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Pinyin

Hanyu Pinyin (simplified Chinese: 汉语拼音; traditional Chinese: 漢語拼音; pinyin: hànyǔ pīnyīn), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese form, to learners already familiar with the Latin alphabet. The system includes four diacritics denoting tones, but pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languages written in the Latin script, and is also used in certain computer input methods to enter Chinese characters. The word Hànyǔ (simplified Chinese: 汉语; traditional Chinese: 漢語) literally means "Han language" (i.e. Chinese language), while Pīnyīn (拼音) means "spelled sounds".[1]

Hanyu Pinyin
汉语拼音, 漢語拼音
Script type romanization
Created1950s
LanguagesStandard Chinese
 This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.
Pinyin
Table of Hanyu Pinyin syllables, which includes 23 initials (top) and 24 finals (bottom)
Chinese拼音
Scheme for the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet
Simplified Chinese汉语拼音方案
Traditional Chinese漢語拼音方案
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinHànyǔ Pīnyīn Fāng'àn
Bopomofoㄏㄢˋ ㄩˇ ㄆㄧㄣ ㄧㄣ ㄈㄤ ㄢˋ
Wade–GilesHan4-yü3 Pʻin1-yin1 Fang1-an4
IPA[xân.ỳ pʰín.ín fáŋ.ân]
Wu
Romanizationhoe nyiu phin in faon oe
Hakka
Romanizationhon55 ngi24 pin24 im24 fong24 on55
Yue: Cantonese
Yale RomanizationHonyúh Pingyām Fōng'on
JyutpingHon3jyu5 Ping3jam1 Fong1on3
Sidney LauHon3yue5 Ping3yam Fongon3
Canton RomanizationHon3yu5 Ping3yem1 Fong1on3
IPA[hɔ̄ːn.y̬ː pʰēŋ.jɐ́m fɔ́ːŋ.ɔ̄ːn]
Southern Min
Hokkien POJhàn-gú pheng-im hong-àn

The pinyin system was developed in the 1950s by a group of Chinese linguists including Zhou Youguang[2] and was based on earlier forms of romanizations of Chinese. It was published by the Chinese Government in 1958 and revised several times.[3] The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) adopted pinyin as an international standard, ISO 7098, in 1982[4] and was followed by the United Nations in 1986.[2] Attempts to make pinyin standard in the ROC (Taiwan) occurred in 2002 and 2009, but "today Taiwan has no standardized spelling system" so that in 2019 "alphabetic spellings in Taiwan are marked more by a lack of system than the presence of one".[5][6][7] Moreover, "some cities, businesses, and organizations, notably in the south of Taiwan, did not accept [efforts to introduce pinyin], as it suggested that Taiwan is more closely tied to the PRC", so it remains one of several rival romanization systems in use.[8]

When a foreign writing system with one set of coding and decoding systems is taken to write a language, certain compromises may have to be made. The result is that the decoding systems used in some foreign languages will enable non-native speakers to produce sounds more closely resembling the target language than will the coding and decoding systems used by other foreign languages. Native speakers of English will decode pinyin spellings to fairly close approximations of Mandarin except in the case of certain speech sounds that are not ordinarily produced by most native speakers of English: j //, q /tɕʰ/, x /ɕ/, z /ts/, c /tsʰ/, zh /ʈʂ/, ch /ʈʂʰ/, h /x/ and r /ɻ/ exhibit the greatest discrepancies.

In this system, the correspondence between the Latin letters and the sound is sometimes idiosyncratic, though not necessarily more so than the way the Latin script is employed in other languages. For example, the aspiration distinction between b, d, g and p, t, k is similar to that of these syllable-initial consonants in English (in which the two sets are, however, also differentiated by voicing), but not to that of French. Letters z and c also have that distinction, pronounced as [ts] and [tsʰ] (which is reminiscent of these letters being used to represent the phoneme /ts/ in the German language and Slavic languages written in the Latin script, respectively). From s, z, c come the digraphs sh, zh, ch by analogy with English sh, ch. Although this analogical use of digraphs introduces the novel combination zh, it is internally consistent in how the two series are related. In the x, j, q series, the pinyin use of x is similar to its use in Portuguese, Galician, Catalan, Basque, and Maltese to represent /ʃ/; the pinyin q is close to its value of /c͡ç/ in Albanian, though to the untrained ear both pinyin and Albanian pronunciations may sound similar to the ch. Pinyin vowels are pronounced in a similar way to vowels in Romance languages.

The pronunciations and spellings of Chinese words are generally given in terms of initials and finals, which represent the language’s segmental phonemic portion, rather than letter by letter. Initials are initial consonants, whereas finals are all possible combinations of medials (semivowels coming before the vowel), a nucleus vowel, and coda (final vowel or consonant).

History

 
In Yiling, Yichang, Hubei, text on road signs appears both in Chinese characters and in Hanyu Pinyin

Background: romanization of Chinese before 1949

In 1605, the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci published Xizi Qiji (西字奇蹟; Xīzì Qíjī; Hsi-tzu Ch'i-chi; 'Miracle of Western Letters') in Beijing.[9] This was the first book to use the Roman alphabet to write the Chinese language. Twenty years later, another Jesuit in China, Nicolas Trigault, issued his Xī Rú Ěrmù Zī (《西儒耳目資》; Hsi Ju Erh-mu Tzu; 'Aid to the Eyes and Ears of Western Literati') at Hangzhou.[10] Neither book had much immediate impact on the way in which Chinese thought about their writing system, and the romanizations they described were intended more for Westerners than for the Chinese.[11]

One of the earliest Chinese thinkers to relate Western alphabets to Chinese was late Ming to early Qing dynasty scholar-official, Fang Yizhi (方以智; Fāng Yǐzhì; Fang I-chih; 1611–1671).[12]

The first late Qing reformer to propose that China adopt a system of spelling was Song Shu (1862–1910). A student of the great scholars Yu Yue and Zhang Taiyan, Song had been to Japan and observed the stunning effect of the kana syllabaries and Western learning there.[which?] This galvanized him into activity on a number of fronts, one of the most important being reform of the script. While Song did not himself actually create a system for spelling Sinitic languages, his discussion proved fertile and led to a proliferation of schemes for phonetic scripts.[11]

Wade–Giles

The Wade–Giles system was produced by Thomas Wade in 1859, and further improved by Herbert Giles in the Chinese–English Dictionary of 1892. It was popular and used in English-language publications outside China until 1979.[13]

Sin Wenz

In the early 1930s, Chinese Communist Party leaders trained in Moscow introduced a phonetic alphabet using Roman letters which had been developed in the Soviet Oriental Institute of Leningrad and was originally intended to improve literacy in the Russian Far East.[14][note 1] This Sin Wenz or "New Writing"[15] was much more linguistically sophisticated than earlier alphabets, but with the major exception that it did not indicate tones of Chinese.[16]

In 1940, several thousand members attended a Border Region Sin Wenz Society convention. Mao Zedong and Zhu De, head of the army, both contributed their calligraphy (in characters) for the masthead of the Sin Wenz Society's new journal. Outside the CCP, other prominent supporters included Sun Yat-sen's son, Sun Fo; Cai Yuanpei, the country's most prestigious educator; Tao Xingzhi, a leading educational reformer; and Lu Xun. Over thirty journals soon appeared written in Sin Wenz, plus large numbers of translations, biographies (including Lincoln, Franklin, Edison, Ford, and Charlie Chaplin), some contemporary Chinese literature, and a spectrum of textbooks. In 1940, the movement reached an apex when Mao's Border Region Government declared that the Sin Wenz had the same legal status as traditional characters in government and public documents. Many educators and political leaders looked forward to the day when they would be universally accepted and completely replace Chinese characters. Opposition arose, however, because the system was less well adapted to writing regional languages, and therefore would require learning Mandarin. Sin Wenz fell into relative disuse during the following years.[17]

Yale romanization

In 1943, the U.S. military engaged Yale University to develop a romanization of Mandarin Chinese for its pilots flying over China. The resulting system is very close to pinyin, but does not use English letters in unfamiliar ways; for example, pinyin x for [ɕ] is written as sy in the Yale system. Medial semivowels are written with y and w (instead of pinyin i and u), and apical vowels (syllabic consonants) with r or z. Accent marks are used to indicate tone.

Emergence and history of Hanyu Pinyin

Pinyin was created by a group of Chinese linguists, including Zhou Youguang who was an economist,[2] as part of a Chinese government project in the 1950s. Zhou, often called "the father of pinyin,"[2][18][19][20] worked as a banker in New York when he decided to return to China to help rebuild the country after the establishment of the People's Republic of China. Mao Zedong initially considered Latinizing written Chinese, but during his first official visit to the Soviet Union in 1949 Joseph Stalin convinced him to maintain the existing writing system.[21] Zhou became an economics professor in Shanghai, and in 1955, when China's Ministry of Education created a Committee for the Reform of the Chinese Written Language, Premier Zhou Enlai assigned Zhou Youguang the task of developing a new romanization system, despite the fact that he was not a professional linguist.[2]

Hanyu Pinyin was based on several existing systems, including: Gwoyeu Romatzyh of 1928, Latinxua Sin Wenz of 1931, and the diacritic markings from zhuyin (bopomofo).[22] "I'm not the father of pinyin," Zhou said years later; "I'm the son of pinyin. It's [the result of] a long tradition from the later years of the Qing dynasty down to today. But we restudied the problem and revisited it and made it more perfect."[23]

A draft was published on February 12, 1956. The first edition of Hanyu Pinyin was approved and adopted at the Fifth Session of the 1st National People's Congress on February 11, 1958. It was then introduced to primary schools as a way to teach Standard Chinese pronunciation and used to improve the literacy rate among adults.[24]

During the height of the Cold War, the use of pinyin system over the Yale romanization outside of China was regarded as a political statement or identification with the communist Chinese regime.[25] Beginning in the early 1980s, Western publications addressing Mainland China began using the Hanyu Pinyin romanization system instead of earlier romanization systems;[26] this change followed the normalization of diplomatic relations between the United States and the PRC in 1979.[27][28] In 2001, the PRC Government issued the National Common Language Law, providing a legal basis for applying pinyin.[24] The current specification of the orthographic rules is laid down in the National Standard GB/T 16159–2012.[29]

Initials and finals

Unlike European languages, clusters of letters —initials (声母; 聲母; shēngmǔ) and finals (韵母; 韻母; yùnmǔ)— and not consonant and vowel letters, form the fundamental elements in pinyin (and most other phonetic systems used to describe the Han language). Every Mandarin syllable can be spelled with exactly one initial followed by one final, except for the special syllable er or when a trailing -r is considered part of a syllable (see below, and see erhua). The latter case, though a common practice in some sub-dialects, is rarely used in official publications.

Even though most initials contain a consonant, finals are not always simple vowels, especially in compound finals (复韵母; 複韻母; fùyùnmǔ), i.e. when a "medial" is placed in front of the final. For example, the medials [i] and [u] are pronounced with such tight openings at the beginning of a final that some native Chinese speakers (especially when singing) pronounce (, clothes, officially pronounced /í/) as /jí/ and wéi (; , to enclose, officially pronounced /uěi/) as /wěi/ or /wuěi/. Often these medials are treated as separate from the finals rather than as part of them; this convention is followed in the chart of finals below.

Initials

In each cell below, the bold letters indicate pinyin and the brackets enclose the symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet.

1 y is pronounced [ɥ] (a labial-palatal approximant) before u.
2 The letters w and y are not included in the table of initials in the official pinyin system. They are an orthographic convention for the medials i, u and ü when no initial is present. When i, u, or ü are finals and no initial is present, they are spelled yi, wu, and yu, respectively.

The conventional lexicographical order (excluding w and y), derived from the zhuyin system ("bopomofo"), is:

b  p  m  f   d  t  n  l   g  k h   j  q  x   zh  ch  sh  r   z  c  s

According to Scheme for the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet, zh, ch, and sh can be abbreviated as , ĉ, and ŝ (z, c, s with a circumflex). However, the shorthands are rarely used due to difficulty of entering them on computers and are confined mainly to Esperanto keyboard layouts.

Finals

Front Central Back
Close
 
i ⟨i⟩ • y ⟨ü⟩
ɨ ⟨i⟩
u ⟨u⟩


ɤ ⟨e⟩ • o ⟨o⟩
⟨ê⟩
ɚ ⟨er⟩



a ⟨a⟩
Close-mid
Open-mid
Open

In each cell below, the first line indicates IPA, the second indicates pinyin for a standalone (no-initial) form, and the third indicates pinyin for a combination with an initial. Other than finals modified by an -r, which are omitted, the following is an exhaustive table of all possible finals.1[30]

The only syllable-final consonants in Standard Chinese are -n and -ng, and -r, the last of which is attached as a grammatical suffix. A Chinese syllable ending with any other consonant either is from a non-Mandarin language (a southern Chinese language such as Cantonese, or a minority language of China; possibly reflecting final consonants in Old Chinese), or indicates the use of a non-pinyin romanization system (where final consonants may be used to indicate tones).

