Learn Languages

I have developed what I call “Campbell Universal Pinyin” to better represent all the Chinese languages with one pinyin system without having to type IPA characters. This will help speed up a lot of input I’d like to do for this site. And since there is an almost 1-to-1 matching with IPA, it would be fairly straightforward transliterating everything back to IPA at a future date. This is also to help users who are familiar with pinyin but not IPA, in other words, it addresses a majority audience rather than a minority. The whole description of the system is described here in length, in spite of having designed it with ease-of-use in mind, I believe most people will not need to reference it. Instead, you may find some interesting phonological details about the various languages within the description.

Campbell Universal Pinyin (CUP)

Pronunciation

Chinese is easily characterized by its simple syllable structure. This is centered around a core vowel that can have semivowels (i or u) before or after. Syllables normally only start with one consonant and sometimes can have an ending consonant. This syllable structure can be found in all the dialects and because of this every effort has been made to systematize the pronunciation guide here, although it is still based on the Chinese government’s pinyin standard. The only challenge in systematizing it is finding a special letter for each vowel that maybe encountered. The typical American English speaker has an inventory of 12 vowels, and if familiar with the sounds of French and German (namely ö and ü) should not have any difficulty reproducing the large number of vowels found in the various Chinese languages.

The government’s pinyin standard makes use of several shortcuts and spellings that users are familiar with. These shortcuts are used so that fewer diacritical marks are needed making it easier to type and read. For example, ‘u’ is always pronounced like English /oo/ except after ‘j’, ‘q’, ‘x’ and ‘y’ where it is pronounced /ü/. The same can be said for the two pronunciations of the letter ‘i’ in pinyin. For example, in Mandarin ‘zi’ is pronounced like /dzih/ and can never be /dzee/, but both are possible in Hui.

I have attempted to systematize this by using separate letters that represent only one sound each. And so I make these changes in Mandarin pinyin in essence eliminating all the shortcuts in order to make the pronunciation guide to work for all the languages. If you already know pinyin, you won’t need to relearn that much but you should familiarize yourself with the following changes:

1. Shortcuts
In Mandarin:
-ui (as in dui) becomes -uei (as in duei)
-iu (as in diu) becomes -iou (as in diou)
Cantonese has several different spelling systems. One of the spellings uses a shortcut:
kui (the IPA is /kʰœy/) and becomes köü

2. Umlauts
Umlauts (two dots) change a vowel to become more centralized. These are harder to pronounce because your tongue is not in an absolute position, but more in the middle between two other vowels. For example, ‘i’ and ‘u’ are extreme front and back vowels, but by placing umlauts over them, the ‘i’ becomes similar to the English ‘i’ in ’sit’ and the ‘u’ sounds like the German ‘ü’.
In Mandarin Pinyin you’ll find the following changes:
lue, nue become lüe, nüe
-u after j, q, x, y becomes -ü (i.e. jue — jüe)
-i after zh, ch, sh, r, z, c, s becomes -ï (i.e. chi — chï)
-e (not -ei) after d, t, n, l, g, k, h, zh, ch, sh, r, z, c, s becomes -ë (i.e. zhe — zhë)
Cantonese short ‘a’ becomes â, long ‘aa’ becomes ‘a’
Wherever any language has the similar sounds /œ/ or /ø/ in IPA, I’ve written them as ‘ö’. For example:
Cantonese cheung becomes chöng
Cantonese heut becomes höt

