Bopomofo Tutorial Video Script
Hi! Welcome to my channel! My name is Hsinju, and I am a native Taiwanese. Today, I’m gonna do a brief intro on Bopomofo, the phonetic symbols Taiwanese use for learning Mandarin Chinese at school. There are 37 symbols along with 4 tones. I know it’s hard to learn a language without audio guides, so I’m here to create this tutorial to help you on that.
ㄅㄆㄇㄈㄉㄊㄋㄌㄍㄎㄏㄐㄑㄒㄓㄔㄕㄖㄗㄘㄙㄧㄨㄩㄚㄛㄜㄝㄞㄟㄠㄡㄢㄣㄤㄥㄦ
Okay, these are the 37 symbols. Now, moving to the tones. We are going to use ㄇ with ㄚ for examples.
The first tone is an even tone. The pitch of your voice does not change. It’s a lot like ‘Wut’ in English, as in 媽.
The second tone is a rising tone. The pitch of your voice goes higher as you speak. Like when you ask a question, such as ‘now?’ In Chinese, it would be like 麻.
The third tone is a tricky one. The pitch of your voice goes low first than rises up. Like when you respond to people and say ‘yes?’ In Chinese, it is 馬.
The fourth tone is a dropping tone. The pitch of your voice goes low fast. A little bit like when you are annoyed or angry, and say ‘no!’ As for Chinese, it would be 罵.
There is actually an additional neutral tone that is not exactly a tone. But we call it a tone anyway. It is more like a short sound. For example, 嗎.
So, these are the 37 symbols and the 4 tones along with neutral tone. Hope this helps! If you like this video, please give it a thumbs up and if you have any questions or suggestions, leave your comment below. I’ll get back to you. See you guys next time! Bye!
6 Comments
Karl Kauffman
Any bias you have that favors Zhuyin is well founded. The Bopomofo alphabet I would definitely appeal more to linguists because it places aspirated and unaspirated phonemes In sequence and same with sibilants, dentals, etc. The alphabet is almost linguistically perfect. I find it it is a much better and more accurate system to write the proper pronunciation of standard Mandarin.
Hsinju
Thank you! EXACTLY! I do hope that more people would appreciate and look into Bopomofo system. 🙂
Karl Kauffman
I loved your BoPoMoFo video. I am currently studying Mandarin in Taiwan, and I prefer the linguistic accuracy of Zhuin to Pinyin.
Hsinju
Glad to hear that you enjoyed the video! I am definitely biased, but Zhuyin/Bopomofo is an awesome phonetic system. I hope Taiwan is treating you well!
HOANG DINH Viep
Thank you very much for your contribution, I just start to learn chinese and I would like to use bopomofo in order to have traditional chinese characters. Your post is very helpful for me because I don’t know how to use …
Hsinju
Thank you for your support! I will also try to do more Mandarin tutorials soon! Feel free to comment if you have any questions~