Rime
-⁠e/-⁠o -⁠a -⁠ei -⁠ai -⁠ou -⁠ao -⁠n -⁠en -⁠an -⁠ng -⁠ong -⁠eng -⁠ang er
Medial [ɨ]

-⁠i
[ɤ]
e
-⁠e
[a]
a
-⁠a
[ei̯]
ei
-⁠ei
[ai̯]
ai
-⁠ai
[ou̯]
ou
-⁠ou
[au̯]
ao
-⁠ao
[ən]
en
-⁠en
[an]
an
-⁠an
[ʊŋ]

-⁠ong
[əŋ]
eng
-⁠eng
[aŋ]
ang
-⁠ang
[ɚ]
er 1
 
y⁠-
-⁠i⁠-
[i]
yi
-⁠i
[je]
ye
-⁠ie
[ja]
ya
-⁠ia
[jou̯]
you
-⁠iu
[jau̯]
yao
-⁠iao
[in]
yin
-⁠in
[jɛn]
yan
-⁠ian
[iŋ]
ying
-⁠ing
[jʊŋ]
yong
-⁠iong
[jaŋ]
yang
-⁠iang
w⁠-
-⁠u⁠-
[u]
wu
-⁠u
[wo]
wo
-⁠uo 3
[wa]
wa
-⁠ua
[wei̯]
wei
-⁠ui
[wai̯]
wai
-⁠uai
[wən]
wen
-⁠un
[wan]
wan
-⁠uan
[wəŋ]
weng
 
[waŋ]
wang
-⁠uang
yu⁠-
-⁠ü⁠-
[y]
yu
-⁠ü 2
[ɥe]
yue
-⁠üe 2
[yn]
yun
-⁠ün 2
[ɥɛn]
yuan
-⁠üan 2

1 For other finals formed by the suffix -r, pinyin does not use special orthography; one simply appends r to the final that it is added to, without regard for any sound changes that may take place along the way. For information on sound changes related to final r, please see Erhua#Rules in Standard Mandarin.
2 ü is written as u after y, j, q, or x.
3 uo is written as o after b, p, m, f, or w.

Technically, i, u, ü without a following vowel are finals, not medials, and therefore take the tone marks, but they are more concisely displayed as above. In addition, ê [ɛ] (; ) and syllabic nasals m (, ), n (, ), ng (, 𠮾) are used as interjections.

According to Scheme for the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet, ng can be abbreviated with a shorthand of ŋ. However, this shorthand is rarely used due to difficulty of entering them on computers.

The ü sound

An umlaut is placed over the letter u when it occurs after the initials l and n when necessary in order to represent the sound [y]. This is necessary in order to distinguish the front high rounded vowel in (e.g. ; ; 'donkey') from the back high rounded vowel in lu (e.g. ; ; 'oven'). Tonal markers are added on top of the umlaut, as in .

However, the ü is not used in the other contexts where it could represent a front high rounded vowel, namely after the letters j, q, x, and y. For example, the sound of the word / (fish) is transcribed in pinyin simply as , not as . This practice is opposed to Wade–Giles, which always uses ü, and Tongyong Pinyin, which always uses yu. Whereas Wade–Giles needs the umlaut to distinguish between chü (pinyin ju) and chu (pinyin zhu), this ambiguity does not arise with pinyin, so the more convenient form ju is used instead of . Genuine ambiguities only happen with nu/ and lu/, which are then distinguished by an umlaut.

Many fonts or output methods do not support an umlaut for ü or cannot place tone marks on top of ü. Likewise, using ü in input methods is difficult because it is not present as a simple key on many keyboard layouts. For these reasons v is sometimes used instead by convention. For example, it is common for cellphones to use v instead of ü. Additionally, some stores in China use v instead of ü in the transliteration of their names. The drawback is that there are no tone marks for the letter v.

This also presents a problem in transcribing names for use on passports, affecting people with names that consist of the sound or , particularly people with the surname (), a fairly common surname, particularly compared to the surnames (), (), () and (). Previously, the practice varied among different passport issuing offices, with some transcribing as "LV" and "NV" while others used "LU" and "NU". On 10 July 2012, the Ministry of Public Security standardized the practice to use "LYU" and "NYU" in passports.[31][32]

Although nüe written as nue, and lüe written as lue are not ambiguous, nue or lue are not correct according to the rules; nüe and lüe should be used instead. However, some Chinese input methods (e.g. Microsoft Pinyin IME) support both nve/lve (typing v for ü) and nue/lue.

Approximations to English pronunciation

Most rules given here in terms of English pronunciation are approximations, as several of these sounds do not correspond directly to sounds in English.

Pronunciation of initials

Pinyin IPA English approximation[33] Explanation
b [p] spark unaspirated p, as in spark
p [] pay strongly aspirated p, as in pit
m [m] may as in English mummy
f [f] fair as in English fun
d [t] stop unaspirated t, as in stop
t [] take strongly aspirated t, as in top
n [n] nay as in English nit
l [l] lay as in English love
g [k] skill unaspirated k, as in skill
k [] kay strongly aspirated k, as in kiss
h [x], [h] loch Varies between hat and Scottish loch.
j [] churchyard Alveo-palatal. No equivalent in English, but similar to an unaspirated "-chy-" sound when said quickly. Like q, but unaspirated. Is similar to the English name of the letter G, but curl the tip of the tongue downwards to stick it at the back of the teeth.
q [tɕʰ] punch yourself Alveo-palatal. No equivalent in English. Like punch yourself, with the lips spread wide as when one says ee. Curl the tip of the tongue downwards to stick it at the back of the teeth and strongly aspirate.
x [ɕ] push yourself Alveo-palatal. No equivalent in English. Like -sh y-, with the lips spread as when one says ee and with the tip of the tongue curled downwards and stuck to the back of the teeth.
zh [ʈʂ] nurture Unaspirated ch. Similar to hatching but retroflex, or marching in American English. Voiced in a toneless syllable.
ch [ʈʂʰ] church Similar to chin, but retroflex.
sh [ʂ] shirt Similar to shoe but retroflex, or marsh in American English.
r [ɻ~ʐ] ray No equivalent in English, but similar to a sound between r in reduce and s in measure but with the tongue curled upward against the top of the mouth (i.e. retroflex).
z [ts] pizza unaspirated c, similar to something between suds but voiceless, unless in a toneless syllable.
c [tsʰ] hats like the English ts in cats, but strongly aspirated, very similar to the Czech, Polish, Esperanto, and Slovak c.
s [s] say as in sun
w [w] way as in water. Before an e or a it is sometimes pronounced like v as in violin.*
y [j], [ɥ] yes as in yes. Before a u, pronounced with rounded lips, as if pronouncing German ü.*
* Note on y and w

Y and w are equivalent to the semivowel medials i, u, and ü (see below). They are spelled differently when there is no initial consonant in order to mark a new syllable: fanguan is fan-guan, while fangwan is fang-wan (and equivalent to *fang-uan). With this convention, an apostrophe only needs to be used to mark an initial a, e, or o: Xi'an (two syllables: [ɕi.an]) vs. xian (one syllable: [ɕi̯ɛn]). In addition, y and w are added to fully vocalic i, u, and ü when these occur without an initial consonant, so that they are written yi, wu, and yu. Some Mandarin speakers do pronounce a [j] or [w] sound at the beginning of such words—that is, yi [i] or [ji], wu [u] or [wu], yu [y] or [ɥy],—so this is an intuitive convention. See below for a few finals which are abbreviated after a consonant plus w/u or y/i medial: wen → C+un, wei → C+ui, weng → C+ong, and you → Q+iu.

** Note on the apostrophe

The apostrophe (') (隔音符号; 隔音符號; géyīn fúhào; 'syllable-dividing mark') is used before a syllable starting with a vowel (a, o, or e) in a multiple-syllable word, unless the syllable starts the word or immediately follows a hyphen or other dash. For example, 西安 is written as Xi'an or Xī'ān, and 天峨 is written as Tian'e or Tiān'é, but 第二 is written "dì-èr", without an apostrophe.[34] This apostrophe is not used in the Taipei Metro names.[35]

Apostrophes (as well as hyphens and tone marks) are omitted on Chinese passports.[36]

Pronunciation of finals

The following is a list of finals in Standard Chinese, excepting most of those ending with r.

To find a given final:

  1. Remove the initial consonant. zh, ch, and sh count as initial consonants.
  2. Change initial w to u and initial y to i. For weng, wen, wei, you, look under ong, un, ui, iu.
  3. For u (including the ones starting with u) after j, q, x, or y, look under ü.
Pinyin IPA Form with zero initial Explanation
-i [ɹ̩~], [ɻ̩~ʐ̩] (N/A) -i is a buzzed continuation of the consonant following z-, c-, s-, zh-, ch-, sh- or r-.

(In all other cases, -i has the sound of bee; this is listed below.)

a [a] a like English father, but a bit more fronted
e [ɤ] ( listen) e a back, unrounded vowel (similar to English duh, but not as open). Pronounced as a sequence [ɰɤ].
ai [ai̯] ai like English eye, but a bit lighter
ei [ei̯] ei as in hey
ao [au̯] ao approximately as in cow; the a is much more audible than the o
ou [ou̯] ou as in North American English so
an [an] an like British English ban, but more central
en [ən] en as in taken
ang [aŋ] ang as in German Angst.

(Starts with the vowel sound in father and ends in the velar nasal; like song in some dialects of American English)

eng [əŋ] eng like e in en above but with ng appended
ong [ʊŋ] (weng) starts with the vowel sound in book and ends with the velar nasal sound in sing. Varies between [oŋ] and [uŋ] depending on the speaker.
er [aɚ̯] er Similar to the sound in bar in English. Can also be pronounced [ɚ] depending on the speaker.
Finals beginning with i- (y-)
i [i] yi like English bee
ia [ja] ya as i + a; like English yard
ie [je] ye as i + ê where the e (compare with the ê interjection) is pronounced shorter and lighter
iao [jau̯] yao as i + ao
iu [jou̯] you as i + ou
ian [jɛn] yan as i + an; like English yen. Varies between [jen] and [jan] depending on the speaker.
in [in] yin as i + n
iang [jaŋ] yang as i + ang
ing [iŋ] ying as i + ng
iong [jʊŋ] yong as i + ong. Varies between [joŋ] and [juŋ] depending on the speaker.
Finals beginning with u- (w-)
u [u] wu like English oo
ua [wa] wa as u + a
uo/o [wo] wo as u + o where the o (compare with the o interjection) is pronounced shorter and lighter (spelled as o after b, p, m or f)
uai [wai̯] wai as u + ai, as in English why
ui [wei̯] wei as u + ei, as in English way
uan [wan] wan as u + an
un [wən] wen as u + en; as in English won
uang [waŋ] wang as u + ang
(ong) [wəŋ] weng as u + eng
Finals beginning with ü- (yu-)
ü [y] ( listen) yu as in German über or French lune (pronounced as English ee with rounded lips; spelled as u after j, q or x)
üe [ɥe] yue as ü + ê where the e (compare with the ê interjection) is pronounced shorter and lighter (spelled as ue after j, q or x)
üan [ɥɛn] yuan as ü + an. Varies between [ɥen] and [ɥan] depending on the speaker (spelled as uan after j, q or x)
ün [yn] yun as ü + n (spelled as un after j, q or x)
Interjections
ê [ɛ] (N/A) as in bet
o [ɔ] (N/A) approximately as in British English office; the lips are much more rounded
io [jɔ] yo as i + o

Tones

 
Relative pitch changes of the four tones

The pinyin system also uses diacritics to mark the four tones of Mandarin. The diacritic is placed over the letter that represents the syllable nucleus, unless that letter is missing (see below).

If the tone mark is written over an i, the tittle above the i is omitted, as in .

Many books printed in China use a mix of fonts, with vowels and tone marks rendered in a different font from the surrounding text, tending to give such pinyin texts a typographically ungainly appearance. This style, most likely rooted in early technical limitations, has led many to believe that pinyin's rules call for this practice, e.g. the use of a Latin alpha (ɑ) rather than the standard style (a) found in most fonts, or g often written with a single-storey ɡ. The rules of Hanyu Pinyin, however, specify no such practice.[37]: 3.3.4.1:8 

  1. The first tone (flat or high-level tone) is represented by a macron (ˉ) added to the pinyin vowel:
    ā ē ī ō ū ǖ Ā Ē Ī Ō Ū Ǖ
  2. The second tone (rising or high-rising tone) is denoted by an acute accent (ˊ):
    á é í ó ú ǘ Á É Í Ó Ú Ǘ
  3. The third tone (falling-rising or low tone) is marked by a caron/háček (ˇ). It is not the rounded breve (˘), though a breve is sometimes substituted due to ignorance or font limitations.
    ǎ ě ǐ ǒ ǔ ǚ Ǎ Ě Ǐ Ǒ Ǔ Ǚ
  4. The fourth tone (falling or high-falling tone) is represented by a grave accent (ˋ):
    à è ì ò ù ǜ À È Ì Ò Ù Ǜ
  5. The fifth tone (neutral tone) is represented by a normal vowel without any accent mark:
    a e i o u ü A E I O U Ü
In dictionaries, neutral tone may be indicated by a dot preceding the syllable; for example, ·ma. When a neutral tone syllable has an alternative pronunciation in another tone, a combination of tone marks may be used: zhī·dào (知道).[38]

Numerals in place of tone marks

Before the advent of computers, many typewriter fonts did not contain vowels with macron or caron diacritics. Tones were thus represented by placing a tone number at the end of individual syllables. For example, tóng is written tong². The number used for each tone is as the order listed above, except the neutral tone, which is either not numbered, or given the number 0 or 5, e.g. ma⁵ for , an interrogative marker.

