Zhuyin (注音符號), or bopomofo from its first four symbols ㄅㄆㄇㄈ, is the 37-symbol phonetic alphabet Taiwan uses to teach the pronunciation of Chinese characters. It represents the same Mandarin sounds as Hanyu Pinyin, and every syllable has one fixed spelling in each system. While most symbols map cleanly to a pinyin letter or two (ㄋㄧˇ ㄏㄠˇ is nǐ hǎo), pinyin has spelling conventions that Zhuyin does not. Relying on a simple conversion chart will produce the wrong spelling for about one syllable in four.
We counted that against Taiwan's Ministry of Education Revised Mandarin Chinese Dictionary, which gives both Zhuyin and pinyin for every reading. Its 11,933 single-character readings come to 1,336 distinct syllables with tone and 413 without. Of those 413, a symbol-for-letter chart converts 320 correctly and misses 93. The same dictionary is the answer key for our pinyin–Zhuyin converter, which handles all five rules below.
The 37 symbols and their pinyin
| Initials | Pinyin | Initials | Pinyin | Initials | Pinyin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ㄅ | b | ㄍ | g | ㄓ | zh |
| ㄆ | p | ㄎ | k | ㄔ | ch |
| ㄇ | m | ㄏ | h | ㄕ | sh |
| ㄈ | f | ㄐ | j | ㄖ | r |
| ㄉ | d | ㄑ | q | ㄗ | z |
| ㄊ | t | ㄒ | x | ㄘ | c |
| ㄋ | n | ㄙ | s | ||
| ㄌ | l |
| Finals | Pinyin | Finals | Pinyin |
|---|---|---|---|
| ㄚ | a | ㄢ | an |
| ㄛ | o | ㄣ | en |
| ㄜ | e | ㄤ | ang |
| ㄝ | ê (the e in ie, üe) | ㄥ | eng |
| ㄞ | ai | ㄦ | er |
| ㄟ | ei | ㄧ | i |
| ㄠ | ao | ㄨ | u |
| ㄡ | ou | ㄩ | ü |
The tables show two immediate differences between the systems. Pinyin uses a single letter, e, for two vowels that Zhuyin distinguishes: ㄜ (as in de, he) and ㄝ (as in jie, xue). A Zhuyin syllable never needs more than three symbols, while the longest pinyin syllables (chuang, shuang, zhuang) run to six letters.
Where the chart goes wrong, largest group first
The 93 syllables a chart misses fall into five groups. Each group comes from a rule in the 1958 pinyin scheme, which was itself printed with Zhuyin beside every letter as its pronunciation key.
- Shortened finals, 33 syllables. After an initial, pinyin shortens iou, uei and uen to iu, ui and un. The Zhuyin keeps all three sounds: liu is ㄌㄧㄡ, gui is ㄍㄨㄟ, lun is ㄌㄨㄣ. A chart that reads "iu" as ㄧㄨ gets every one of them wrong.
- Syllables with no initial, 25. When a syllable starts with a vowel, pinyin adds a y or a w that stands for no sound of its own: ㄧㄡ is you, ㄨㄟ is wei, ㄨㄣ is wen, ㄩㄢ is yuan. Zhuyin has no y or w. (Our guide to tongue twisters covers why some counts give Mandarin 21 initials and others 23: the difference is exactly these two letters.)
- -ong and -iong, 16. Pinyin writes ㄨㄥ after an initial as -ong (dong is ㄉㄨㄥ) and ㄩㄥ as -iong (xiong is ㄒㄩㄥ). Neither pinyin spelling contains the letter the chart expects.
- ü written as u, 12. After j, q and x only ü can follow, never u, so pinyin drops the two dots: ju is ㄐㄩ, xue is ㄒㄩㄝ, quan is ㄑㄩㄢ. After n and l both can follow, so nü and lü keep them.
- Syllables with no vowel symbol, 7. zhi, chi, shi, ri, zi, ci and si are written in pinyin with an i only so that each has a vowel letter. The sound is not ㄧ, and Zhuyin writes the initial alone: 是 shì is ㄕˋ, not ㄕㄧˋ.
These figures count distinct syllables, not how often each turns up in running text, and they assume a chart with the full forms iou, uei and uen. A chart that already lists iu, ui and un will get the first group right and do better overall.
Tone marks point the opposite way
Each system leaves one tone unmarked, and they choose different ones. Zhuyin leaves out the first tone and marks the neutral tone with a dot. Pinyin marks the first tone (mā) and leaves the neutral tone bare (ma).
| Tone | Pinyin | Zhuyin |
|---|---|---|
| First | mā | ㄇㄚ (no mark) |
| Second | má | ㄇㄚˊ |
| Third | mǎ | ㄇㄚˇ |
| Fourth | mà | ㄇㄚˋ |
| Neutral | ma (no mark) | ˙ㄇㄚ |
In horizontal writing the Ministry of Education puts the neutral-tone dot in front of the syllable (˙ㄇㄚ), and tones two to four after the last symbol. The dot is its own character, U+02D9; an ordinary middle dot looks similar but is a different character. How tones change in speech, for example 你好 said ní hǎo, is a separate question, covered in our guide to when yi and bu change tone.
Why Taiwan still teaches Zhuyin
Zhuyin was drawn up in 1913, published in 1918 and renamed 注音符號, "phonetic symbols", in 1930. Taiwan adopted Hanyu Pinyin as its standard romanisation in December 2008, but Zhuyin remains how Taiwanese children learn to read, and it sits beside characters in children's books and in the Ministry's own dictionaries. It is also widely used for typing: Taiwanese keyboards commonly print the symbols on the keys.
For a learner, the choice mostly follows where you study. Mainland China, Singapore and Malaysia teach pinyin; Taiwan teaches Zhuyin. The one small study comparing the two, with 30 English speakers learning 16 words, found Zhuyin helped where an English letter would suggest the wrong sound, which is interesting but too small to settle the question.
The dictionary data is the Ministry of Education's Revised Mandarin Chinese Dictionary as published in the open g0v moedict dataset; one reading with no vowel at all was left out. Tone-mark placement is from the Ministry's Zhuyin handbook, and the spelling rules from the 1958 pinyin scheme.
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