Discover

'Jyutping' (sometimes spelled 'Jyutpin') is a romanization system for Standard Cantonese developed by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong (LSHK) in 1993. Its formal name is '''The Linguistic Society of Hong Kong Cantonese Romanization Scheme'''. The LSHK promotes the use of this romanization system.
The name ''Jyutping'' is a contraction consisting of the first Chinese characters of the terms ''jyut jyu'' (粵語, ''lit.'' Cantonese) and ''ping jam'' (拼音, ''lit.'' phonetic alphabet).

Contents

Initials

Finals

Tones

Comparison with Yale Romanization

Comparison with Standard Cantonese Pinyin

Examples

Jyutping input method

List of Cantonese phonetic methods

External links

Initials

b 巴	p 怕	m 媽	f 花
d 打	t 他	n 那	l 啦
g 家	k 卡	ng 牙	h 蝦
gw 瓜	kw 誇	w 蛙
z 渣	c 叉	s 沙	j 也

Finals

aa 沙	aai 徙	aau 梢	aam 三	aan 山	aang 坑	aap 圾	aat 剎	aak 客
	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 桑		ot 喝	ok 索
u 夫	ui 灰			un 寬	ung 鬆		ut 闊	uk 叔
oe 鋸					oeng 商			oek 削
	eoi 需			eon 詢			eot 摔
yu 書				yun 孫			yut 雪
			m 唔		ng 吳

★ The finals ''m'' and ''ng'' can only be used as standalone nasal syllables.

★ Referring to the colloquial pronunciation of these words.

Tones

There are nine tones in six distinct tone contours in Cantonese. However, as three of the nine are Ru tones (入聲), which only appear in syllables ending with ''p'', ''t'', and ''k'', they do not have separate tone numbers in Jyutping (though they do in Yale; these are shown in parentheses in table below).

Tone name	Yīn Píng (陰平)	Yīn Shàng (陰上)	Yīn Qù (陰去)	Yáng Píng (陽平)	Yáng Shàng (陽上)	Yáng Qù (陽去)	Yīn Rù (陰入)	Zhōng Rù (中入)	Yáng Rù (陽入)
Tone Number	1	2	3	4	5	6	1 (7)	3 (8)	6 (9)
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	粉	訓	焚	奮	份	忽	發	佛
Example	fan1	fan2	fan3	fan4	fan5	fan6	fat1	faat3	fat6

Comparison with Yale Romanization

Jyutping and the Yale romanization system 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'' (except when using alone), ''a'', ''e'', ''i'', ''o'', ''u'',''yu''.

★ The nasal consonant: ''m'', ''ng''.

★ The coda: ''i'', ''u'', ''m'', ''n'', ''ng'', ''p'', ''t'', ''k''.
But they have difference with the following exceptions:

★ The vowels ''eo'' and ''oe'' represent and respectively in Jyutping, while the ''eu'' represents both vowels in Yale.

★ The initial ''j'' represents in Jyutping while ''y'' is used instead in Yale.

★ The initial ''z'' represents in Jyutping while ''j'' is used instead in Yale.

★ The initial ''c'' represents in Jyutping while ''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'' (掉), ''lem2'' (舐), and ''gep6'' (夾).

★ To represent tones, only tone numbers are used in Jyutping while Yale originally uses tone marks together with the letter ''h'' (though tone numbers can be used in Yale as well).

Comparison with Standard Cantonese Pinyin

Jyutping and the Standard Cantonese Pinyin 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'', ''j'', ''w''.

★ The vowel: ''aa'', ''a'', ''e'', ''i'', ''o'', ''u''.

★ The nasal consonant: ''m'', ''ng''.

★ The coda: ''i'' (except of being the coda in Jyutping), ''u'', ''m'', ''n'', ''ng'', ''p'', ''t'', ''k''.
But they have some differences:

★ The vowels ''oe'' represent and in Standard Cantonese Pinyin while the ''eo'' and ''oe'' represent and respectively in Jyutping.

★ The vowel ''y'' represent in Standard Cantonese Pinyin while both ''yu'' (use in nucleus) and ''i'' (use in coda) is used in Jyutping.

★ The initial ''dz'' represents in Standard Cantonese Pinyin while ''z'' is used instead in Jyutping.

★ The initial ''ts'' represents in Standard Cantonese Pinyin while ''c'' is used instead in Jyutping.

★ To represent tone, numbers 1 to 9 are usually used in Standard Cantonese Pinyin (as in Yale), though substituting 1, 3, and 6 for 7, 8, and 9 is acceptable. However, only numbers 1 to 6 are used in Jyutping.

Examples

Traditional	Simplified	Romanization
廣州話	广州话	gwong2 zau1 waa2
粵語	粤语	jyut6 jyu5
你好	你好	nei5 hou2

Try to write an old Chinese poem:

'春曉'　　'孟浩然'	'Ceon1 Hiu2'　　'Maang6 Hou6jin4'
春眠不覺曉，	Ceon1 min4 bat1 gok3 hiu2,
處處聞啼鳥。	cyu3 cyu3 man4 tai4 niu5.
夜來風雨聲，	Je6 loi4 fung1 jyu5 sing1,
花落知多少？	faa1 lok6 zi1 do1 siu2?

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 (with or without tone, depending on the system) and then presenting the user with a list of possible characters with that pronunciation.

List of Cantonese phonetic methods

★ Yahoo's list of Cantonese IME

★ MDBG

★ CantoInput

★ CantonIM for Macintosh Mac OS X

★ Red Dragonfly

★ LSHK Jyutping for Macintosh Mac OS X and OS 9 (The page also includes Yale input version 0.2)

★ Smart Jyutping IME

★ Waisek Chinese Input Method (緯石廣東話拼音中文輸入法)

★ LSHK? (輕鬆粵語輸入法)

★ Simplified phonetic? (粵語簡拼輸入法)

★ Microsoft Office Hong Kong Cantonese IME 2007 (微軟香港粵語輸入法2007)

External links

★ LSHK Cantonese Romanization Scheme

★ Jyutping Pronunciation Guide

★ 粵語拼盤: Learning the phonetic system of Cantonese

★ Chinese Character Database (Phonologically Disambiguated According to the Cantonese Dialect)

★ MDBG free online Chinese-English dictionary (supports both Jyutping and Yale romanization)

★ The CantoDict Project is a dedicated Cantonese-Mandarin-English online dictionary which uses Jyutping by default

★ Jyutping exercises and other resources (only partially English as of 2006-12-17; temporary website)