Tone Tone Mark Number added to end of syllable
in place of tone mark
Example using
tone mark
Example using
number
IPA
First macron◌̄ ) 1 ma1 ma˥
Second acute accent◌́ ) 2 ma2 ma˧˥
Third caron◌̌ ) 3 ma3 ma˨˩˦
Fourth grave accent◌̀ ) 4 ma4 ma˥˩
"Neutral" No mark
or middle dot before syllable ( · )
no number
5
0
ma
·ma
ma
ma5
ma0
ma

Rules for placing the tone mark

Briefly, the tone mark should always be placed by the order—a, o, e, i, u, ü, with the only exception being iu, where the tone mark is placed on the u instead. Pinyin tone marks appear primarily above the nucleus of the syllable, for example as in kuài, where k is the initial, u the medial, a the nucleus, and i the coda. The exception is syllabic nasals like /m/, where the nucleus of the syllable is a consonant, the diacritic will be carried by a written dummy vowel.

When the nucleus is /ə/ (written e or o), and there is both a medial and a coda, the nucleus may be dropped from writing. In this case, when the coda is a consonant n or ng, the only vowel left is the medial i, u, or ü, and so this takes the diacritic. However, when the coda is a vowel, it is the coda rather than the medial which takes the diacritic in the absence of a written nucleus. This occurs with syllables ending in -ui (from wei: wèi-uì) and in -iu (from you: yòu-iù). That is, in the absence of a written nucleus the finals have priority for receiving the tone marker, as long as they are vowels: if not, the medial takes the diacritic.

An algorithm to find the correct vowel letter (when there is more than one) is as follows:[39]

  1. If there is an a or an e, it will take the tone mark
  2. If there is an ou, then the o takes the tone mark
  3. Otherwise, the second vowel takes the tone mark

Worded differently,

  1. If there is an a, e, or o, it will take the tone mark; in the case of ao, the mark goes on the a
  2. Otherwise, the vowels are -iu or -ui, in which case the second vowel takes the tone mark

The above can be summarized as the following table. The vowel letter taking the tone mark is indicated by the fourth-tone mark.

Placement of the tone mark in Pinyin
-a -e -i -o -u
a- ài ào
e- èi
i- ià, iào
o- òu
u- uà, uài
ü- (üà) üè

Phonological intuition

The placement of the tone marker, when more than one of the written letters a, e, i, o, and u appears, can also be inferred from the nature of the vowel sound in the medial and final. The rule is that the tone marker goes on the spelled vowel that is not a (near-)semi-vowel. The exception is that, for triphthongs that are spelled with only two vowel letters, both of which are the semi-vowels, the tone marker goes on the second spelled vowel.

Specifically, if the spelling of a diphthong begins with i (as in ia) or u (as in ua), which serves as a near-semi-vowel, this letter does not take the tone marker. Likewise, if the spelling of a diphthong ends with o or u representing a near-semi-vowel (as in ao or ou), this letter does not receive a tone marker. In a triphthong spelled with three of a, e, i, o, and u (with i or u replaced by y or w at the start of a syllable), the first and third letters coincide with near-semi-vowels and hence do not receive the tone marker (as in iao or uai or iou). But if no letter is written to represent a triphthong's middle (non-semi-vowel) sound (as in ui or iu), then the tone marker goes on the final (second) vowel letter.

Using tone colors

In addition to tone number and mark, tone color has been suggested as a visual aid for learning. Although there are no formal standards, there are a number of different color schemes in use, Dummitt's being one of the first.

Tone color schemes
Scheme Tone 1 Tone 2 Tone 3 Tone 4 Neutral tone
Dummitt[40] red orange green blue none/black
MDBG red orange green blue black
Unimelb[a] blue green purple red grey
Hanping[41] blue green orange red grey
Pleco red green blue purple grey
Thomas[a] green blue red black grey
  1. ^ a b The colors used here to illustrate Unimelb and Thomas are only approximate. The precise color values used by Dummitt, the MDBG Chinese Online Dictionary, Hanping, and Pleco are taken from Laowai's blog Tone Colors and What Pleco Did with Them.

Indication of tone change in pinyin spelling

Tone sandhi (tone change) is usually not reflected in pinyin spelling — the underlying tone (i.e. the original tone before the sandhi) is still written. However, ABC English–Chinese, Chinese–English Dictionary (2010)[42] uses the following notation to indicate both the original tone and the tone after the sandhi:

  1. () pronounced in second tone () is written as yị̄.[a]
    • e.g. 一共 (underlying yīgòng, realized as yígòng) is written as yị̄gòng
  2. () pronounced in fourth tone () is written as yī̠.
    • e.g. 一起 (underlying yīqǐ, realized as yìqǐ) is written as yī̠qǐ
  3. () pronounced in second tone () is written as bụ̀.
    • e.g. 不要 (underlying bùyào, realized as búyào) is written as bụ̀yào
  4. When there are two consecutive third-tone syllables, the first syllable is pronounced in second tone. A dot is added below to the third tone pronounced in second tone (i.e. written as ạ̌/Ạ̌, ẹ̌/Ẹ̌, ị̌,[a] ọ̌/Ọ̌, ụ̌, and ụ̈̌).
    • e.g. 了解 (underlying liǎojiě, realized as liáojiě) is written as liạ̌ojiě

Wenlin Software for learning Chinese also adopted this notation.

  1. ^ a b Due to a bug in some fonts, a tittle (overdot) may be displayed in ị̄ and ị̌. They should be displayed without the tittle (i.e. ī or ǐ with a dot below), like they appear in the cited dictionary.

Orthographic rules

Letters

The Scheme for the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet lists the letters of pinyin, along with their pronunciations, as:

List of pinyin letters
Letter Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz
Pronunciation (pinyin) a bê cê dê e êf gê ha yi jie kê êl êm nê o pê qiu ar ês tê wu wa xi ya zê
Bopomofo transcription ㄧㄝ ㄧㄡ

Pinyin differs from other romanizations in several aspects, such as the following:

  • Syllables starting with u are written as w in place of u (e.g., *uan is written as wan). Standalone u is written as wu.
  • Syllables starting with i are written as y in place of i (e.g., *ian is written as yan). Standalone i is written as yi.
  • Syllables starting with ü are written as yu in place of ü (e.g., *üe is written as yue). Standalone ü is written as yu.
  • ü is written as u when there is no ambiguity (such as ju, qu, and xu) but as ü when there are corresponding u syllables (such as and ). If there are corresponding u syllables, it is often replaced with v on a computer to make it easier to type on a standard keyboard.
  • After by a consonant, iou, uei, and uen are simplified as iu, ui, and un, which do not represent the actual pronunciation.
  • As in zhuyin, syllables that are actually pronounced as buo, puo, muo, and fuo are given a separate representation: bo, po, mo, and fo.
  • The apostrophe (') is used before a syllable starting with a vowel (a, o, or e) in a syllable other than the first of a word, the syllable being most commonly realized as [ɰ] unless it immediately follows a hyphen or other dash.[34] That is done to remove ambiguity that could arise, as in Xi'an, which consists of the two syllables xi (西) an (), compared to such words as xian (). (The ambiguity does not occur when tone marks are used since both tone marks in "Xīān" unambiguously show that the word has two syllables. However, even with tone marks, the city is usually spelled with an apostrophe as "Xī'ān".)
  • Eh alone is written as ê; elsewhere as e. Schwa is always written as e.
  • Zh, ch, and sh can be abbreviated as , ĉ, and ŝ (z, c, s with a circumflex). However, the shorthands are rarely used because of the difficulty of entering them on computers and are confined mainly to Esperanto keyboard layouts. Early drafts and some published material used diacritic hooks below instead: (ȥ/ʐ), , ʂ ().[43]
  • Ng has the uncommon shorthand of ŋ, which was also used in early drafts.
  • Early drafts also contained the symbol ɥ or the letter ч borrowed from the Cyrillic script, in place of later j for the voiceless alveolo-palatal sibilant affricate.[43]
  • The letter v is unused, except in spelling foreign languages, languages of minority nationalities, and some dialects, despite a conscious effort to distribute letters more evenly than in Western languages. However, the ease of typing into a computer causes the v to be sometimes used to replace ü. (The Scheme table above maps the letter to bopomofo ㄪ, which typically maps to /v/.)

Most of the above are used to avoid ambiguity when words of more than one syllable are written in pinyin. For example, uenian is written as wenyan because it is not clear which syllables make up uenian; uen-ian, uen-i-an, u-en-i-an, u-e-nian, and u-e-ni-an are all possible combinations, but wenyan is unambiguous since we, nya, etc. do not exist in pinyin. See the pinyin table article for a summary of possible pinyin syllables (not including tones).

Words, capitalization, initialisms and punctuation

 
Many writers are not yet aware of the rules for dividing text into words by spaces, and either put a space after each syllable, or run all words together. The manufacturer of this image's blankets put unnecessary spaces into the city name, 'Bishikaike' (which is the correct pinyin for 比什凯克, 'Bishkek') on the bottom line, but wrote the English text in the arc on top with no spaces at all.

Although Chinese characters represent single syllables, Mandarin Chinese is a polysyllabic language. Spacing in pinyin is usually based on words, and not on single syllables. However, there are often ambiguities in partitioning a word.

The Basic Rules of the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet Orthography (汉语拼音正词法基本规则; 漢語拼音正詞法基本規則; Hànyǔ Pīnyīn Zhèngcífǎ Jīběn Guīzé) were put into effect in 1988 by the National Educational Commission (国家教育委员会; 國家教育委員會; Guójiā Jiàoyù Wěiyuánhuì) and the National Language Commission (国家语言文字工作委员会; 國家語言文字工作委員會; Guójiā Yǔyán Wénzì Gōngzuò Wěiyuánhuì).[44] These rules became a Guóbiāo recommendation in 1996[44][45] and were updated in 2012.[46]

