Jyutping

This article contains Chinese text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Chinese characters.

Jyutping (sometimes spelled Jyutpin) is a romanization system for Standard Cantonese developed by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong (LSHK) in 1993. Its formal name is The Linguistic Society of Hong Kong Cantonese Romanization Scheme. The LSHK promotes the use of this romanization system.

The name Jyutping is a contraction consisting of the first Chinese characters of the terms jyut jyu (粵語, meaning "Cantonese") and ping jam (拼音 "phonetic alphabet").

This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

Note that the "j" used by this romanization system is the "j" used by IPA, which is equivalent to the "y" used by English speakers or most Chinese romanization systems.

Jyutping input method is the only Cantonese input method available in Microsoft's Vista products.

Initials

Finals

• The finals m and ng can only be used as standalone nasal syllables.
• ^ ^ ^  Referring to the colloquial pronunciation of these words.

Tones

There are nine tones in six distinct tone contours in Cantonese. However, as three of the nine are entering tones (入聲), which only appear in syllables ending with p, t, and k, they do not have separate tone numbers in Jyutping (though they do in Yale; these are shown in parentheses in table below).

Comparison with Yale Romanization

Jyutping and the Yale romanization system represent Cantonese pronunciations with the same letters in:

• The initials: b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, ng, h, s, gw, kw, w.
• The vowel: aa (except when using alone), a, e, i, o, u,yu.
• The nasal consonant: m, ng.
• The coda: i, u, m, n, ng, p, t, k.

But they have difference with the following exceptions:

• The vowels eo and oe represent /ɵ/ and /œː/ respectively in Jyutping, while the eu represents both vowels in Yale.
• The initial j represents /j/ in Jyutping while y is used instead in Yale.
• The initial z represents /ts/ in Jyutping while j is used instead in Yale.
• The initial c represents /tsʰ/ in Jyutping while ch is used instead in Yale.
• In Jyutping, if no consonant precedes the vowel yu, then the initial j is appended before the vowel. In Yale, the corresponding initial y is never appended before yu under any circumstances.
• Jyutping defines three finals not in Yale: eu /ɛːu/, em /ɛːm/, and ep /ɛːp/. These three finals are used in colloquial Cantonese words, such as deu6 (掉), lem2 (舐), and gep6 (夾).
• To represent tones, only tone numbers are used in Jyutping while Yale originally uses tone marks together with the letter h (though tone numbers can be used in Yale as well).

Comparison with Standard Cantonese Pinyin

Jyutping and the Standard Cantonese Pinyin represent Cantonese pronunciations with the same letters in:

• The initials: b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, ng, h, s, gw, kw, j, w.
• The vowel: aa, a, e, i, o, u.
• The nasal consonant: m, ng.
• The coda: i (except of being the coda /y/ in Jyutping), u, m, n, ng, p, t, k.

But they have some differences:

• The vowels oe represent /ɵ/ and /œː/ in Standard Cantonese Pinyin while the eo and oe represent /ɵ/ and /œː/ respectively in Jyutping.
• The vowel y represent /y/ in Standard Cantonese Pinyin while both yu (use in nucleus) and i (use in coda) is used in Jyutping.
• The initial dz represents /ts/ in Standard Cantonese Pinyin while z is used instead in Jyutping.
• The initial ts represents /tsʰ/ in Standard Cantonese Pinyin while c is used instead in Jyutping.
• To represent tone, numbers 1 to 9 are usually used in Standard Cantonese Pinyin (as in Yale), though substituting 1, 3, and 6 for 7, 8, and 9 is acceptable. However, only numbers 1 to 6 are used in Jyutping.

Examples

Try to write an old Chinese poem:

Jyutping input method

The Jyutping method (traditional Chinese: 粵拼輸入法) refers to a family of input methods based on the Jyutping romanization system.

The Jyutping method allows a user to input Chinese characters by entering the jyutping of a Chinese character (with or without tone, depending on the system) and then presenting the user with a list of possible characters with that pronunciation.

List of Cantonese phonetic methods

• Yahoo's list of Cantonese IME
• Online Cantonese Input Method (網上廣東話輸入法)
• MDBG
• CantoInput
• CantonIM for Macintosh Mac OS X
• Red Dragonfly
• LSHK Jyutping for Macintosh Mac OS X and OS 9 (The page also includes Yale input version 0.2)
• Smart Jyutping IME
• Waisek Chinese Input Method (緯石廣東話拼音中文輸入法)
• LSHK? (輕鬆粵語輸入法)
• Simplified phonetic? (粵語簡拼輸入法)
• Microsoft Office Hong Kong Cantonese IME 2007 (微軟香港粵語輸入法2007)

External links

• LSHK Cantonese Romanization Scheme
• Jyutping Pronunciation Guide
• 粵語拼盤: Learning the phonetic system of Cantonese
• Chinese Character Database (Phonologically Disambiguated According to the Cantonese Dialect)
• MDBG free online Chinese-English dictionary (supports both Jyutping and Yale romanization)
• The CantoDict Project is a dedicated Cantonese-Mandarin-English online dictionary which uses Jyutping by default
• Jyutping exercises and other resources (only partially English as of 2006-12-17; temporary website)
• Cantonese Phonetic IME (with Jyutping)
• 粵拼易 JyutPingEasy.Net: a website that transliterates Chinese characters to Jyutping