Ting

Ting can convert between various systems for phonetically writing Mandarin Chinese. It can also handle various representation of tones, so it can be used to convert pinyin with numbers to pinyin with tones.

Hanyu Pinyin, Bopomofo, Wade-Giles, Tongyong Pinyin and International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) are supported.

• gem install ting

To parse your strings create a Reader object. Ting.reader() takes two parameters : the transliteration format, and the way that tones are represented.

To some extent these can be mixed and matched.

To generate pinyin/wade-giles/etc. create a Writer object. Use Ting.writer()

• :hanyu Hanyu Pinyin
• :zhuyin Zhuyin Fuhao (a.k.a. Bopomofo)
• :wadegiles Wade Giles
• :ipa International Phonetic Alphabet
• :tongyong Tongyong Pinyin

• :numbers Simply put a number after the syllable, easy to type
• :accents Use diacritics, follows the Hanyu Pinyin rules, there needs to be at least one vowel to apply this to, not usable with IPA or Bopomofo
• :supernum Superscript numerals, typically used for Wade-Giles
• :marks Tone mark after the syllable, typically used for Bopomofo
• :ipa IPA tone marks
• :no_tones Use no tones

Parse Hanyu Pinyin

   require 'ting'

   reader = Ting.reader(:hanyu, :numbers)
   reader.( "wo3 ai4 ni3" )
    # => [<Ting::Syllable <initial=Empty, final=Uo, tone=3>>,
    #     <Ting::Syllable <initial=Empty, final=Ai, tone=4>>,
    #     <Ting::Syllable <initial=Ne, final=I, tone=3>>]

Generate Bopomofo

   zhuyin = Ting.writer(:zhuyin, :marks)
   zhuyin.(reader.("wo3 ai4 ni3"))
   # => "ㄨㄛˇ ㄞˋ ㄋㄧˇ"

Generate Wade-Giles

   wadegiles = Ting.writer(:wadegiles, :supernum)
   wadegiles.(reader.("qing2 kuang4 ru2 he2"))
   # => "ch`ing² k`uang⁴ ju² ho²"

Generate IPA

   ipa = Ting.writer.new(:ipa, :ipa)
   ipa.(reader.("you3 peng2 zi4 yuan2 fang1 lai2"))
   # => "iou˧˩˧ pʰeŋ˧˥ ts˥˩ yɛn˧˥ faŋ˥˥ lai˧˥"

Since this is such a common use case, a convenience method exists to add diacritics to pinyin.

   Ting.pretty_tones "wo3 ai4 ni3"
   # => "wǒ ài nǐ"

Note that syllables need to be separated by spaces, feeding "peng2you3" to the parser does not work. The Ting.pretty_tones(string) method does handle these things a bit more gracefully.

If you need to parse input that does not conform, consider using a regexp to scan for valid syllables, then feed the syllables to the parser one by one. Have a look at Ting.pretty_tones for an example of how to do this, but note that it does not support special cases like erhua (wanr2 = wan2 er) or non-standard Pinyin syllables like 嗯/"ń" or 呣／"ḿ" (which appear in the official Unicode data and some textbooks).

The ting_table script will spit out a CSV table of all syllables and formats Ting knows about. Useful if you want to do conversion in other languages.

• none, Ting uses nothing but Ruby

Copyright (c) 2007-2017, Arne Brasseur. (http://www.arnebrasseur.net)

Available as Free Software under the GPLv3 License, see LICENSE.txt for details