  1. General
    1. Single meaning: Words with a single meaning, which are usually set up of two characters (sometimes one, seldom three), are written together and not capitalized: rén (, person); péngyou (朋友, friend); qiǎokèlì (巧克力, chocolate)
    2. Combined meaning (2 or 3 characters): Same goes for words combined of two words to one meaning: hǎifēng (海风; 海風, sea breeze); wèndá (问答; 問答, question and answer); quánguó (全国; 全國, nationwide); chángyòngcí (常用词; 常用詞, common words)
    3. Combined meaning (4 or more characters): Words with four or more characters having one meaning are split up with their original meaning if possible: wúfèng gāngguǎn (无缝钢管; 無縫鋼管, seamless steel-tube); huánjìng bǎohù guīhuà (环境保护规划; 環境保護規劃, environmental protection planning); gāoměngsuānjiǎ (高锰酸钾; 高錳酸鉀, potassium permanganate)
  2. Duplicated words
    1. AA: Duplicated characters (AA) are written together: rénrén (人人, everybody), kànkan (看看, to have a look), niánnián (年年, every year)
    2. ABAB: Two characters duplicated (ABAB) are written separated: yánjiū yánjiū (研究研究, to study, to research), xuěbái xuěbái (雪白雪白, white as snow)
    3. AABB: Characters in the AABB schema are written together: láiláiwǎngwǎng (来来往往; 來來往往, come and go), qiānqiānwànwàn (千千万万; 千千萬萬, numerous)
  3. Prefixes (前附成分; qiánfù chéngfèn) and Suffixes (后附成分; 後附成分; hòufù chéngfèn): Words accompanied by prefixes such as (, vice), zǒng (; , chief), fēi (, non-), fǎn (, anti-), chāo (, ultra-), lǎo (, old), ā (, used before names to indicate familiarity), (, -able), (; , -less) and bàn (, semi-) and suffixes such as zi (, noun suffix), r (; , diminutive suffix), tou (; , noun suffix), xìng (, -ness, -ity), zhě (, -er, -ist), yuán (; , person), jiā (, -er, -ist), shǒu (, person skilled in a field), huà (, -ize) and men (; , plural marker) are written together: fùbùzhǎng (副部长; 副部長, vice minister), chéngwùyuán (乘务员; 乘務員, conductor), háizimen (孩子们; 孩子們, children)
  4. Nouns and names (名词; 名詞; míngcí)
    1. Words of position are separated: mén wài (门外; 門外, outdoor), hé li (河里; 河裏, under the river), huǒchē shàngmian (火车上面; 火車上面, on the train), Huáng Hé yǐnán (黄河以南; 黃河以南, south of the Yellow River)
      1. Exceptions are words traditionally connected: tiānshang (天上, in the sky or outerspace), dìxia (地下, on the ground), kōngzhōng (空中, in the air), hǎiwài (海外, overseas)
    2. Surnames are separated from the given names, each capitalized: Lǐ Huá (李华; 李華), Zhāng Sān (张三; 張三). If the surname and/or given name consists of two syllables, it should be written as one: Zhūgě Kǒngmíng (诸葛孔明; 諸葛孔明).
    3. Titles following the name are separated and are not capitalized: Wáng bùzhǎng (王部长; 王部長, Minister Wang), Lǐ xiānsheng (李先生, Mr. Li), Tián zhǔrèn (田主任, Director Tian), Zhào tóngzhì (赵同志; 趙同志, Comrade Zhao).
    4. The forms of addressing people with prefixes such as Lǎo (), Xiǎo (), () and Ā () are capitalized: Xiǎo Liú (小刘; 小劉, [young] Ms./Mr. Liu), Dà Lǐ (大李, [great; elder] Mr. Li), Ā Sān (阿三, Ah San), Lǎo Qián (老钱; 老錢, [senior] Mr. Qian), Lǎo Wú (老吴; 老吳, [senior] Mr. Wu)
      1. Exceptions include Kǒngzǐ (孔子, Confucius), Bāogōng (包公, Judge Bao), Xīshī (西施, Xishi), Mèngchángjūn (孟尝君; 孟嘗君, Lord Mengchang)
    5. Geographical names of China: Běijīng Shì (北京市, city of Beijing), Héběi Shěng (河北省, province of Hebei), Yālù Jiāng (鸭绿江; 鴨綠江, Yalu River), Tài Shān (泰山, Mount Tai), Dòngtíng Hú (洞庭湖, Dongting Lake), Qióngzhōu Hǎixiá (琼州海峡; 瓊州海峽, Qiongzhou Strait)
      1. Monosyllabic prefixes and suffixes are written together with their related part: Dōngsì Shítiáo (东四; 東四, Dongsi 10th Alley)
      2. Common geographical nouns that have become part of proper nouns are written together: Hēilóngjiāng (黑龙江; 黑龍江, Heilongjiang)
    6. Non-Chinese names are written in Hanyu Pinyin: Āpèi Āwàngjìnměi (阿沛·阿旺晋美; 阿沛·阿旺晉美, Ngapoi Ngawang Jigme); Dōngjīng (东京; 東京, Tokyo)
  5. Verbs (动词; 動詞; dòngcí): Verbs and their suffixes -zhe (; ), -le () or -guo ((; ) are written as one: kànzhe (看着; 看著, seeing), jìnxíngguo (进行过; 進行過, have been implemented). Le as it appears in the end of a sentence is separated though: Huǒchē dào le. (火车到了; 火車到了, The train [has] arrived).
    1. Verbs and their objects are separated: kàn xìn (看信, read a letter), chī yú (吃鱼; 吃魚, eat fish), kāi wánxiào (开玩笑; 開玩笑, to be kidding).
    2. If verbs and their complements are each monosyllabic, they are written together; if not, they are separated: gǎohuài (搞坏; 搞壞, to make broken), dǎsǐ (打死, hit to death), huàwéi (化为; 化為, to become), zhěnglǐ hǎo (整理好, to sort out), gǎixiě wéi (改写为; 改寫為, to rewrite as)
  6. Adjectives (形容词; 形容詞; xíngróngcí): A monosyllabic adjective and its reduplication are written as one: mēngmēngliàng (矇矇亮, dim), liàngtángtáng (亮堂堂, shining bright)
    1. Complements of size or degree such as xiē (), yīxiē (一些), diǎnr (点儿; 點兒) and yīdiǎnr (一点儿; 一點兒) are written separated: dà xiē (大些), a little bigger), kuài yīdiǎnr (快一点儿; 快一點兒, a bit faster)
  7. Pronouns (代词; 代詞; dàicí)
    1. Personal pronouns and interrogative pronouns are separated from other words: Wǒ ài Zhōngguó. (我爱中国。; 我愛中國。, I love China); Shéi shuō de? (谁说的?; 誰說的?, Who said it?)
    2. The demonstrative pronoun zhè (; , this), (, that) and the question pronoun (, which) are separated: zhè rén (这人; 這人, this person), nà cì huìyì (那次会议; 那次會議, that meeting), nǎ zhāng bàozhǐ (哪张报纸; 哪張報紙, which newspaper)
      1. Exception—If zhè, or are followed by diǎnr (点儿; 點兒), bān (), biān (; ), shí (; ), huìr (会儿; 會兒), (; ), me (; ) or the general classifier ge (; ), they are written together: nàlǐ (那里; 那裏, there), zhèbiān (这边; 這邊, over here), zhège (这个; 這個, this)
  8. Numerals (数词; 數詞; shùcí) and measure words (量词; 量詞; liàngcí)
    1. Numbers and words like (, each), měi (, each), mǒu (, any), běn (, this), gāi (; , that), (, my, our) and (, your) are separated from the measure words following them: liǎng gè rén (两个人; 兩個人, two people), gè guó (各国; 各國, every nation), měi nián (每年, every year), mǒu gōngchǎng (某工厂; 某工廠, a certain factory), wǒ xiào (我校, our school)
    2. Numbers up to 100 are written as single words: sānshísān (三十三, thirty-three). Above that, the hundreds, thousands, etc. are written as separate words: jiǔyì qīwàn èrqiān sānbǎi wǔshíliù (九亿七万二千三百五十六; 九億七萬二千三百五十六, nine hundred million, seventy-two thousand, three hundred fifty-six). Arabic numerals are kept as Arabic numerals: 635 fēnjī (635 分机; 635 分機, extension 635)
    3. According to 汉语拼音正词法基本规则 6.1.5.4, the () used in ordinal numerals is followed by a hyphen: - (第一, first), -356 (第 356, 356th). The hyphen should not be used if the word in which () and the numeral appear does not refer to an ordinal number in the context. For example: Dìwǔ (第五, a Chinese compound surname).[47][48] The chū () in front of numbers one to ten is written together with the number: chūshí (初十, tenth day)
    4. Numbers representing month and day are hyphenated: wǔ-sì (五四, May fourth), yīèr-jiǔ (一二·九, December ninth)
    5. Words of approximations such as duō (), lái (; ) and (; ) are separated from numerals and measure words: yībǎi duō gè (一百多个; 一百多個, around a hundred); shí lái wàn gè (十来万个; 十來萬個, around a hundred thousand); jǐ jiā rén (几家人; 幾家人, a few families)
      1. Shíjǐ (十几; 十幾, more than ten) and jǐshí (几十; 幾十, tens) are written together: shíjǐ gè rén (十几个人; 十幾個人, more than ten people); jǐshí (几十根钢管; 幾十根鋼管, tens of steel pipes)
    6. Approximations with numbers or units that are close together are hyphenated: sān-wǔ tiān (三五天, three to five days), qiān-bǎi cì (千百次, thousands of times)
  9. Other function words (虚词; 虛詞; xūcí) are separated from other words
    1. Adverbs (副词; 副詞; fùcí): hěn hǎo (很好, very good), zuì kuài (最快, fastest), fēicháng dà (非常大, extremely big)
    2. Prepositions (介词; 介詞; jiècí): zài qiánmiàn (在前面, in front)
    3. Conjunctions (连词; 連詞; liáncí): nǐ hé wǒ (你和我, you and I/me), Nǐ lái háishi bù lái? (你来还是不来?; 你來還是不來?, Are you coming or not?)
    4. "Constructive auxiliaries" (结构助词; 結構助詞; jiégòu zhùcí) such as de (的/地/得), zhī () and suǒ (): mànmàn de zou (慢慢地走), go slowly)
      1. A monosyllabic word can also be written together with de (的/地/得): wǒ de shū / wǒde shū (我的书; 我的書, my book)
    5. Modal auxiliaries at the end of a sentence: Nǐ zhīdào ma? (你知道吗?; 你知道嗎?, Do you know?), Kuài qù ba! (快去吧!, Go quickly!)
    6. Exclamations and interjections: À! Zhēn měi! (啊!真美!), Oh, it's so beautiful!)
    7. Onomatopoeia: mó dāo huòhuò (磨刀霍霍, honing a knife), hōnglōng yī shēng (轰隆一声; 轟隆一聲, rumbling)
  10. Capitalization
    1. The first letter of the first word in a sentence is capitalized: Chūntiān lái le. (春天来了。; 春天來了。, Spring has arrived.)
    2. The first letter of each line in a poem is capitalized.
    3. The first letter of a proper noun is capitalized: Běijīng (北京, Beijing), Guójì Shūdiàn (国际书店; 國際書店, International Bookstore), Guójiā Yǔyán Wénzì Gōngzuò Wěiyuánhuì (国家语言文字工作委员会; 國家語言文字工作委員會, National Language Commission)
      1. On some occasions, proper nouns can be written in all caps: BĚIJĪNG, GUÓJÌ SHŪDIÀN, GUÓJIĀ YǓYÁN WÉNZÌ GŌNGZUÒ WĚIYUÁNHUÌ
    4. If a proper noun is written together with a common noun to make a proper noun, it is capitalized. If not, it is not capitalized: Fójiào (佛教, Buddhism), Tángcháo (唐朝, Tang dynasty), jīngjù (京剧; 京劇, Beijing opera), chuānxiōng (川芎, Szechuan lovage)
  11. Initialisms
    1. Single words are abbreviated by taking the first letter of each character of the word: Bjīng (北京, Beijing) → BJ
    2. A group of words are abbreviated by taking the first letter of each word in the group: guójiā biāozhǔn (国家标准; 國家標準, Guóbiāo standard) → GB
    3. Initials can also be indicated using full stops: BeǐjīngB.J., guójiā biāozhǔnG.B.
    4. When abbreviating names, the surname is written fully (first letter capitalized or in all caps), but only the first letter of each character in the given name is taken, with full stops after each initial: Lǐ Huá (李华; 李華) → Lǐ H. or LǏ H., Zhūgě Kǒngmíng (诸葛孔明; 諸葛孔明) → Zhūgě K. M. or ZHŪGĚ K. M.
  12. Line wrapping
    1. Words can only be split by the character:
      guāngmíng (光明, bright) → guāng-
      míng
      , not gu-
      āngmíng
    2. Initials cannot be split:
      Wáng J. G. (王建国; 王建國) → Wáng
      J. G.
      , not Wáng J.-
      G.
    3. Apostrophes are removed in line wrapping:
      Xī'ān (西安, Xi'an) → Xī-
      ān
      , not Xī-
      'ān
    4. When the original word has a hyphen, the hyphen is added at the beginning of the new line:
      chēshuǐ-mǎlóng (车水马龙; 車水馬龍, heavy traffic: "carriage, water, horse, dragon") → chēshuǐ-
      -mǎlóng
  13. Hyphenation: In addition to the situations mentioned above, there are four situations where hyphens are used.
    1. Coordinate and disjunctive compound words, where the two elements are conjoined or opposed, but retain their individual meaning: gōng-jiàn (弓箭, bow and arrow), kuài-màn (快慢, speed: "fast-slow"), shíqī-bā suì (十七八岁; 十七八歲, 17–18 years old), dǎ-mà (打骂; 打罵, beat and scold), Yīng-Hàn (英汉; 英漢, English–Chinese [dictionary]), Jīng-Jīn (京津, Beijing–Tianjin), lù-hǎi-kōngjūn (陆海空军; 陸海空軍, army-navy-airforce).
    2. Abbreviated compounds (略语; 略語; lüèyǔ): gōnggòng guānxì (公共关系; 公共關係, public relations) → gōng-guān (公关; 公關, PR), chángtú diànhuà (长途电话; 長途電話, long-distance calling) → cháng-huà (长话; 長話, LDC).
      Exceptions are made when the abbreviated term has become established as a word in its own right, as in chūzhōng (初中) for chūjí zhōngxué (初级中学; 初級中學, junior high school). Abbreviations of proper-name compounds, however, should always be hyphenated: Běijīng Dàxué (北京大学; 北京大學, Peking University) → Běi-Dà (北大, PKU).
    3. Four-syllable idioms: fēngpíng-làngjìng (风平浪静; 風平浪靜), calm and tranquil: "wind calm, waves down"), huījīn-rútǔ (挥金如土; 揮金如土, spend money like water: "throw gold like dirt"), zhǐ-bǐ-mò-yàn (纸笔墨砚; 紙筆墨硯, paper-brush-ink-inkstone [four coordinate words]).[49]
      1. Other idioms are separated according to the words that make up the idiom: bēi hēiguō (背黑锅; 背黑鍋, to be made a scapegoat: "to carry a black pot"), zhǐ xǔ zhōuguān fànghuǒ, bù xǔ bǎixìng diǎndēng (只许州官放火,不许百姓点灯; 只許州官放火,不許百姓點燈, Gods may do what cattle may not: "only the official is allowed to light the fire; the commoners are not allowed to light a lamp")
  14. Punctuation
    1. The Chinese full stop (。) is changed to a western full stop (.)
    2. The hyphen is a half-width hyphen (-)
    3. Ellipsis can be changed from 6 dots (......) to 3 dots (...)
    4. The enumeration comma (、) is changed to a normal comma (,)
    5. All other punctuation marks are the same as the ones used in normal texts

Comparison with other orthographies

Pinyin is now used by foreign students learning Chinese as a second language, as well as Bopomofo.

Pinyin assigns some Latin letters sound values which are quite different from those of most languages. This has drawn some criticism as it may lead to confusion when uninformed speakers apply either native or English assumed pronunciations to words. However, this problem is not limited only to pinyin, since many languages that use the Latin alphabet natively also assign different values to the same letters. A recent study on Chinese writing and literacy concluded, "By and large, pinyin represents the Chinese sounds better than the Wade–Giles system, and does so with fewer extra marks."[50]

As Pinyin is a phonetic writing system for modern Standard Chinese, it is not designed to replace Chinese characters for writing Literary Chinese, the standard written language prior to the early 1900s. In particular, Chinese characters retains semantic cues that helps distinguish differently pronounced words in the ancient classical language that are now homophones in Mandarin. Thus, Chinese characters remain indispensable for recording and transmitting the corpus of Chinese writing from the past.

