Bopomofo

Script Details

Bopomofo

An example of Bopomofo in regular, handwritten and cursive forms.

By Anonymous - Early Chinese Art Font practice templates Bopomofo, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37275387

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Maps

Https://scriptsource.org/cms/scripts/page.php?item_id=script_detail&key=Bopo

Data

Alternate Names Zhuyin, Mandarin Phonetic Sounds
ISO 15924 Bopo 285
Type Syllabary
Family Hanzi
Direction LtR
Diacritics Yes
Contextual Forms Yes
Capitals Used No
Glyphs 37
Inventor The Commission on the Unification of Pronunciation, led by Wu Zhihui, but based on shorthand by Zhang Binglin
Earliest Location Republic of China (prior to the formation of the People's Republic of China)
Earliest Date 1913 CE
Latest Date Present
Ancestry
      • Bopomofo

Overview

Bopomofo or Zhuyin was named Bopomofo based on the first four glyphs in its syllabary. It was originally developed for the government of the Republic of China for use as a phonetic script, however, when pinyin (a Latin-based phonetic script) was created, the People's Republic of China (PRC) moved away from Bopomofo.

People living on the island of Taiwan (Republic of China) continues to use Bopomofo for inputting Han characters in all forms of media and text input on keyboards and smart devices. The use of Bopomofo is most commonly associated with media oriented towards children or foreign language materials.

Bibliography

Author Year Publication Publisher
Coulmas, Florian 1996 The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems, 575-577 Blackwell Publishing
Fan-ji Syllabary 1963 Fan-ji Syllabary Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1963; p. 85-88
Heylen, Ann 2013 Vol 81, ISS. 3, (2013), p. 411-436; 625 Archiv Orientalni
LI, Hsien 2000 The Manual of the Phonetic Symbols of Mandarin Chinese Taiwan Ministry of Education
Ting, Kuocheng 1989 The Bopomofo transcription system, Chinese sounds, and the word-processor keyboard The University of Texas at El Paso ProQuest Dissertations Publishing
Xu, Lei 2020 Research on the Application of Computer Recording Technology in Modern Chinese Bopomofo Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 1578(1)