I'm still a bit confused...it sounds to me like Pinyin is a written "language" which would require pronunciation rules to sound out the same way English or Traditional Chinese characters would. If this is the case, it would seem to me that English speakers would want to see the Chinese characters, the associated pinyin and finally, the pronunciation of the Pinyin characters? What is your thought? To keep it shorter for purposes of a language guide, however, it seems like it would be okay to leave out the 'written pinyin' since users can point to the Chinese characters if people are not able to understand their Pinyin pronunciation. Do you think this makes sense?
Thanks for the help.
Well I'd say pinyin to native Chinese speakers is nothing but phonetic pronunciation, and that's basically because we mastered it from childhood. Technically, it's not a formal variety of written language but it's usually used as phonetic annotation for children who still can't recognize complex Chinese characters. My mom is a Chinese teacher at a primary school and I am fully aware of her methodology in teaching little kids to first identify and then read pinyin by doing little "bo po mo fo" practice with them. Likewise, after some proper training, all Chinese learners will eventually get how exactly pinyin and phonetic pronunciation match up and form in their heads the corresponding relationship between the Chinese pinyin and the international phonetic alphabet.
As for your confusion about the difference between intuitive pronunciation and pinyin, my suggestion is "take it easy". In fact, either way will do and the difference to me seems all about the form and appearance. Apparently however, precise pronunciation is your top concern so perhaps pinyin is more effective in terms of getting rid of a foreign accent, considering you will have to completely scrap the old way of pronunciation and toss it onto the rubble heap.
But let's say, "wo yo pyao" enunciated by westerners sound pretty much like "wo you piao" by native Chinese speakers. I've done an interesting online research before and the result turned out, for the most part, that native English speakers found it much easier to pick up the Chinese language by using intuitive pronunciation, or in other words, your version of pinyin. The bottom line is the same Latin letters in different countries are pronounced differently, so why not carry on with your own convenient system and just try to adapt it a little bit? At least that way, your book will be more practical and hence more attractive.
In fact, most of the time, it's only the clearness of pronunciation that really matters. Admittedly inside, we all possess a fairly high threshold, pertaining to our tolerance of accents.