Pinyin is also not designed to transcribe Chinese language varieties other than Standard Chinese, which is based on the phonological system of Beijing Mandarin. Other romanization schemes have been devised to transcribe those other Chinese varieties, such as Jyutping for Cantonese and Pe̍h-ōe-jī for Hokkien.

Comparison charts

Vowels a, e, o
IPA a ɔ ɛ ɤ ai ei au ou an ən əŋ ʊŋ
Pinyin a o ê e ai ei ao ou an en ang eng ong er
Tongyong Pinyin e
Wade–Giles eh ê/o ên êng ung êrh
Bopomofo ㄨㄥ
example
Vowels i, u, y
IPA i je jou jɛn in jʊŋ u wo wei wən wəŋ y ɥe ɥɛn yn
Pinyin yi ye you yan yin ying yong wu wo/o wei wen weng yu yue yuan yun
Tongyong Pinyin wun wong
Wade–Giles i/yi yeh yu yen yung wên wêng yüeh yüan yün
Bopomofo ㄧㄝ ㄧㄡ ㄧㄢ ㄧㄣ ㄧㄥ ㄩㄥ ㄨㄛ/ㄛ ㄨㄟ ㄨㄣ ㄨㄥ ㄩㄝ ㄩㄢ ㄩㄣ
example
Non-sibilant consonants
IPA p m fəŋ tjou twei twən tʰɤ ny ly kɤɚ kʰɤ
Pinyin b p m feng diu dui dun te ge ke he
Tongyong Pinyin fong diou duei nyu lyu
Wade–Giles p fêng tiu tui tun tʻê ko kʻo ho
Bopomofo ㄈㄥ ㄉㄧㄡ ㄉㄨㄟ ㄉㄨㄣ ㄊㄜ ㄋㄩ ㄌㄩ ㄍㄜ ㄎㄜ ㄏㄜ
example
Sibilant consonants
IPA tɕjɛn tɕjʊŋ tɕʰin ɕɥɛn ʈʂɤ ʈʂɨ ʈʂʰɤ ʈʂʰɨ ʂɤ ʂɨ ɻɤ ɻɨ tsɤ tswo tsɨ tsʰɤ tsʰɨ
Pinyin jian jiong qin xuan zhe zhi che chi she shi re ri ze zuo zi ce ci se si
Tongyong Pinyin jyong cin syuan jhe jhih chih shih rih zih cih sih
Wade–Giles chien chiung chʻin shüan chê chih chʻê chʻih shê shih jih tsê tso tzŭ tsʻê tzʻŭ ssŭ
Bopomofo ㄐㄧㄢ ㄐㄩㄥ ㄑㄧㄣ ㄒㄩㄢ ㄓㄜ ㄔㄜ ㄕㄜ ㄖㄜ ㄗㄜ ㄗㄨㄛ ㄘㄜ ㄙㄜ
example
Tones
IPA ma˥˥ ma˧˥ ma˨˩˦ ma˥˩ ma
Pinyin ma
Tongyong Pinyin ma
Wade–Giles ma1 ma2 ma3 ma4 ma
Bopomofo ㄇㄚ ㄇㄚˊ ㄇㄚˇ ㄇㄚˋ ˙ㄇㄚ
example (Chinese characters)

Unicode code points

Based on ISO 7098:2015, Information and Documentation: Chinese Romanization (《信息与文献——中文罗马字母拼写法》), tonal marks for pinyin should use the symbols from Combining Diacritical Marks, as opposed by the use of Spacing Modifier Letters in Bopomofo. Lowercase letters with tone marks are included in GB/T 2312 and their uppercase counterparts are included in JIS X 0212;[51] thus Unicode includes all the common accented characters from pinyin.[52]

Due to The Basic Rules of the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet Orthography, all accented letters are required to have both uppercase and lowercase characters as per their normal counterparts.

Accented pinyin characters[1][2]
Letter First tone Second tone Third tone Fourth tone
Combining Diacritical Marks ̄ (U+0304) ́ (U+0301) ̌ (U+030C) ̀ (U+0300)
Common letters
Uppercase A Ā (U+0100) Á (U+00C1) Ǎ (U+01CD) À (U+00C0)
E Ē (U+0112) É (U+00C9) Ě (U+011A) È (U+00C8)
I Ī (U+012A) Í (U+00CD) Ǐ (U+01CF) Ì (U+00CC)
O Ō (U+014C) Ó (U+00D3) Ǒ (U+01D1) Ò (U+00D2)
U Ū (U+016A) Ú (U+00DA) Ǔ (U+01D3) Ù (U+00D9)
Ü (U+00DC) Ǖ (U+01D5) Ǘ (U+01D7) Ǚ (U+01D9) Ǜ (U+01DB)
Lowercase a ā (U+0101) á (U+00E1) ǎ (U+01CE) à (U+00E0)
e ē (U+0113) é (U+00E9) ě (U+011B) è (U+00E8)
i ī (U+012B) í (U+00ED) ǐ (U+01D0) ì (U+00EC)
o ō (U+014D) ó (U+00F3) ǒ (U+01D2) ò (U+00F2)
u ū (U+016B) ú (U+00FA) ǔ (U+01D4) ù (U+00F9)
ü (U+00FC) ǖ (U+01D6) ǘ (U+01D8) ǚ (U+01DA) ǜ (U+01DC)
Rare letters
Uppercase Ê (U+00CA) Ê̄ (U+00CA U+0304) Ế (U+1EBE) Ê̌ (U+00CA U+030C) Ề (U+1EC0)
M M̄ (U+004D U+0304) Ḿ (U+1E3E) M̌ (U+004D U+030C) M̀ (U+004D U+0300)
N N̄ (U+004E U+0304) Ń (U+0143) Ň (U+0147) Ǹ (U+01F8)
Lowercase ê (U+00EA) ê̄ (U+00EA U+0304) ế (U+1EBF) ê̌ (U+00EA U+030C) ề (U+1EC1)
m m̄ (U+006D U+0304) ḿ (U+1E3F) m̌ (U+006D U+030C) m̀ (U+006D U+0300)
n n̄ (U+006E U+0304) ń (U+0144) ň (U+0148) ǹ (U+01F9)
Notes
1.^ Yellow cells indicate that there are no single Unicode character for that letter; the character shown here uses Combining Diacritical Mark characters to display the letter.[52]
2.^ Grey cells indicate that Xiandai Hanyu Cidian does not include pinyin with that specific letter.[52][53]
 
Microsoft Pinyin IME
When using pinyin IME, choosing ḿ/ǹ outputs PUA U+E7C7 and U+E7C8.

GBK has mapped two characters ‘ḿ’ and ‘ǹ’ to Private Use Areas in Unicode as U+E7C7 () and U+E7C8 () respectively,[54] thus some Simplified Chinese fonts (e.g. SimSun) that adheres to GBK include both characters in the Private Use Areas, and some input methods (e.g. Sogou Pinyin) also outputs the Private Use Areas code point instead of the original character. As the superset GB 18030 changed the mappings of ‘ḿ’ and ‘ǹ’,[53] this has an caused issue where the input methods and font files use different encoding standard, and thus the input and output of both characters are mixed up.[52]

Shorthand pinyin letters[52]
Uppercase Lowercase Note Example[1]
Ĉ (U+0108) ĉ (U+0109) Abbreviation of ch 长/長 can be spelled as ĉáŋ
Ŝ (U+015C) ŝ (U+015D) Abbreviation of sh 伤/傷 can be spelled as ŝāŋ
Ẑ (U+1E90) ẑ (U+1E91) Abbreviation of zh 张/張 can be spelled as Ẑāŋ
Ŋ (U+014A) ŋ (U+014B) Abbreviation of ng 让/讓 can be spelled as ràŋ, 嗯 can be spelled as ŋ̀
Notes
1.^ Example given is the abbreviated/shorthand version according to Scheme for the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet, it is inadvisable to use them for real life usage.

Other symbols that are used in pinyin is as follow:

Pinyin symbols
Symbol in Chinese Symbol in pinyin Usage Example
。(U+3002) . (U+002E) Marks end of sentence. 你好。 Nǐ hǎo.
,(U+FF0C)/、 (U+3001) , (U+002C) Marks connecting sentence. 你,好吗? Nǐ, hǎo ma?
—— (U+2014 U+2014) — (U+2014) Indicates breaking of meaning mid-sentence. 枢纽部分——中央大厅 shūniǔ bùfèn — zhōngyāng dàtīng
…… (U+2026 U+2026) … (U+2026) Used for omitting a word, phrase, line, paragraph, or more from a quoted passage. 我…… Wǒ…
· (U+00B7) Marks for the neutral tone, can be placed before the neutral-tone syllable. 吗 ·ma
- (U+002D) Hyphenation between abbreviated compounds. 公关 gōng-guān
' (U+0027) Indicates separate syllables. 西安 Xī'ān (compared to 先 xiān)

Other punctuation mark and symbols in Chinese are to use the equivalent symbol in English noted in to GB/T 15834.

 
Single storey a in four different Kai script fonts. Notice that accented pinyin letters are different in style and width with the regular letter.

In educational usage, to match the handwritten style, some fonts used a different style for the letter a and g to have an appearance of single-storey a and single-storey g. Fonts that follow GB/T 2312 usually make single-storey a in the accented pinyin characters but leaving unaccented double-storey a, causing a discrepancy in the font itself.[52] Unicode did not provide an official way to encode single-storey a and single-storey g, but as IPA require the differentiation of single-storey and double-storey a and g, thus the single-storey character ɑ/ɡ in IPA should be used if the need to separate single-storey a and g arises. For daily usage there is no need to differentiate single-storey and double-storey a/g.

Single-storey alphabet
Alphabet Single-storey representation Notes
a ɑ (U+0251) IPA /ɑ/
α (U+03B1) Greek alpha, not suggested
g ɡ (U+0261) IPA /ɡ/

Usage

 
A school slogan asking elementary students to speak Standard Chinese is annotated with pinyin, but without tonal marks.

Pinyin superseded older romanization systems such as Wade–Giles (1859; modified 1892) and postal romanization, and replaced zhuyin as the method of Chinese phonetic instruction in mainland China. The ISO adopted pinyin as the standard romanization for modern Chinese in 1982 (ISO 7098:1982, superseded by ISO 7098:2015). The United Nations followed suit in 1986.[2][55] It has also been accepted by the government of Singapore, the United States's Library of Congress, the American Library Association, and many other international institutions.[56][failed verification]

The spelling of Chinese geographical or personal names in pinyin has become the most common way to transcribe them in English. Pinyin has also become the dominant method for entering Chinese text into computers in Mainland China, in contrast to Taiwan; where Bopomofo is most commonly used.

Families outside of Taiwan who speak Mandarin as a mother tongue use pinyin to help children associate characters with spoken words which they already know. Chinese families outside of Taiwan who speak some other language as their mother tongue use the system to teach children Mandarin pronunciation when they learn vocabulary in elementary school.[57][58]

Since 1958, pinyin has been actively used in adult education as well, making it easier for formerly illiterate people to continue with self-study after a short period of pinyin literacy instruction.[59]

Pinyin has become a tool for many foreigners to learn Mandarin pronunciation, and is used to explain both the grammar and spoken Mandarin coupled with Chinese characters (汉字; 漢字; Hànzì). Books containing both Chinese characters and pinyin are often used by foreign learners of Chinese. Pinyin's role in teaching pronunciation to foreigners and children is similar in some respects to furigana-based books (with hiragana letters written above or next to kanji, directly analogous to zhuyin) in Japanese or fully vocalised texts in Arabic ("vocalised Arabic").

The tone-marking diacritics are commonly omitted in popular news stories and even in scholarly works, as well as in the traditional Mainland Chinese Braille system, which is similar to pinyin, but meant for blind readers.[60] This results in some degree of ambiguity as to which words are being represented.

Computer input systems

Simple computer systems, able to display only 7-bit ASCII text (essentially the 26 Latin letters, 10 digits, and punctuation marks), long provided a convincing argument for using unaccented pinyin instead of Chinese characters. Today, however, most computer systems are able to display characters from Chinese and many other writing systems as well, and have them entered with a Latin keyboard using an input method editor. Alternatively, some PDAs, tablet computers, and digitizing tablets allow users to input characters graphically by writing with a stylus, with concurrent online handwriting recognition.

Pinyin with accents can be entered with the use of special keyboard layouts or various character map utilities. X keyboard extension includes a "Hanyu Pinyin (altgr)" layout for AltGr-triggered dead key input of accented characters.[61]

In Taiwan

Taiwan (Republic of China) adopted Tongyong Pinyin, a modification of Hanyu Pinyin, as the official romanization system on the national level between October 2002 and January 2009, when it decided to promote Hanyu Pinyin. Tongyong Pinyin ("common phonetic"), a romanization system developed in Taiwan, was designed to romanize languages and dialects spoken on the island in addition to Mandarin Chinese. The Kuomintang (KMT) party resisted its adoption, preferring the Hanyu Pinyin system used in mainland China and in general use internationally. Romanization preferences quickly became associated with issues of national identity. Preferences split along party lines: the KMT and its affiliated parties in the pan-blue coalition supported the use of Hanyu Pinyin while the Democratic Progressive Party and its affiliated parties in the pan-green coalition favored the use of Tongyong Pinyin.

