Penkyamp (Chinese: 拼音; Yale: ping1 yam1, Jyutping: ping1 jam1) or Cantonese pinyin, is a romanization system for transliterating Cantonese Chinese. It is a joint effort of enthusiasts in Guangzhou with a goal of devicing an alternative script to write Cantonese, replacing the standard Chinese characters plus the Cantonese folk characters. It is an attempt to standardize the language spoken by large number of residents in Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Sydney, Auckland, Vancouver and San Francisco, from the status of a vernacular to that of a literary language.
On the other hand, the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong adopts another Cantonese Romanization called Jyutping, which is not yet popularized among Cantonese-English or English-Cantonese dictionaries. The current most widely accepted system for Cantonese Romanization are Meyer-Wempe and Yale.
Both Penkyamp and Jyutping are attempts to improve from previous systems. The features of Penkyamp includes:
reflects the vowel system of Cantonese more systematically than Jyutping by recognizing all long-short vowel contrasts,
whereas Jyutping only recognizes short a and long a.
indicates long and short vowels using the unique orthographic feature of altering the ending consonant of the shengmu.
does not have the ambiguous distinction between "oe" and "eu" (as in Jyutping).
treats the two (not three) front-round vowels using the same silent vowel letter "e", placed before the substantial vowel
categorizes the other front-round vowel (an underdeveloped one) as a short "o".
does not use the consonant "j", which is used in traditional Cantonese anglicization as "z" instead of "y" (as in Jyutping).
diphthongs2: single vowels and diphthongs1 preceded by semi-vowel u, such as uay as in guây (expensive)
Yunmus aided by International Phonetic Symbols
long
A [a] ("a" alone or followed by "g", "b", "d", "ng", "m", "n", "i", "u")
E [ɛ] open-mid front unrounded
I [i]
O [ɔ]open-mid back rounded
U [u]
Eo [ɶ] open-mid front rounded
Eu [y]
short
Ah [ɐ]open-mid back unrounded ("a" followed by "h", "k", "p", "t", "nk", "mp", "nt", "y", "w")
Eh [e] close-mid front unrounded ("e" followed by above)
Oh [o] close-mid back rounded ("o" followed by above)
diphthongs
Ai [ai]
Oi [ɔy]
Ui [uy]
Au [au]
Iu [iw]
Ay [ɐj]
Ey [ej]
Oy [øy] (ø is mid-close front rounded)
Aw [ɐu]
Ow [ow]
Short vowels are those in short yunmus, and long vowels in long yunmus. All short vowels are pronounced with tighter, smaller
enclosure of lips than are their long counterparts.
Yin1Ping2 or high Yin1Ru4 (Yamp1Penk4 cum high Yamp1Yap6): a1, ä (umlaut)
Yin1Shang3(Yamp1Seong5): a2, ã (tilde)
Yin1Qu4 or low Yin1Ru4 (Yamp1Hoy3 cum low Yamp1Yap6): a3, â (circumflex)
Yang2Ping2(Yeong4Penk4): a4, a (plain)
Yang2Shang3(Yeong4Seong5): a5, á (acute)
Yang2Qu4(Yeong4Hoy3): a6, à (grave)
6 tones represented by numerical scales of pitch, "1" being the lowest, "6" the highest"
First: "Zäw" tone, scale= 66
Second: "Hãw" tone, scale= 35
Third: "Dîm" tone, scale= 44
Fourth: "Ho" tone, scale= 11
Fifth: "Mów", scale=24
Sixth: "Dòw", scale=22
Either the tone numbers 1-6 or the diacritic marks may be used
note: a shortcut for memorizing all 6 of them is a couplet:
Zaw1 Haw2 Dim3, Ho4 Mow2 Dow6
Zhou1 Kou3 Dian4, He2 Mu3 Du4 (Mandarin)
(周口店, 河姆渡)
Zhoukoudian is an archeological site near Beijing containing a 500,000 year old Homo Erectus habitat; Hemudu is a Zhejiang archeological site of Neolithic human activities
There were complaints that using final consonants to determine vowel length was counter-intuitive and that "eu" and "eo" were unconventional. So a variant called "Gwohngdongwaa pengyam" was created. These were the changes:
Initial "z" was replaced by "j".
Vowels:
long: aa(ah) eh(ee) i oh(oo) u oe ue
short: a e o
diphthongs1: aay(ai) ooy(oi) uy aaw(au) iw ay ey oy aw ow
diphthongs2: single vowels and diphthongs were preceded by semi-vowel w, such as way as in gwây (expensive)
Consonant endings were made consistent: m n ng p t k
