Anyone with tips on how how learn bo po mo fo??

I am studying in taiwan soon and it appears I am going to really need to learn bo po mo fo unless I want to start in the level 1 beginners class. (Pinyin is apparently not that useful when you have students from all over the world)

I did find a semi useful link:
http://chinesepod.com/community/conversations/post/2440

I think it's mainly practice, I personaly never found an efficient way to learn it, and then the motivation kind of went away too.

The main reason I wanted to study was to be able to read books in chinese only, having those bo po mo fo next to the characters make it convenient for the pronunciation, but then, I decided children's book weren't not all that interesting... and in the adults book, bo po mo fo is nonexistant.

Learning bo po mo fo is helpful, but I don't see it as vital. Besides, even taiwanese people have trouble with it.

The only situation where I see it as vital is if you desperately need to type in chinese, and bopomofo is the only input method on the computer :D

Since it sounds like you'll be going to Taiwan, I think you'll find plenty of practice in the books, else, you can go to a stationary store, and buy one of those posters with the bo po mo fo alphabet on it.

Good luck!

I'm an ardent supporter of bopomofo. Although I started with pinyin, when I got to Taiwan, I really saw the value in defining new sounds with new phonetic symbols that didn't have any residual English associations for me. Also, I like how they can be added next to characters in children's books and Chinese textbooks. You can pretty much ignore them and focus on the characters until you need them.

They're not that hard to learn especially if you've already learned a good many Chinese characters. Took me about a weekend to get a decent handle on them. Make some flash cards.

Well the thing I have found which convinced me it is important that if you need to communicate with a person from taiwan about how to pronounce something they only know bopomofo and the tongyong pinyin so I am going to have to learn one or the other if I am going to communicate with chinese people.

Setting aside the fact tongyong pinyin is retarded and the taiwan ministry of education has officially switched to standard pinyin -- most taiwanese know bopomofo really well as they use it to type on their computer and their phone.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongyong_Pinyin

It's definitely worth the effort, and honestly shouldn't take you but a few days to master.

I'd recommend using the links from the other thread (especially this one: http://www.mdnkids.com/BoPoMo/) to learn the sounds of the initials and finals.

You can use the comparison chart from Pinyin.info to help remember how the sounds go together. Someone has also created online flashcards here: http://quizlet.com/54182/bo-po-mo-fo-chinese-initials-flash-cards/

Then, use zhuyin as your primary Chinese IME on both your computer and your phone (if possible). I'm assuming you don't have a computer with zhuyin on the keys already, but you can always buy some special bopomofo stickers (see here for an example: http://www.datacal.com/p-289-chinese-bopomofo-keyboard-labels.aspx) or write the symbols on with white-out or something else you can scrape off later. For me, typing was what really made me remember the symbols. It's much slower than pinyin, so you'll probably not want to continue with zhuyin typing after you've really mastered it, but you'll get faster and faster by using it frequently.

Later, if you really want a challenge, learn how to sing Kenji Wu's song 大舌頭 - there's a super-fast bopomofo line around 3:06 that's good motivation for learning bopomofo in order: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NczAY3Bpfng

After watching http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NczAY3Bpfng how could anyone argue that learning bopomofo could be anything other than very useful (:

Also found this on youtube -- learn bopomofo from a 5 year old (:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CeJ0lc4s2o&NR=1

Haha - that kid is adorable. I'd like to know how their "剪刀,石頭,布" turned out! Oooooh, and I just realized I have that same bopomofo magnet set on my fridge, too - they sell them at Carrefour for something like $50NT.

Incidentally, this is a pretty good video, too (with a little better pronunciation than the kid!). It shows each sound with an example word: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCJhQ8Vu2x8&feature=related

And I almost forgot - this is very cool - you can download a font (found here: http://www.wazu.jp/gallery/views/View_HanWangMingMediumChuIn.html) that annotates characters with bopomofo. Very good for printing out your own study materials. Only downfall is when it's a character with more than one pronunciation. I use this a lot for making lists, so I don't have to bother typing up the pinyin to go with the words. Printing/reading with bopomofo annotation is also a lot less distracting than pinyin.

Thanks for the links!

I hope I don't get banned for saying it again... :) But yay will be the day when I can brush up on those 37 characters while logged into skritter. :)

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I cobbled this list together from Wikipedia. Disclaimer: I don't know Zhuyin Fuhao. I'm considering learning it though, as a form of in-class shorthand instead of pinyin...