Tongyong Pinyin was made the official system in an administrative order that allowed its adoption by local governments to be voluntary. Locales in Kaohsiung, Tainan and other areas use romanizations derived from Tongyong Pinyin for some district and street names. A few localities with governments controlled by the KMT, most notably Taipei, Hsinchu, and Kinmen County, overrode the order and converted to Hanyu Pinyin before the January 1, 2009 national-level decision,[5][6] though with a slightly different capitalization convention than mainland China. Most areas of Taiwan adopted Tongyong Pinyin, consistent with the national policy. Today, many street signs in Taiwan are using Tongyong Pinyin-derived romanizations,[62][63] but some, especially in northern Taiwan, display Hanyu Pinyin-derived romanizations. It is not unusual to see spellings on street signs and buildings derived from the older Wade–Giles, MPS2 and other systems.

Attempts to make pinyin standard in Taiwan have had uneven success, with most place and proper names remaining unaffected, including all major cities. Personal names on Taiwanese passports honor the choices of Taiwanese citizens, who can choose Wade-Giles, Hakka, Hoklo, Tongyong, aboriginal, or pinyin.[64] Official pinyin use is controversial, as when pinyin use for a metro line in 2017 provoked protests, despite government responses that "The romanization used on road signs and at transportation stations is intended for foreigners... Every foreigner learning Mandarin learns Hanyu pinyin, because it is the international standard...The decision has nothing to do with the nation’s self-determination or any ideologies, because the key point is to ensure that foreigners can read signs."[65]

In Singapore

Singapore implemented Hanyu Pinyin as the official romanization system for Mandarin in the public sector starting in the 1980s, in conjunction with the Speak Mandarin Campaign.[66] Hanyu Pinyin is also used as the romanization system to teach Mandarin Chinese at schools.[67] While the process of Pinyinisation has been mostly successful in government communication, placenames, and businesses established in the 1980s and onward, it continues to be unpopular in some areas, most notably for personal names and vocabulary borrowed from other varieties of Chinese already established in the local vernacular.[66] In these situations, romanization continues to be based on the Chinese language variety it originated from, especially the three largest Chinese varieties traditionally spoken in Singapore (Hokkien, Teochew, and Cantonese).

For other languages

Pinyin-like systems have been devised for other variants of Chinese. Guangdong Romanization is a set of romanizations devised by the government of Guangdong province for Cantonese, Teochew, Hakka (Moiyen dialect), and Hainanese. All of these are designed to use Latin letters in a similar way to pinyin.

In addition, in accordance to the Regulation of Phonetic Transcription in Hanyu Pinyin Letters of Place Names in Minority Nationality Languages (少数民族语地名汉语拼音字母音译转写法; 少數民族語地名漢語拼音字母音譯寫法) promulgated in 1976, place names in non-Han languages like Mongolian, Uyghur, and Tibetan are also officially transcribed using pinyin in a system adopted by the State Administration of Surveying and Mapping and Geographical Names Committee known as SASM/GNC romanization. The pinyin letters (26 Roman letters, plus ü and ê) are used to approximate the non-Han language in question as closely as possible. This results in spellings that are different from both the customary spelling of the place name, and the pinyin spelling of the name in Chinese:

Customary Official (pinyin for local name) Traditional Chinese name Simplified Chinese name Pinyin for Chinese name
Shigatse Xigazê 日喀則 日喀则 Rìkāzé
Urumchi Ürümqi 烏魯木齊 乌鲁木齐 Wūlǔmùqí
Lhasa Lhasa 拉薩 拉萨 Lāsà
Hohhot Hohhot 呼和浩特 呼和浩特 Hūhéhàotè
Golmud Golmud 格爾木 格尔木 Gé'ěrmù
Qiqihar Qiqihar 齊齊哈爾 齐齐哈尔 Qíqíhā'ěr

Tongyong Pinyin was developed in Taiwan for use in rendering not only Mandarin Chinese, but other languages and dialects spoken on the island such as Taiwanese, Hakka, and aboriginal languages.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ This was part of the Soviet program of Latinization meant to reform alphabets for languages in that country to use Latin characters.

References

  1. ^ The online version of the canonical[clarification needed "According to which group?"] Guoyu Cidian (《國語辭典》) defines this term as: 標語音﹑不標語義的符號系統,足以明確紀錄某一種語言。 'a system of symbols for notation of the sounds of words, rather than for their meanings, that is sufficient to accurately record some language'. See this entry online.[permanent dead link] Retrieved 14 September 2012.
  2. ^ a b c d e f Margalit Fox (14 January 2017). "Zhou Youguang, Who Made Writing Chinese as Simple as ABC, Dies at 111". The New York Times.
  3. ^ "Pinyin celebrates 50th birthday". Xinhua News Agency. 11 February 2008. Retrieved 20 September 2008.
  4. ^ "ISO 7098:1982 – Documentation – Romanization of Chinese". Retrieved 1 March 2009.
  5. ^ a b Shih Hsiu-Chuan (18 September 2008). "Hanyu Pinyin to be standard system in 2009". Taipei Times. p. 2.
  6. ^ a b . The China Post. 18 September 2008. Archived from the original on 19 September 2008.
  7. ^ Copper, John F. (2014). Historical Dictionary of Taiwan (Republic of China). Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1-4422-4307-1. Retrieved 20 July 2020.
  8. ^ Copper, John F. (2015). Historical Dictionary of Taiwan (Republic of China. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. p. xv. ISBN 9781442243064. Retrieved 4 December 2017. But some cities, businesses, and organizations, notably in the south of Taiwan, did not accept this, as it suggested that Taiwan is more closely tied to the PRC.
  9. ^ Sin, Kiong Wong (2012). Confucianism, Chinese History and Society. World Scientific. p. 72. ISBN 978-9814374477. Retrieved 13 July 2014.
  10. ^ Brockey, Liam Matthew (2009). Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579–1724. Harvard University Press. p. 261. ISBN 978-0674028814. Retrieved 13 July 2014.
  11. ^ a b Chan, Wing-tsit; Adler, Joseph (2013). Sources of Chinese Tradition. Columbia University Press. pp. 303, 304. ISBN 978-0231517997. Retrieved 13 July 2014.
  12. ^ Mair, Victor H. (2002). "Sound and Meaning in the History of Characters: Views of China's Earliest Script Reformers". In Erbaugh, Mary S. (ed.). Difficult Characters: Interdisciplinary Studies of Chinese and Japanese Writing. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University National East Asian Language Resource Center.
  13. ^ Ao, Benjamin (1997). "History and Prospect of Chinese Romanization". Chinese Librarianship: An International Electronic Journal. 4.
  14. ^ Norman, Jerry (1988). Chinese, Cambridge Language Surveys. Cambridge University Press. p. 261. ISBN 0521296536. Retrieved 13 July 2014.
  15. ^ Jensen, Lionel M.; Weston, Timothy B. (2007). China's Transformations: The Stories Beyond the Headlines. Rowman & Littlefield. p. XX. ISBN 978-0742538634.
  16. ^ Chen, Ping (1999). Modern Chinese: History and Sociolinguistics. Cambridge University Press. p. 186. ISBN 0521645727. Retrieved 13 July 2014. Latinxua Sin Wenz tones.
  17. ^ John DeFrancis, The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1984), pp. 246-247.
  18. ^ "Father of pinyin". China Daily. 26 March 2009. Retrieved 12 July 2009. Reprinted in part as Simon, Alan (21–27 January 2011). "Father of Pinyin". China Daily Asia Weekly. Hong Kong. Xinhua. p. 20.
  19. ^ Dwyer, Colin (14 January 2017). "Obituary: Zhou Youguang, Architect Of A Bridge Between Languages, Dies At 111". NPR. National Public Radio. Retrieved 20 December 2018.
  20. ^ Branigan, Tania (21 February 2008). "Sound Principles". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 20 September 2008.
  21. ^ Hessler, Peter (8 February 2004). "Oracle Bones". The New Yorker. Retrieved 17 March 2022.
  22. ^ Rohsenow, John S. 1989. Fifty years of script and written language reform in the PRC: the genesis of the language law of 2001. In Zhou Minglang and Sun Hongkai, eds. Language Policy in the People's Republic of China: Theory and Practice Since 1949, p. 23
  23. ^ Branigan, Tania (21 February 2008). "Sound principles". The Guardian. London.
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  26. ^ Terry, Edith. How Asia Got Rich: Japan, China and the Asian Miracle. M.E. Sharpe, 2002. 632. Retrieved from Google Books on August 7, 2011. ISBN 0-7656-0356-X, 9780765603562.
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  35. ^ 怪 北捷景安站 英譯如「金幹站」. Apple Daily (Taiwan). 23 December 2012. Retrieved 2 April 2019. 北市捷運局指出,目前有7大捷運站名英譯沒有隔音符號,常讓外國人問路鬧烏龍,如大安站「Daan」被誤唸為丹站、景安站「Jingan」變成金幹站等,捷運局擬加撇號「’」或橫線「-」,以利分辨音節。
  36. ^ Section 5.1.6 of the current standard GB/T 28039-2011 Chinese phonetic alphabet spelling rules for Chinese names
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  62. ^ 劉婉君 (15 October 2018). 路牌改通用拼音? 南市府:已採用多年. Liberty Times (in Chinese (Taiwan)). Retrieved 28 July 2019. 基進黨台南市東區市議員參選人李宗霖今天指出,台南市路名牌拼音未統一、音譯錯誤等,建議統一採用通用拼音。對此,台南市政府交通局回應,南市已實施通用拼音多年,將全面檢視路名牌,依現行音譯方式進行校對改善。
  63. ^ Eryk Smith (27 November 2017). "OPINION: Hanyu Pinyin Should Not Be Political, Kaohsiung". Retrieved 13 July 2019. why does Kaohsiung City insist on making visitors guess what 'Shihcyuan' is supposed to represent? Especially when a few blocks away, the same road has somehow morphed into 'Shiquan' (十全路) Road? Move away from Kaohsiung's city center and streets, neighborhoods or townships can have several romanized names ... sometimes on the same signage.{...}The refusal to adopt Hanyu in Kaohsiung seems based on nothing more than groundless fear of loss of identity or diminished regional autonomy. Listen, Kaohsiung: we won't lose our identity or our freedom by changing the romanized spelling of Singjhong Road (興中)to Xingzhong.
  64. ^ Everington, Keoni. "Taiwan passport can now include names in Hoklo, Hakka, indigenous languages". Taiwan News. Retrieved 20 July 2020.
  65. ^ Lin, Sean (11 January 2017). "Groups protest use of Hanyu pinyin for new MRT line - Taipei Times". www.taipeitimes.com. Retrieved 20 July 2020.
  66. ^ a b Wendy Bockhorst-Heng; Lionel Lee (November 2007), "Language Planning in Singapore: On Pragmatism, Communitarianism and Personal Names", Current Issues in Language Planning, p. 3
  67. ^ p.485, Chan, Sin-Wai. The Routledge Encyclopedia of the Chinese Language, Routledge, 2016.

Further reading

  • Gao, Johnson K. (2005). Pinyin shorthand: a bilingual handbook. Jack Sun. ISBN 9781599712512.
  • Kimball, Richard L. (1988). Quick reference Chinese : a practical guide to Mandarin for beginners and travelers in English, Pinyin romanization, and Chinese characters. China Books & Periodicals. ISBN 9780835120364.
  • Pinyin Chinese–English dictionary. Beijing: Commercial Press. 1979. ISBN 9780471867968.
  • Yǐn Bīnyōng (尹斌庸); Felley, Mary (1990). 汉语拼音和正词法 [Chinese romanization: pronunciation and orthography]. ISBN 9787800521485.

