User:Garygo golob/Bopomofo/sandbox

WP:COPYARTICLE, old copy of Bopomofo with the following addition:

Evolution of the letters
At first, letters resembled characters from which they were derived more closely, but got simplified over the years. For example, the second stroke of ㄇ, which is derived from, was at first HZG (㇆), the same as in , and then got simplified to HZ (㇕). This simplification is the most evident in ㄛ and ㄜ. At first ㄛ was written with four strokes, the same as the character from which it was derived, 𠀀. Before 1950, they had already undergone another round of simplification. ㄛ was written like (⿱丁𠃊) and ㄜ like  (⿱𬺰𠃊). Later, they both got simplified even more and both are now written with only two strokes and have a rounded bottom part.

The biggest change however, happened to ㄜ. It was first introduced in 1920 and is derived from ㄛ. ㄛ was first pronounced like ㄜ is today, but its pronunciation was changed after a reform in 1920. The sounds of ㄛ and ㄜ became different, so a dot was added on top of ㄛ (ㄮ) to represent different sound. After pronunciation reform in 1926, the character was also simplfied into ㄜ.

Letters in the standard alphabet
During the history, some sounds appeared and some disappeared from the Mandarin pronunciation and the letters were added or removed accordingly.