobile Xuanwumenxi Ave. No.32 Beijing, Beijing 100053 China Email: zehn.cao@gmail.com, caozhen@chinamobile.com Hui Deng China Mobile Xuanwumenxi Ave. No.32 Beijing 100053 China Email: denghui@chinamobile.com Cao & Deng Expires January 11, 2014 [Page 7]