External links

  • Scheme for the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet—The original 1958 Scheme, apparently scanned from a reprinted copy in Xinhua Zidian. PDF version from the Chinese Ministry of Education. (in Chinese)
  • Basic rules of the Chinese phonetic alphabet orthography—The official standard GB/T 16159–2012 in Chinese. PDF version from the Chinese Ministry of Education. (in Chinese)
    • HTML version (in Chinese)
  • Chinese phonetic alphabet spelling rules for Chinese names—The official standard GB/T 28039–2011 in Chinese. PDF version from the Chinese Ministry of Education (in Chinese)
    • HTML version (in Chinese)
  • Pinyin-Guide.com Pronunciation and FAQs related to Pinyin
  • Pinyin Tone Tool () Online editor to create Pinyin with tones

pinyin, other, uses, disambiguation, hanyu, simplified, chinese, 汉语拼音, traditional, chinese, 漢語拼音, pinyin, hànyǔ, pīnyīn, often, shortened, just, pinyin, official, romanization, system, standard, mandarin, chinese, china, some, extent, singapore, malaysia, oft. For other uses see Pinyin disambiguation Hanyu Pinyin simplified Chinese 汉语拼音 traditional Chinese 漢語拼音 pinyin hanyǔ pinyin often shortened to just pinyin is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China and to some extent in Singapore and Malaysia It is often used to teach Mandarin normally written in Chinese form to learners already familiar with the Latin alphabet The system includes four diacritics denoting tones but pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languages written in the Latin script and is also used in certain computer input methods to enter Chinese characters The word Hanyǔ simplified Chinese 汉语 traditional Chinese 漢語 literally means Han language i e Chinese language while Pinyin 拼音 means spelled sounds 1 Hanyu Pinyin汉语拼音 漢語拼音Script typeAlphabet romanizationCreated1950sLanguagesStandard Chinese This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet IPA For an introductory guide on IPA symbols see Help IPA For the distinction between and see IPA Brackets and transcription delimiters PinyinTable of Hanyu Pinyin syllables which includes 23 initials top and 24 finals bottom Chinese拼音TranscriptionsStandard MandarinHanyu PinyinPinyinBopomofoㄆㄧㄣ ㄧㄣWade GilesPʻin1 yin1Tongyong PinyinPinyinIPA pʰi n i n WuRomanizationphin平 in平HakkaRomanizationpin24 im24Yue CantoneseYale RomanizationPingyamJyutpingPing3jam1Sidney LauPing3yam1 Canton RomanizationPing3yem1IPA pʰe ŋ jɐ m Southern MinHokkien POJpheng imScheme for the Chinese Phonetic AlphabetSimplified Chinese汉语拼音方案Traditional Chinese漢語拼音方案TranscriptionsStandard MandarinHanyu PinyinHanyǔ Pinyin Fang anBopomofoㄏㄢˋ ㄩˇ ㄆㄧㄣ ㄧㄣ ㄈㄤ ㄢˋWade GilesHan4 yu3 Pʻin1 yin1 Fang1 an4IPA xa n y pʰi n i n fa ŋ a n WuRomanizationhoe去 nyiu上 phin平 in平 faon平 oe去HakkaRomanizationhon55 ngi24 pin24 im24 fong24 on55Yue CantoneseYale RomanizationHonyuh Pingyam Fōng onJyutpingHon3jyu5 Ping3jam1 Fong1on3Sidney LauHon3yue5 Ping3yam1 Fong1 on3Canton RomanizationHon3yu5 Ping3yem1 Fong1on3IPA hɔ ːn y ː pʰeŋ jɐ m fɔ ːŋ ɔ ːn Southern MinHokkien POJhan gu pheng im hong anThis article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet IPA For an introductory guide on IPA symbols see Help IPA For the distinction between and see IPA Brackets and transcription delimiters The pinyin system was developed in the 1950s by a group of Chinese linguists including Zhou Youguang 2 and was based on earlier forms of romanizations of Chinese It was published by the Chinese Government in 1958 and revised several times 3 The International Organization for Standardization ISO adopted pinyin as an international standard ISO 7098 in 1982 4 and was followed by the United Nations in 1986 2 Attempts to make pinyin standard in the ROC Taiwan occurred in 2002 and 2009 but today Taiwan has no standardized spelling system so that in 2019 alphabetic spellings in Taiwan are marked more by a lack of system than the presence of one 5 6 7 Moreover some cities businesses and organizations notably in the south of Taiwan did not accept efforts to introduce pinyin as it suggested that Taiwan is more closely tied to the PRC so it remains one of several rival romanization systems in use 8 When a foreign writing system with one set of coding and decoding systems is taken to write a language certain compromises may have to be made The result is that the decoding systems used in some foreign languages will enable non native speakers to produce sounds more closely resembling the target language than will the coding and decoding systems used by other foreign languages Native speakers of English will decode pinyin spellings to fairly close approximations of Mandarin except in the case of certain speech sounds that are not ordinarily produced by most native speakers of English j tɕ q tɕʰ x ɕ z ts c tsʰ zh ʈʂ ch ʈʂʰ h x and r ɻ exhibit the greatest discrepancies In this system the correspondence between the Latin letters and the sound is sometimes idiosyncratic though not necessarily more so than the way the Latin script is employed in other languages For example the aspiration distinction between b d g and p t k is similar to that of these syllable initial consonants in English in which the two sets are however also differentiated by voicing but not to that of French Letters z and c also have that distinction pronounced as ts and tsʰ which is reminiscent of these letters being used to represent the phoneme ts in the German language and Slavic languages written in the Latin script respectively From s z c come the digraphs sh zh ch by analogy with English sh ch Although this analogical use of digraphs introduces the novel combination zh it is internally consistent in how the two series are related In the x j q series the pinyin use of x is similar to its use in Portuguese Galician Catalan Basque and Maltese to represent ʃ the pinyin q is close to its value of c c in Albanian though to the untrained ear both pinyin and Albanian pronunciations may sound similar to the ch Pinyin vowels are pronounced in a similar way to vowels in Romance languages The pronunciations and spellings of Chinese words are generally given in terms of initials and finals which represent the language s segmental phonemic portion rather than letter by letter Initials are initial consonants whereas finals are all possible combinations of medials semivowels coming before the vowel a nucleus vowel and coda final vowel or consonant Contents 1 History 1 1 Background romanization of Chinese before 1949 1 1 1 Wade Giles 1 1 2 Sin Wenz 1 1 3 Yale romanization 1 2 Emergence and history of Hanyu Pinyin 2 Initials and finals 2 1 Initials 2 2 Finals 2 2 1 The u sound 2 3 Approximations to English pronunciation 2 3 1 Pronunciation of initials 2 3 2 Pronunciation of finals 3 Tones 3 1 Numerals in place of tone marks 3 2 Rules for placing the tone mark 3 2 1 Phonological intuition 3 3 Using tone colors 3 4 Indication of tone change in pinyin spelling 4 Orthographic rules 4 1 Letters 4 2 Words capitalization initialisms and punctuation 5 Comparison with other orthographies 5 1 Comparison charts 6 Unicode code points 7 Usage 7 1 Computer input systems 7 2 In Taiwan 7 3 In Singapore 7 4 For other languages 8 See also 9 Notes 10 References 11 Further reading 12 External linksHistory Edit In Yiling Yichang Hubei text on road signs appears both in Chinese characters and in Hanyu Pinyin Background romanization of Chinese before 1949 Edit In 1605 the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci published Xizi Qiji 西字奇蹟 Xizi Qiji Hsi tzu Ch i chi Miracle of Western Letters in Beijing 9 This was the first book to use the Roman alphabet to write the Chinese language Twenty years later another Jesuit in China Nicolas Trigault issued his Xi Ru Ermu Zi 西儒耳目資 Hsi Ju Erh mu Tzu Aid to the Eyes and Ears of Western Literati at Hangzhou 10 Neither book had much immediate impact on the way in which Chinese thought about their writing system and the romanizations they described were intended more for Westerners than for the Chinese 11 One of the earliest Chinese thinkers to relate Western alphabets to Chinese was late Ming to early Qing dynasty scholar official Fang Yizhi 方以智 Fang Yǐzhi Fang I chih 1611 1671 12 The first late Qing reformer to propose that China adopt a system of spelling was Song Shu 1862 1910 A student of the great scholars Yu Yue and Zhang Taiyan Song had been to Japan and observed the stunning effect of the kana syllabaries and Western learning there which This galvanized him into activity on a number of fronts one of the most important being reform of the script While Song did not himself actually create a system for spelling Sinitic languages his discussion proved fertile and led to a proliferation of schemes for phonetic scripts 11 Wade Giles Edit Main article Wade Giles The Wade Giles system was produced by Thomas Wade in 1859 and further improved by Herbert Giles in the Chinese English Dictionary of 1892 It was popular and used in English language publications outside China until 1979 13 Sin Wenz Edit Main article Latinxua Sin Wenz In the early 1930s Chinese Communist Party leaders trained in Moscow introduced a phonetic alphabet using Roman letters which had been developed in the Soviet Oriental Institute of Leningrad and was originally intended to improve literacy in the Russian Far East 14 note 1 This Sin Wenz or New Writing 15 was much more linguistically sophisticated than earlier alphabets but with the major exception that it did not indicate tones of Chinese 16 In 1940 several thousand members attended a Border Region Sin Wenz Society convention Mao Zedong and Zhu De head of the army both contributed their calligraphy in characters for the masthead of the Sin Wenz Society s new journal Outside the CCP other prominent supporters included Sun Yat sen s son Sun Fo Cai Yuanpei the country s most prestigious educator Tao Xingzhi a leading educational reformer and Lu Xun Over thirty journals soon appeared written in Sin Wenz plus large numbers of translations biographies including Lincoln Franklin Edison Ford and Charlie Chaplin some contemporary Chinese literature and a spectrum of textbooks In 1940 the movement reached an apex when Mao s Border Region Government declared that the Sin Wenz had the same legal status as traditional characters in government and public documents Many educators and political leaders looked forward to the day when they would be universally accepted and completely replace Chinese characters Opposition arose however because the system was less well adapted to writing regional languages and therefore would require learning Mandarin Sin Wenz fell into relative disuse during the following years 17 Yale romanization Edit Main article Yale romanization of Mandarin In 1943 the U S military engaged Yale University to develop a romanization of Mandarin Chinese for its pilots flying over China The resulting system is very close to pinyin but does not use English letters in unfamiliar ways for example pinyin x for ɕ is written as sy in the Yale system Medial semivowels are written with y and w instead of pinyin i and u and apical vowels syllabic consonants with r or z Accent marks are used to indicate tone Emergence and history of Hanyu Pinyin Edit Pinyin was created by a group of Chinese linguists including Zhou Youguang who was an economist 2 as part of a Chinese government project in the 1950s Zhou often called the father of pinyin 2 18 19 20 worked as a banker in New York when he decided to return to China to help rebuild the country after the establishment of the People s Republic of China Mao Zedong initially considered Latinizing written Chinese but during his first official visit to the Soviet Union in 1949 Joseph Stalin convinced him to maintain the existing writing system 21 Zhou became an economics professor in Shanghai and in 1955 when China s Ministry of Education created a Committee for the Reform of the Chinese Written Language Premier Zhou Enlai assigned Zhou Youguang the task of developing a new romanization system despite the fact that he was not a professional linguist 2 Hanyu Pinyin was based on several existing systems including Gwoyeu Romatzyh of 1928 Latinxua Sin Wenz of 1931 and the diacritic markings from zhuyin bopomofo 22 I m not the father of pinyin Zhou said years later I m the son of pinyin It s the result of a long tradition from the later years of the Qing dynasty down to today But we restudied the problem and revisited it and made it more perfect 23 A draft was published on February 12 1956 The first edition of Hanyu Pinyin was approved and adopted at the Fifth Session of the 1st National People s Congress on February 11 1958 It was then introduced to primary schools as a way to teach Standard Chinese pronunciation and used to improve the literacy rate among adults 24 During the height of the Cold War the use of pinyin system over the Yale romanization outside of China was regarded as a political statement or identification with the communist Chinese regime 25 Beginning in the early 1980s Western publications addressing Mainland China began using the Hanyu Pinyin romanization system instead of earlier romanization systems 26 this change followed the normalization of diplomatic relations between the United States and the PRC in 1979 27 28 In 2001 the PRC Government issued the National Common Language Law providing a legal basis for applying pinyin 24 The current specification of the orthographic rules is laid down in the National Standard GB T 16159 2012 29 Initials and finals EditUnlike European languages clusters of letters initials 声母 聲母 shengmǔ and finals 韵母 韻母 yunmǔ and not consonant and vowel letters form the fundamental elements in pinyin and most other phonetic systems used to describe the Han language Every Mandarin syllable can be spelled with exactly one initial followed by one final except for the special syllable er or when a trailing r is considered part of a syllable see below and see erhua The latter case though a common practice in some sub dialects is rarely used in official publications Even though most initials contain a consonant finals are not always simple vowels especially in compound finals 复韵母 複韻母 fuyunmǔ i e when a medial is placed in front of the final For example the medials i and u are pronounced with such tight openings at the beginning of a final that some native Chinese speakers especially when singing pronounce yi 衣 clothes officially pronounced i as ji and wei 围 圍 to enclose officially pronounced uei as wei or wuei Often these medials are treated as separate from the finals rather than as part of them this convention is followed in the chart of finals below Initials Edit In each cell below the bold letters indicate pinyin and the brackets enclose the symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet Labial Alveolar Retroflex Alveolo palatal VelarPlosive unaspirated b p d t g k aspirated p pʰ t tʰ k kʰ Nasal m m n n Affricate unaspirated z ts zh ʈʂ j tɕ aspirated c tsʰ ch ʈʂʰ q tɕʰ Fricative f f s s sh ʂ x ɕ h x Liquid l l r ɻ ʐ Semivowel2 y j ɥ 1 and w w 1 y is pronounced ɥ a labial palatal approximant before u 2 The letters w and y are not included in the table of initials in the official pinyin system They are an orthographic convention for the medials i u and u when no initial is present When i u or u are