Why I Think Chinese Language Schools Should Prioritize Pinyin Over Zhuyin for Asian Century Learning

There's no denying that we're in the Asian century. We have the rise of Mandarin as one of the major languages of the world. In fact, it's the second most spoken language. However, I feel Chinese schools in the Philippines weren't exactly prepared to teach Chinese--only how to memorize without understanding. That's exactly why I didn't like the Chinese language subject. If there was one thing I hated about the Chinese language subject--it was the use of zhuyin. The use of Romanizing wasn't allowed. I could agree to learn to read the characters. However, Zhuyin may not be the best course of action in regard to the international community. I even feel that Zhuyin (a subject I hated) may be as obsolete as the Filipino ancient alphabet. 

It wasn't until college that I got into pinyin. People had been checking out Taiwanese entertainment. I remembered Googling and found Romanized lyrics. Those who were college students in the 2000s (under the K+10) may remember F4 and 5566. I remembered how the pinyin was spelled out. For example, Meteor Garden was referred to as Liu Xing Hua Yuan, and My MVP Valentine as MVP Qing Ren.  I could remember really reading the Pinyin wrong. For example, zh was read as zh instead of a softer ch. A good example is how somebody with the surname Chu (朱) on their ID has their pinyin spelled as Zhu. It's really something when people start to misread the pinyin because they have no idea how to read the pinyin. It's easy to read Xiaomi but certain words just get confusing.

What I did was to get some Romanization, play a Chinese song, and sang the song "Can't Lose You" by F4. That's when I started to realize how I've been reading pinyin wrong or why there's a b but it's read as a soft p. Meanwhile, p is read as a harder p. It reminds me of how Tagalog has j head as a softer h while h is read as a harder h. It's like the word halimbawa has the h read harder while Juan's j is read as a softer h. This may seem tricky at first but I think this would be better than learning zhuyin. In English, k is read harder than c. 

I started learning to type in Chinese. No, I didn't bother to memorize zhuyin but pinyin. The earlier versions had you type the pinyin and guess the tones. The tones are very similar to what we have in Filipino. Tagalog has the malumay, malumi, mabilis, and maragsa. Chinese identifies these similarly as the four tones. Later, all I had to do was to type the pinyin and look for the character. That's when I felt (more than once) that Zhuyin, like the baybayin, is best served as an artifact than a learning tool. Though the four tones just can't disappear.

A good example is that we have "I love you" translated into Chinese. Without the tones, Wo Ai Ni might mean anything. However, we learn to write "I love you" in pinyin as "wǒ ài nǐ" complete with the tones. First, we learn the basic alphabet with bopomofo as bpmf then we learn the consonants and vowels. W is often referred to as u in the pinyin table. For some reason, u is spelled with a was a more correct way of doing things. We see how these words are connected together to form the romanize. Then, we need to learn the tones to learn how to pronounce them. 

We have learned the pinyin now it's time to learn the four different tones. It's like how the word mama in Tagalog can mean either "mother" or "elderly man". We have the pinyin ma in the first tone means mother, the second tone means numb, the third tone means horse, and the fourth means scold. If we just wrote the pinyin as ma then we can get easily lost. Still, I find the approach of learning the pinyin and then the four tones (while there's a fifth neutral tone) to be the more appropriate one.

With the rise of the Chinese language (and we have Chinese and Taiwanese companies becoming multinational companies)--it might be good to emphasize more on learning to speak than meaningless memorization. Memorization of the pinyin would grant easier access. Non-Chinese speakers learning the Chinese language would be burdened if they had to learn the zhuyin than the more accessible pinyin. Instead, it'd be easy if they first learned the arrangement based on the Latin alphabet and then learn the four tonal symbols. That way, we can encourage more Chinese learning. 

Chinese learning shouldn't just be for the Chinese. I believe that Chinese learning should be made more accessible. Also, some ethnic Chinese may still not even learn their ethnic language. It's like how some Filipinos born abroad can't even speak Tagalog. Why not find new ways to teach different languages than the one-size-fits-all with too much memorization? 

For practical reasons, the Inspire Mandarin blog (written by a Taiwanese) shows why you might as well focus more on pinyin than Zhuyin:

1. It is more internationally used by the fact that it uses Latin script. It is relatively easier to type even if you don’t have the input set up in your computer. The keyboard is the same as QWERTY, so there are almost no obstacles to start typing Chinese. 
2. Its use of Latin script makes it more beginner-friendly after all! Even for someone who has never learned Pinyin, he can still try to guess it by reading it with the pronunciation method he is used to though it won’t sound accurate, but it reduces possible struggles in many life situations. For example, for tourists, when they see the Pinyin marked under a road sign, though they’re not sure, chances are they can still get by to successfully communicate with people about where they want to go. 
3. Learners usually find more resources with Pinyin too. That’s the reality. Since the users of Pinyin are much more than Zhuyin’s, and plus other advantages, there are more materials using Pinyin than Zhuyin.