Chinese Pronunciation: PinYin (Romanization) or ZhuYin (BoPoMoFo)

I went to Chinese school and was taught the Taiwan system of ZhuYin or BoPoMoFo (ㄅㄆㄇㄈ). This is basically the way where you learn how to pronounce and read words in Chinese. It was good in that there was a way to learn how to pronounce it. But for me, it made become dependent on it (which means I can't read a lot of words without it). But once again that was due to the lack of reinforcement and studying at home and the variations between Cantonese and Mandarin (often times they don't even coincide), but I didn't learn the differences until an adult). Part of my quest in learning more Mandarin now is the remember words with out the PinYin.

The PinYin (Romanization) system is the method used in China where there is an English equivalent pronunciation in a sense. But you must first learn the sounds first before you put them together to form a word. As you study and learn more Chinese, you will start to understand the similarities and differences in sounds. It's complicated at first and takes time to master some of these sounds. But that's only because you weren't used to making those sounds. If you already had some background in Chinese, this should be easier for you to pick up.

If you think about it, English is similar in some ways. There is the 26 alphabet that we learn to form words and to eventually read them. After a while, we get used to spelling patterns and are able to read. But we also learn to expand our vocabulary which is an essential component of reading comprehension.
In both methods, there are consonants, vowels, and of course, always exceptions to the rules.
Check out this link that explains the correspondence between the two.
http://terpconnect.umd.edu/~nsw/chinese/pinyin.htm

So learning the way to pronounce and say words is one thing, but now you have to learn what it means. So in Chinese, we have many (and I mean MANY) different words with similar sounds! That makes it challenging at times. But once again, practicing is essential. Easier said than done...

This past weekend, I started learning about the PinYin system and how it works. For me, it's an easy adjustment with all the books I purchased this year to learn Chinese. It comes a little bit quicker than using the ZhuYin method simply because I am so used to reading in English! But if you were to ask me to "spell" something in either method, I wouldn't be able to do much.

Over time, you just get used to reading it in that language.

Another way that I have found to improve my Chinese reading comprehension and speaking pronunciation is to translate or find PinYin translations of my favorite Chinese pop songs. Not only will you learn to sing it, you will start making sense of more Chinese words and phrases! There are so many Chinese songs where I like the melody and what not, but only have a vague idea of what they were singing. After I translate it, the songs makes much more sense! It's like an, "Ah-ha!" moment. =)