Bopomofo
I think I like it better for representing all the sounds because it makes harder distinctions between things like the two -i's. It's also kinda like kana is in Japanese. Pinyin is leading me to trying to pronounce things too much like English where the sounds are sometimes not that similar. :-/

  • emizeko [they/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Pinyin is leading me to trying to pronounce things too much like English where the sounds are sometimes not that similar. :-/

    part of the reason is this wasn't a problem for their target audience. what really helped me with this problem was going through the chart of all the chinese phonemes and practicing the pronunication as standard as possible. you've got to disconnect it from the English pronunciations

    something like this: https://chinese.yabla.com/chinese-pinyin-chart.php

  • emizeko [they/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    things like the two -i’s.

    by this are you meaning the difference between a retroflex '-i' vowel and a frontal '-i' vowel, like "shi" vs. "xi"?

      • emizeko [they/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        it's all about your tongue. "retroflex" means your tongue is curled back to your soft palate, and "frontal" means it's almost touching the back of your front teeth

        the "i" in "shi" sounds more like English "dirt" or "shirt" and but the one in "xi" sounds more like the "e" in Pete

        • MarxGuns [comrade/them]
          ·
          3 years ago

          I think I finally got this yesterday after trying a bunch of different ways. My mouth gets all pouched up and my tongue lets air past slightly at the front-ish of the palate. It’s still hard because my regular ‘sh’ is between that and the pinyin ‘x’.

          • emizeko [they/them]
            ·
            3 years ago

            as you practice and get more fluid with it, the movements of your tongue and mouth will become less exaggerated and you will learn how far you can cut corners to make it easier to move to the next sound while still sounding differentiable

            • MarxGuns [comrade/them]
              ·
              3 years ago

              Good! I just can’t fake it like I can a Spanish or German pronunciation.

  • infuziSporg [e/em/eir]
    ·
    3 years ago

    All popos are mofos.

    On a serious note, there are many languages where trying to implement an alphabet was a disaster. Vietnamese would probably be way better off with a logography like that of Chinese.