Learning Pinyin With the 23 Consonants-24 Vowels Method

I wrote about how I believe pinyin will bridge the gap in Mandarin learning and how pinyin helped secure business permits. I think a new challenge that some may face is learning pinyin through the 23 consonants and 24 vowels method. Back in college, I took Mandarin as my required foreign language (FOLA) elective. It was my attempt to find out what went wrong with Chinese language classes in Chinese schools. Zhuyin was used for too long (read here) and isn't the ideal bridge between Mandarin and non-Mandarin speakers. Meanwhile, romanizing on your own without learning the pinyin gives the wrong reading. It's like how nobody should Sh in the place of X. I could talk about learning using the 23 vowels and 24 consonants method.

The early stages of teaching pinyin followed the bopomofo method. The Chinese language teacher in college didn't use the 23 consonants-24 vowels method. Instead, we had the pinyin arranged using the bopomofo method. It was simply to translate all the Zhuyin into pinyin, arranging it in that way. I tend to recall my pinyin using the bopomofo arrangement. Part of me still says, "There are two types of bopofomo. One is the zhuyin. The other is the pinyin, which is more friendly for people outside China." I remembered memorizing the pinyin table in the exact order of the Zhuyin table.

It can get confusing since there are certain rules. Learn Chinese in Chinatown presents how w and y are used in the pinyin system:

Notes: The letters "y" and "w" are not included in the table of initials in the official pinyin system. They are an orthographic convention for "i", "u" and "ü" when no initial is present. When "i", "u" or "ü" are finals and no initial is present, they are spelled "yi", "wu", and "yu", respectively.
The letters "y" and "w" are called "half vowels" in Chinese, to make it simple and easier to use, I categorize them as initials here.

Another confusion is when eng is spelled. For example, the pinyin for dragon (龙) is lóng. Any Chinese language teacher will mark the Romanization leóng for dragon as wrong. That's why I want to write eng as ng instead of eng to avoid confusion. Yet, any seasoned person may know the rule that when eng is preceded by a vowel followed by a consonant, the letter e must be removed. They would know that when Yu is combined with a vowel, it must be spelled out as Ü instead.

Meanwhile, the use of the 23 consonants-24 vowels method might actually simplify pinyin in the long run. The final four vowels (of which the two have no Zhuyin equivalents) are Ang, Eng, Ing, and Ong. If one combines the pinyin and Zhuyin methods, one would have Ing and Ong as I+ng and O+ng. There's no Zhuyin equivalent for Ing and Ong either. The use of Üe may have been what would be representing Eh in the older versions of pinyin. The sequence of A-O-E-Ȇ would be inputted as A-O-E-Ue or A-O-E-Eh. For some, knowing the ANG-ENG-ING-ONG might be easier than if they had to do the ING as I+NG and ONG as O+NG.

I still think using the Bopomofo rhythm of the pinyin will be easier. Reciting the pinyin using the traditional Bopomofo made it easier for me to memorize pinyin. However, it might give room for error if somebody spelled something like JOE using the Pinyin which is downright wrong. I guess the use of the 23 consonants-24 vowels method might be to prevent making the wrong inputs.

I think neither method is wrong. However, reciting the pinyin like learning Bopomofo should come first. The rhythmic cycle of reciting B up to Ü like it was the Zhuyin could be much better. However, learning the 23 consonants-24 vowels method might also be the key to lessening mistakes when using pinyin. I prefer to stick to learning pinyin using the Bopomofo sequence. I prefer to use the 23 consonants-24 vowels method to simply check if one knows how to and how not to combine the consonants and vowels.

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