Jyutping

The Linguistic Society of Hong Kong Cantonese Romanization Scheme,Template:NoteTag also known as Jyutping, is a romanisation system for Cantonese developed in 1993 by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong (LSHK).

The name Jyutping (itself the Jyutping romanisation of its Chinese name, ) is a contraction of the official name, and it consists of the first Chinese characters of the terms jyut6 jyu5 (Template:Zh) and ping3 jam1 (Template:Zh; pronounced pīnyīn in Mandarin).

Despite being intended as a system to indicate pronunciation, it has also been employed in Template:Ill—in effect, elevating Jyutping from its assistive status to a written language. Template:RCL

History

The Jyutping system departs from all previous Cantonese romanisation systems (approximately 12, including Robert Morrison's pioneering work of 1828, and the widely used Standard Romanization, Yale and Sidney Lau systems) by introducing z and c initials and the use of eo and oe in finals, as well as replacing the initial y, used in all previous systems, with j.

In 2018, it was updated to include the -a and -oet finals, to reflect syllables recognized as part of Cantonese phonology in 1997 by the Jyutping Work Group of the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong.

Initials

b	p	m	f
d	t	n		l
g	k	ng	h
gw	kw			w
z	c		s	j

Finals

aa	aai	aau	aam	aan	aang	aap	aat	aak
a [1]	ai	au	am	an	ang	ap	at	ak
e	ei	eu [2]	em [3]		eng	ep [4]	et	ek
i		iu	im	in	ing	ip	it	ik
o	oi	ou		on	ong		ot	ok
u	ui			un	ung		ut	uk
	eoi			eon			eot
oe					oeng		oet [5]	oek
yu				yun			yut
			m		ng

• Only the finals m and ng can be used as standalone nasal syllables.
• ^ Used for elided words in casual speech such as a6 in 四十四 (sei3 a6 sei3), elided from sei3 sap6 sei3.
• ^ ^ ^ Referring to the colloquial pronunciation of these words.
• ^ Used for onomatopoeias such as oet6 for belching or goet4 for snoring.

Tones

There are nine tones in six distinct tone contours in Cantonese. However, as three of the nine are entering tones (Template:Zh), which only appear in syllables ending with p, t, and k, they do not have separate tone numbers in Jyutping (though they do in the ILE romanization of Cantonese; these are shown in parentheses in the table below). A mnemonic which some use to remember this is Template:Lang-zh or "Feng Shui [dictates that] we will be lucky."

Tone name	jam1 ping4 ()		jam1 soeng5 ()		jam1 heoi3 ()		joeng4 ping4 ()		joeng4 soeng5 ()		joeng4 heoi3 ()		gou1 jam1 jap6 ()		dai1 jam1 jap6 ()		joeng4 jap6 ()
(In English)	high level or high falling		mid rising		mid level		low falling		low rising		low level		entering high level		entering mid level		entering low level
Tone number	1		2		3		4		5		6		1 (7)		3 (8)		6 (9)
Contour	55	53	35		33		21	11	13		22		5		3		2
Character example
	fan1	si1	fan2	si2	fan3	si3	fan4	si4	fan5	si5	fan6	si6	fat1	sik1	faat3	sek3	fat6	sik6

Comparison with Yale romanisation

Jyutping and the Yale romanisation of Cantonese 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 used alone), a, e, i, o, u, yu.
• The nasal stop: m, ng.
• The coda: i, u, m, n, ng, p, t, k.

But they differ in the following:

• The vowels eo and oe represent and respectively in Jyutping, whereas the eu represents both vowels in Yale.
• The initial j represents in Jyutping whereas y is used instead in Yale.
• The initial z represents in Jyutping whereas j is used instead in Yale.
• The initial c represents in Jyutping whereas 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 five finals not in Yale: a , eu , em , ep , oet . These finals are used in colloquial Cantonese words, such as deu6 (), lem2 (), and gep6 ().
• To represent tones, only tone numbers are used in Jyutping whereas Yale traditionally uses tone marks together with the letter h (though tone numbers can be used in Yale as well).

Comparison with ILE romanisation

Jyutping and ILE romanisation 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 stop: m, ng.
• The coda: i (except for its use in the coda in Jyutping; see below), u, m, n, ng, p, t, k.

But they have some differences:

• The vowel oe represents both and in ILE whereas eo and oe represent and respectively in Jyutping.
• The vowel y represents in ILE whereas both yu (used in the nucleus) and i (used in the coda of the final -eoi) are used in Jyutping.
• The initial dz represents in ILE whereas z is used instead in Jyutping.
• The initial ts represents in ILE whereas c is used instead in Jyutping.
• To represent tones, the numbers 1 to 9 are usually used in ILE, although the use of 1, 3, 6 to replace 7, 8, 9 for the checked tones is acceptable. However, only the numbers 1 to 6 are used in Jyutping.

Examples

Traditional	Simplified	Romanization
		gwong2 zau1 waa2
		jyut6 jyu5
		nei5 hou2

Sample transcription of one of the 300 Tang Poems:

	ceon1 hiu2 maang6 hou6 jin4
	ceon1 min4 bat1 gok3 hiu2,	Sleeping past sunrise in springtime.
	cyu3 cyu3 man4 tai4 niu5.	Everywhere one hears birdsong.
	je6 loi4 fung1 jyu5 sing1,	Night brings the sound of wind and rain,
	faa1 lok6 zi1 do1 siu2?	I wonder how many flowers fell?

Jyutping input method

The Jyutping method (Template:Zh) 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 romanization 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.

As of macOS Ventura, Jyutping input with Traditional Chinese now comes standard on macOS under the name "Phonetic – Cantonese".

List of Jyutping keyboard input utilities

• TypeDuck ()
• Online Jyutping Input Method ()
• MDBG Type Chinese
• LSHK Jyutping for Mac (Mac OS 9 and macOS) (The page also includes Yale input version 0.2)
• Hong Kong Cantonese 2010 (via Microsoft Office IME 2010)
• Cantonese Phonetic IME () (also called 'Cantonese Phonetic IME (CPIME) Jyutping' in Windows 10)
• RIME ()
• Gboard

See also

• Cantonese phonology

External links

• Official website, from the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong

• Jyutping Pronunciation Guide
• : Learning the phonetic system of Cantonese
• Chinese Character Database (Phonologically Disambiguated According to the Cantonese Dialect)
• The CantoDict Project is a dedicated Cantonese-Mandarin-English online dictionary which uses Jyutping by default
• MDBG free online Chinese-English dictionary (supports both Jyutping and Yale romanization)