[jamesdutc]

I am not a Cantonese speaker; however, in Mandarin, fonts with phonetic guidance are very common.

e.g., Hann-Tzong Wang's (王漢宗) free font collection[1] includes two typefaces with phonetic pronunciation guidance. These are wp{0..3}10-05.ttf and wp{0..3}10-08.ttf [2] As you can see from the filenames, there are actually four different font files for each of these two typefaces. The font files numbered {1..3} are for 「破音字」, characters with alternate pronunciation.

When a user types a word like 「給予」 (ㄐ一ˇㄩˇ/jǐ yǔ) for which there is an alternate, less-common pronunciation (ㄐ一ˇ/jǐ instead of ㄍㄟˇ/gěi for 給) they simply change the font for just the affected character to the variant with the correct pronunciation.

In the case of this Cantonese Font, the authors distribute a single .ttf (alongside a “phrasebook” .ttf whose purpose is not clear to me) and indicate in the Roadmap section of the website that ligature support must be enabled. If alternate pronunciations are common in Cantonese, then I suspect that they must use some ligature-based method. I would have to imagine there must be cases where this could be ambiguous, but I don't know how you would resolve those.

(In practice, just swapping the font on a single character works fairly well.)

[1] https://code.google.com/archive/p/wangfonts/

[2] https://dywang.csie.cyut.edu.tw/dywang/download/pdf/sample-o...

[er4hn]

Thanks for sharing this. When I saw the link, I wanted to see if there was something similar for Mandarin. Looking at the PDF sample I don't see anything around how to pronounce the characters, i.e. there's nothing along the top or bottom that looks like pinyin with tonal markers. Am I missing something?

[jamesdutc]

The fonts at the bottom of page one and the top of page two (王漢宗中明體注音 wp010-05.ttf and 王漢宗中楷體注音 wp010-08.ttf) include pronunciation guidance using zhùyīn fúhào 注音符號 (also called “Bopomofo” 「ㄈㄅㄇㄈ」 after the first four consonants): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bopomofo

This is the phonetic system that is used most commonly in Taiwan.

Typically, phonetic pronunciation guidance is used only in educational materials. For native speakers, this means materials only for very small children. However, in Taiwan, it's not uncommon to see 注音符號 guidance to indicate when a word should be said with a non-Mandarin pronunciation. You'll see this, for example, in shops whose names contain a pun when using the Taiwanese Hokkien pronunciation.

There are other fonts that include pronunciation guidance in hànyǔ pīnyīn 漢語拼音, the phonetic system used most commonly in China: e.g., http://fonts.mobanwang.com/200909/5832.html

I don't think there are any fonts with pronunciation guidance in any of the other phonetic systems (e.g., 通用拼音, Wade-Giles, 國語羅馬字) but these have almost all fallen into disuse and appear only in old signage, historical place names, or in people's names.

(Presumably, if you are born in Taiwan, you get to pick how you want your named romanized… especially since you may want the spelling of your name to match that of your relatives. But are you allowed to pick any transliteration you desire?)

[ywnico]

The fonts at the bottom of the first page (wp010-05.ttf) and the top of the second page (wp[123]10-05.ttf etc.) have zhuyin (aka bopomofo) phonetic symbols [1] to the right of each character. These are common in Taiwan, whereas pinyin is used in the mainland. jamesdutc also used them in the comment above; e.g., ㄐ一ˇㄩˇ = jǐ yǔ.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bopomofo