3. Consonants
●In pinyin, ‘p’ ‘t’ ‘k’ always have an extra puff of air–they are pronounced strong. ‘b’ ‘d’ ‘g’ therefore do not have this puff of air. However, the ‘b’ ‘d’ ‘g’ are not the same as the English. They are similar to the way many Europeans pronounce ‘p’ ‘t’ ‘k’ in their own languages. ‘b’ is similar to American English soft ‘p’ in ‘computation’ (not as in ‘computer’).’d’ is similar to American English soft ‘t’ in ‘city’, ‘computer’ or ‘competitive’. ‘g’ is similar to American English ‘c’ in ‘indícative’. None of these should be pronounced with a strong puff of air.
●The real voiced sounds of ‘b’ ‘d’ ‘g’ as we use them in English ‘boy’ and ‘dog’ do not exist in Mandarin and so pinyin does not have a way to represent them. However, some dictionary publishers of languages in southern China often use ‘bb’ ‘dd’ and ‘gg’ to represent the voiced sounds. In all cases where we need voicing where the pinyin originally does not have it, we double the letters. Sounds that do not have unvoiced counterparts do not need this treatment (viz. r, l, n, m, ng), with the exception of the fricative ‘v’ remaining as ‘v’.
●Words starting with Mandarin ‘r’ is a mix between ‘z’ and ‘r’, sort of a buzzing ‘r’. To differentiate this from the American English ‘r’, we write it here as ‘zr’:
rui becomes zruei
●zh, z, and j are not truly voiced. In some languages we also need the voiced counterparts so here I add ‘d’ to each, respectively:
dzh, dz, and dj
●In the Mandarin Jüxian topolect of Shandong province, an extra set of affricates exist: tθ, tθʰ, and θ — whose occurrence can be unpredictable from Mandarin (see for example the following contrast: 山 Mandarin shan, Jüxian shan; 善 Mandarin shan, Jüxian θan). This adds a complication to the unified pinyin so I adopt the Icelandic ‘þ’, ‘þh’ and ‘ð’ respectively: tθ = þ, tθʰ = þh, θ = ð.

4. Vowels
All vowels represent one sound:
● “a” /a/, as in British ‘lad’, not as much /æ/ as American English ‘bad’
● “e” /e/, like Spanish ‘e’
● “i” /i/, as in ‘feed’ (as used in Spanish)
● “i” + vowel sounds like English semivowel ‘y’
● “o” /o/, like Spanish ‘o’ or English ‘boat’ but less rounded
● “u” /u/, as in ‘food’, not as in ‘foot’ (as in Spanish)
● “u” + vowel sounds like English semivowel ‘w’

● “â” /ɐ/, middle unrounded ‘ah/uh’ not common in European languages
● “å” /ɑ/ , as in ‘pod’ and ‘father’
● “ê” /ɛ/, like English ‘bed’
● “î” /ɪ/, as in ‘lid’
● “ô” /ɔ/, like Scottish English ’stop’
● “û” /ɤ/ and /ʌ/, similar to the “u” in ‘mud’.

● “ä” /æ/, as in American English ‘fad’ (borrowed from Finnish–but not like the German!)
● “ë” /ə/, a middle vowel like the English schwa (like in Albanian)
● “ï” /ɿ/ and /ɨ/ and /ʅ/. Other similar sounds as found in Russian (ы), Turkish (ı) are also mapped to this letter.
● “ö” /œ/ and /ø/ and /ɵ/, as in German ‘können’ or French ’sœur’. This sounds similar to British English ‘ur’ in ‘curd’.
● “ü” /y/ and /ʏ/, as in German ‘Lüge’ and ‘hübsch’ or French ‘tu’.
● “yü” /ɥ/, as in French ‘huit’ /ɥi/. This is an ‘ü’ semivowel made by pressing the tongue closer to the top of the mouth making it sound more like an English ‘y’, or basically an ‘ü’ with a ‘y’ glide. It is similar to pronouncing both English ‘y’ and ‘w’ together at the same time (purse lips as in ‘w’ and then use the tongue to make the ‘y’ and release together); as in Mandarin 月 ‘yue’.

5. Regional Pronunciations
In pinyin, ‘juan / jian / quan / qian / xuan / xian / yuan / yan’ are pronounced by many as /-iɛn/ and not as /-ian/. This guide will show you the difference and where each are spoken written here either as ‘iên’ or ‘ian’.

As a result of this unified pinyin, the regular spellings used in Mandarin and Cantonese take on new forms. But for those who already know Mandarin, familiarizing yourself with this system is almost effortless and it gives you immediate access to the pronunciations of all the other languages.

Let’s take a look at the inventory of sounds:

38 Consonants:

In the event other consonants are needed, here are some ideas, and I’m currently only confident with using the first line.

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