Yale romanization of Cantonese

Yale
Traditional Chinese耶魯
Simplified Chinese耶鲁
Cantonese Yaleyèh lóuh
Transcriptions
Yue: Cantonese
Yale Romanizationyèh lóuh
Jyutpingje4 lou5
IPA[jɛ˩ lɔw˩˧]

The Yale romanization of Cantonese was developed by Yale scholar Gerard P. Kok for his and Parker Po-fei Huang's textbook Speak Cantonese initially circulated in looseleaf form in 1952[1] but later published in 1958.[2] Unlike the Yale romanization of Mandarin, it is still widely used in books and dictionaries, especially for foreign learners of Cantonese. It shares some similarities with Hanyu Pinyin in that unvoiced, unaspirated consonants are represented by letters traditionally used in English and most other European languages to represent voiced sounds. For example, [p] is represented as b in Yale, whereas its aspirated counterpart, [pʰ] is represented as p.[3] Students attending The Chinese University of Hong Kong's New-Asia Yale-in-China Chinese Language Center are taught using Yale romanization.[4]

Some enthusiasts employ Yale romanisation to explore writing Cantonese as an alphabetic language.[citation needed]

  1. ^ Huang, Parker Po-fei (1965). Cantonese Sounds and Tones. New Haven, CT: Far Eastern Publications, Yale University. p. Foreword.
  2. ^ The Routledge Encyclopedia of the Chinese Language, p. 40.
  3. ^ "Cantonese". Omniglot. Retrieved 2016-10-27.
  4. ^ "CUHK Teaching Materials". Retrieved 2016-10-27.