Jyutping
Jyutping is a romanisation system for Cantonese developed by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong, an academic group, in 1993. Its formal name is the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong Cantonese Romanisation Scheme. The LSHK advocates for and promotes the use of this romanisation system.
The name Jyutping is a contraction consisting of the first Chinese characters of the terms Jyut6jyu5 and ping3jam1.
History
The Jyutping system marks a departure from all previous Cantonese romanisation 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, the Jyutping system was updated to include the -a and -oet finals, to reflect syllables newly discovered to be part of Cantonese phonology by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong.
Initials
Finals
| aa 沙 | aai 徙 | aau 梢 | aam 三 | aan 山 | aang 坑 | aap 圾 | aat 剎 | aak 客 |
| a 㗎 | ai 西 | au 收 | am 心 | an 新 | ang 笙 | ap 濕 | at 失 | ak 塞 |
| e 些 | ei 四 | eu 掉 | em 舐 | eng 鄭 | ep 夾 | ek 石 | ||
| i 詩 | iu 消 | im 閃 | in 先 | ing 星 | ip 攝 | it 洩 | ik 識 | |
| o 疏 | oi 開 | ou 蘇 | on 看 | ong 康 | ot 喝 | ok 索 | ||
| u 夫 | ui 灰 | un 寬 | ung 鬆 | ut 闊 | uk 叔 | |||
| eoi 需 | eon 詢 | eot 摔 | ||||||
| oe 鋸 | oeng 商 | oet | oek 削 | |||||
| yu 書 | yun 孫 | yut 雪 | ||||||
| m 唔 | ng 吳 |
- Only the finals m and ng can be used as standalone nasal syllables.
- Referring to the colloquial pronunciation of these words.
- Used for onomatopoeias such as oet6 for belching or goet4 for snoring.
Tones
| Tone name | jam1ping4 | jam1soeng5 | jam1heoi3 | joeng4ping4 | joeng4soeng5 | joeng4heoi3 | gou1jam1jap6 | dai1jam1jap6 | joeng4jap6 |
| Tone number | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 1 | 3 | 6 |
| The tone name 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 |
| Contour | 55 / 53 | 35 | 33 | 21 / 11 | 13 | 22 | 5 | 3 | 2 |
| Character example | 分／詩 | 粉／史 | 訓／試 | 焚／時 | 奮／市 | 份／是 | 忽／識 | 發／錫 | 佛／食 |
| 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, a, e, i, o, u, yu.
- The nasal stop: m, ng.
- The coda: i, u, m, n, ng, p, t, k.
- 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 three finals not in Yale: eu, em, and ep. These three 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.
Comparison with Cantonese pinyin
- 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, u, m, n, ng, p, t, k.
- The vowel oe represents both and in Cantonese Pinyin whereas eo and oe represent and respectively in Jyutping.
- The vowel y represents in Cantonese Pinyin whereas both yu and i are used in Jyutping.
- The initial dz represents in Cantonese Pinyin whereas z is used instead in Jyutping.
- The initial ts represents in Cantonese Pinyin whereas c is used instead in Jyutping.
- To represent tones, the numbers 1 to 9 are usually used in Cantonese Pinyin, 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
Jyutping input method
The Jyutping method 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 of a Chinese character and then presenting the user with a list of possible characters with that pronunciation.