ㄅ Zhuyin "b-" initial
ㄆ Zhuyin "p-" initial
ㄇ Zhuyin "m-" initial
ㄈ Zhuyin "f-" initial
ㄉ Zhuyin "d-" initial
ㄊ Zhuyin "t-" initial
ㄋ Zhuyin "n-" initial
ㄌ Zhuyin "l-" initial
ㄍ Zhuyin "g-" initial
ㄎ Zhuyin "k-" initial
ㄏ Zhuyin "h-" initial
ㄐ Zhuyin "j-" initial
ㄑ Zhuyin "q-" initial
ㄒ Zhuyin "x-" initial
ㄓ Zhuyin "zh-" initial
ㄔ Zhuyin "ch-" initial
ㄕ Zhuyin "sh-" initial
ㄖ Zhuyin "r-" initial
ㄗ Zhuyin "z-" initial
ㄘ Zhuyin "c-" initial
ㄙ Zhuyin "s-" initial
ㄚ Zhuyin "-a" final
ㄛ Zhuyin "-o" final
ㄜ Zhuyin "-e" final
ㄝ Zhuyin "-ê" vocalisation
ㄞ Zhuyin "-ai" final
ㄟ Zhuyin "-ei" final
ㄠ Zhuyin "-ao" final
ㄡ Zhuyin "-ou" final
ㄢ Zhuyin "-an" final
ㄣ Zhuyin "-en" final
ㄤ Zhuyin "-ang" final
ㄥ Zhuyin "-eng" final
ㄦ Zhuyin "-er" final
ㄧ Zhuyin "-i" final
ㄧㄚ Zhuyin "-ia" final
ㄧㄛ Zhuyin "-io" final
ㄧㄝ Zhuyin "-ie" final
ㄧㄞ Zhuyin "-iai" final
ㄧㄠ Zhuyin "-iao" final
ㄧㄡ Zhuyin "-iu" final
ㄧㄢ Zhuyin "-ian" final
ㄧㄣ Zhuyin "-in" final
ㄧㄤ Zhuyin "-iang" final
ㄧㄥ Zhuyin "-ing" final
ㄨ Zhuyin "-u" final
ㄨㄚ Zhuyin "-ua" final
ㄨㄛ Zhuyin "-uo" final
ㄨㄞ Zhuyin "-uai" final
ㄨㄟ Zhuyin "-ui" final
ㄨㄢ Zhuyin "-uan" final
ㄨㄣ Zhuyin "-un" final
ㄨㄤ Zhuyin "-uang" final
ㄨㄥ Zhuyin "-ong" final
ㄩ Zhuyin "-ü" final
ㄩㄝ Zhuyin "-ue" final
ㄩㄢ Zhuyin "-üan" final
ㄩㄣ Zhuyin "-ün" final
ㄩㄥ Zhuyin "-iong" final
ㄭ Zhuyin minimal vowel
ˊ Zhuyin 2nd tone diacritical
ˇ Zhuyin 3rd tone diacritical
ˋ Zhuyin 4th tone diacritical
˙ Zhuyin 5th or neutral tone diacritical

Unfortunately Skritter can't handle even a single one of those lines...

My parents taught me bopomofo. When growing up in the US, I went to the weekly "Chinese" school which still use Zhuyin. It didn't stick. In high school onwards I learn Pinyin. Although it is easier for the first few words the final combinations are hard.

I couldn't find any quick tool to allow me translate those Pinyin or Zhuyin on the go. Any good app I should try that might help?

Curious, I've almost never even seen it. I know stacks of Taiwanese folks and they seem cool with pinyin, and in fact use it regularly to text with non smartphones (and lameberrys).

I can certainly see how it's useful because lord knows it seems to take Westerners years before they actually grasp the proper sounds they ought to be making when confronted with pinyin.

Paradoxically I think it would have been useful to use this in the West, less so for Chinese which who inherently know what the underlying sounds are. Presumably vetoed in the West because it seems like it's some extra thing to learn when in fact... it would have saved everyone so much pain listening to lame students say 'kw' sounds for pinyin 'q' and many many other examples...

Can I also just say that any system with 'mofo' in it is clearly too damn cool for school. :)