| I like the mainland Chinese pinyin the best, because it is the most phonetical one. You just need to know a few rules, like that the X is pronounced like the German "ch" in "ich" for example. The only people I know who had real problems with it were.... native speakers of English, seriously. I think the problem native speakers of English is that English is not a phonetical language at all. They tend to make the mistake of mixing up English spelling rules and international phonetical transcription. If you look into an English dictionary for pronunciation, you will see that the phonetical transcription is often VERY different from the spelling. To pronounce English properly, you definitely need to know more rules than for Chinese pinyin. Also, there are sounds that do not exist in English, like the x in xin,... (hs?? please.. ) or the u Umlaut (ü) in lü, etc. My vote would therefore go to the PRCh pinyin to become the international standard, it is very clear and easy, a good adaptation of Latin letters to describe Chinese pronunciation. |
Pinyin is Not Chinese