finals and no initial is present they are spelled yi wu and yu respectively The conventional lexicographical order excluding w and y derived from the zhuyin system bopomofo is b p m f d t n l g k h j q x zh ch sh r z c sAccording to Scheme for the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet zh ch and sh can be abbreviated as ẑ ĉ and ŝ z c s with a circumflex However the shorthands are rarely used due to difficulty of entering them on computers and are confined mainly to Esperanto keyboard layouts Finals Edit Standard Chinese vowels with IPA and Pinyin Front Central BackClose i i y u ɨ i u u ɤ e o o e e ɚ er a a Close midOpen midOpenvte In each cell below the first line indicates IPA the second indicates pinyin for a standalone no initial form and the third indicates pinyin for a combination with an initial Other than finals modified by an r which are omitted the following is an exhaustive table of all possible finals 1 30 The only syllable final consonants in Standard Chinese are n and ng and r the last of which is attached as a grammatical suffix A Chinese syllable ending with any other consonant either is from a non Mandarin language a southern Chinese language such as Cantonese or a minority language of China possibly reflecting final consonants in Old Chinese or indicates the use of a non pinyin romanization system where final consonants may be used to indicate tones Rime e o a ei ai ou ao n en an ng ong eng ang erMedial ɨ i ɤ e e a a a ei ei ei ai ai ai ou ou ou au ao ao en en en an an an ʊŋ ong eŋ eng eng aŋ ang ang ɚ er 1 y i i yi i je ye ie ja ya ia jou you iu jau yao iao in yin in jɛn yan ian iŋ ying ing jʊŋ yong iong jaŋ yang iangw u u wu u wo wo uo 3 wa wa ua wei wei ui wai wai uai wen wen un wan wan uan weŋ weng waŋ wang uangyu u y yu u 2 ɥe yue ue 2 yn yun un 2 ɥɛn yuan uan 21 For other finals formed by the suffix r pinyin does not use special orthography one simply appends r to the final that it is added to without regard for any sound changes that may take place along the way For information on sound changes related to final r please see Erhua Rules in Standard Mandarin 2 u is written as u after y j q or x 3 uo is written as o after b p m f or w Technically i u u without a following vowel are finals not medials and therefore take the tone marks but they are more concisely displayed as above In addition e ɛ 欸 誒 and syllabic nasals m 呒 呣 n 嗯 唔 ng 嗯 𠮾 are used as interjections According to Scheme for the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet ng can be abbreviated with a shorthand of ŋ However this shorthand is rarely used due to difficulty of entering them on computers The u sound Edit An umlaut is placed over the letter u when it occurs after the initials l and n when necessary in order to represent the sound y This is necessary in order to distinguish the front high rounded vowel in lu e g 驴 驢 donkey from the back high rounded vowel in lu e g 炉 爐 oven Tonal markers are added on top of the umlaut as in lǘ However the u is not used in the other contexts where it could represent a front high rounded vowel namely after the letters j q x and y For example the sound of the word 鱼 魚 fish is transcribed in pinyin simply as yu not as yǘ This practice is opposed to Wade Giles which always uses u and Tongyong Pinyin which always uses yu Whereas Wade Giles needs the umlaut to distinguish between chu pinyin ju and chu pinyin zhu this ambiguity does not arise with pinyin so the more convenient form ju is used instead of ju Genuine ambiguities only happen with nu nu and lu lu which are then distinguished by an umlaut Many fonts or output methods do not support an umlaut for u or cannot place tone marks on top of u Likewise using u in input methods is difficult because it is not present as a simple key on many keyboard layouts For these reasons v is sometimes used instead by convention For example it is common for cellphones to use v instead of u Additionally some stores in China use v instead of u in the transliteration of their names The drawback is that there are no tone marks for the letter v This also presents a problem in transcribing names for use on passports affecting people with names that consist of the sound lu or nu particularly people with the surname 吕 Lǚ a fairly common surname particularly compared to the surnames 陆 Lu 鲁 Lǔ 卢 Lu and 路 Lu Previously the practice varied among different passport issuing offices with some transcribing as LV and NV while others used LU and NU On 10 July 2012 the Ministry of Public Security standardized the practice to use LYU and NYU in passports 31 32 Although nue written as nue and lue written as lue are not ambiguous nue or lue are not correct according to the rules nue and lue should be used instead However some Chinese input methods e g Microsoft Pinyin IME support both nve lve typing v for u and nue lue Approximations to English pronunciation Edit This section includes inline links to audio files If you have trouble playing the files see Wikipedia Media help Most rules given here in terms of English pronunciation are approximations as several of these sounds do not correspond directly to sounds in English Pronunciation of initials Edit Pinyin IPA English approximation 33 Explanationb p spark unaspirated p as in sparkp pʰ pay strongly aspirated p as in pitm m may as in English mummyf f fair as in English fund t stop unaspirated t as in stopt tʰ take strongly aspirated t as in topn n nay as in English nitl l lay as in English loveg k skill unaspirated k as in skillk kʰ kay strongly aspirated k as in kissh x h loch Varies between hat and Scottish loch j tɕ churchyard Alveo palatal No equivalent in English but similar to an unaspirated chy sound when said quickly Like q but unaspirated Is similar to the English name of the letter G but curl the tip of the tongue downwards to stick it at the back of the teeth q tɕʰ punch yourself Alveo palatal No equivalent in English Like punch yourself with the lips spread wide as when one says ee Curl the tip of the tongue downwards to stick it at the back of the teeth and strongly aspirate x ɕ push yourself Alveo palatal No equivalent in English Like sh y with the lips spread as when one says ee and with the tip of the tongue curled downwards and stuck to the back of the teeth zh ʈʂ nurture Unaspirated ch Similar to hatching but retroflex or marching in American English Voiced in a toneless syllable ch ʈʂʰ church Similar to chin but retroflex sh ʂ shirt Similar to shoe but retroflex or marsh in American English r ɻ ʐ ray No equivalent in English but similar to a sound between r in reduce and s in measure but with the tongue curled upward against the top of the mouth i e retroflex z ts pizza unaspirated c similar to something between suds but voiceless unless in a toneless syllable c tsʰ hats like the English ts in cats but strongly aspirated very similar to the Czech Polish Esperanto and Slovak c s s say as in sunw w way as in water Before an e or a it is sometimes pronounced like v as in violin y j ɥ yes as in yes Before a u pronounced with rounded lips as if pronouncing German u Note on y and wY and w are equivalent to the semivowel medials i u and u see below They are spelled differently when there is no initial consonant in order to mark a new syllable fanguan is fan guan while fangwan is fang wan and equivalent to fang uan With this convention an apostrophe only needs to be used to mark an initial a e or o Xi an two syllables ɕi an vs xian one syllable ɕi ɛn In addition y and w are added to fully vocalic i u and u when these occur without an initial consonant so that they are written yi wu and yu Some Mandarin speakers do pronounce a j or w sound at the beginning of such words that is yi i or ji wu u or wu yu y or ɥy so this is an intuitive convention See below for a few finals which are abbreviated after a consonant plus w u or y i medial wen C un wei C ui weng C ong and you Q iu Note on the apostropheThe apostrophe 隔音符号 隔音符號 geyin fuhao syllable dividing mark is used before a syllable starting with a vowel a o or e in a multiple syllable word unless the syllable starts the word or immediately follows a hyphen or other dash For example 西安 is written as Xi an or Xi an and 天峨 is written as Tian e or Tian e but 第二 is written di er without an apostrophe 34 This apostrophe is not used in the Taipei Metro names 35 Apostrophes as well as hyphens and tone marks are omitted on Chinese passports 36 Pronunciation of finals Edit IPA VowelsFront Central BackClose i y ɨ ʉ ɯ uNear close ɪ ʏ ʊClose mid e o ɘ ɵ ɤ oMid e o e ɤ o Open mid ɛ œ ɜ ɞ ʌ ɔNear open ae ɐOpen a ɶ a ɑ ɒIPA help audio full chart template Legend unrounded roundedThe following is a list of finals in Standard Chinese excepting most of those ending with r To find a given final Remove the initial consonant zh ch and sh count as initial consonants Change initial w to u and initial y to i For weng wen wei you look under ong un ui iu For u including the ones starting with u after j q x or y look under u Pinyin IPA Form with zero initial Explanation i ɹ z ɻ ʐ N A i is a buzzed continuation of the consonant following z c s zh ch sh or r In all other cases i has the sound of bee this is listed below a a a like English father but a bit more frontede ɤ listen e a back unrounded vowel similar to English duh but not as open Pronounced as a sequence ɰɤ ai ai ai like English eye but a bit lighterei ei ei as in heyao au ao approximately as in cow the a is much more audible than the oou ou ou as in North American English soan an an like British English ban but more centralen en en as in takenang aŋ ang as in German Angst Starts with the vowel sound in father and ends in the velar nasal like song in some dialects of American English eng eŋ eng like e in en above but with ng appendedong ʊŋ weng starts with the vowel sound in book and ends with the velar nasal sound in sing Varies between oŋ and uŋ depending on the speaker er aɚ er Similar to the sound in bar in English Can also be pronounced ɚ depending on the speaker Finals beginning with i y i i yi like English beeia ja ya as i a like English yardie je ye as i e where the e compare with the e interjection is pronounced shorter and lighteriao jau yao as i aoiu jou you as i ouian jɛn yan as i an like English yen Varies between jen and jan depending on the speaker in in yin as i niang jaŋ yang as i anging iŋ ying as i ngiong jʊŋ yong as i ong Varies between joŋ and juŋ depending on the speaker Finals beginning with u w u u wu like English ooua wa wa as u auo o wo wo as u o where the o compare with the o interjection is pronounced shorter and lighter spelled as o after b p m or f uai wai wai as u ai as in English whyui wei wei as u ei as in English wayuan wan wan as u anun wen wen as u en as in English wonuang waŋ wang as u ang ong weŋ weng as u engFinals beginning with u yu u y listen yu as in German uber or French lune pronounced as English ee with rounded lips spelled as u after j q or x ue ɥe yue as u e where the e compare with the e interjection is pronounced shorter and lighter spelled as ue after j q or x uan ɥɛn yuan as u an Varies between ɥen and ɥan depending on the speaker spelled as uan after j q or x un yn yun as u n spelled as un after j q or x Interjectionse ɛ N A as in beto ɔ N A approximately as in British English office the lips are much more roundedio jɔ yo as i oTones Edit Relative pitch changes of the four tones The pinyin system also uses diacritics to mark the four tones of Mandarin The diacritic is placed over the letter that represents the syllable nucleus unless that letter is missing see below If the tone mark is written over an i the tittle above the i is omitted as in yi Many books printed in China use a mix of fonts with vowels and tone marks rendered in a different font from the surrounding text tending to give such pinyin texts a typographically ungainly appearance This style most likely rooted in early technical limitations has led many to believe that pinyin s rules call for this practice e g the use of a Latin alpha ɑ rather than the standard style a found in most fonts or g often written with a single storey ɡ The rules of Hanyu Pinyin however specify no such practice 37 3 3 4 1 8 The first tone flat or high level tone is represented by a macron ˉ added to the pinyin vowel a e i ō u ǖ A E i Ō u Ǖ The second tone rising or high rising tone is denoted by an acute accent ˊ a e i o u ǘ A E I o U Ǘ The third tone falling rising or low tone is marked by a caron hacek ˇ It is not the rounded breve though a breve is sometimes substituted due to ignorance or font limitations ǎ e ǐ ǒ ǔ ǚ Ǎ E Ǐ Ǒ Ǔ Ǚ The fourth tone falling or high falling tone is represented by a grave accent ˋ a e i o u ǜ A E I O U Ǜ The fifth tone neutral tone is represented by a normal vowel without any accent mark a e i o u u A E I O U UIn dictionaries neutral tone may be indicated by a dot preceding the syllable for example ma When a neutral tone syllable has an alternative pronunciation in another tone a combination of tone marks may be used zhi dao 知道 38 dd Numerals in place of tone marks Edit Before the advent of computers many typewriter fonts did not contain vowels with macron or caron diacritics Tones were thus represented by placing a tone number at the end of individual syllables For example tong is written tong The number used for each tone is as the order listed above except the neutral tone which is either not numbered or given the number 0 or 5 e g ma for 吗 嗎 an interrogative marker Tone Tone Mark Number added to end of syllablein place of tone mark Example usingtone mark Example usingnumber IPAFirst macron 1 ma ma1 ma Second acute accent 2 ma ma2 ma Third caron 3 mǎ ma3 ma Fourth grave accent 4 ma ma4 ma Neutral No mark or middle dot before syllable no number50 ma ma mama5ma0 maRules for placing the tone mark Edit Briefly the tone mark should always be placed by the order a o e i u u with the only exception being iu where the tone mark is placed on the u instead Pinyin tone marks appear primarily above the nucleus of the syllable for example as in kuai where k is the initial u the medial a the nucleus and i the coda The exception is syllabic nasals like m where the nucleus of the syllable is a consonant the diacritic will be carried by a written dummy vowel When the nucleus is e written e or o and there is both a medial and a coda the nucleus may be dropped from writing In this case when the coda is a consonant n or ng the only vowel left is the medial i u or u and so this takes the diacritic However when the coda is a vowel it is the coda rather than the medial which takes the diacritic in the absence of a written nucleus This occurs with syllables ending in ui from wei wei ui and in iu from you you iu That is in the absence of a written nucleus the finals have priority for receiving the tone marker as long as they are vowels if not the medial takes the diacritic An algorithm to find the correct vowel letter when there is more than one is as follows 39 If there is an a or an e it will take the tone mark If there is an ou then the o takes the tone mark Otherwise the second vowel takes the tone markWorded differently If there is an a e or o it will take the tone mark in the case of ao the mark goes on the a Otherwise the vowels are iu or ui in which case the second vowel takes the tone markThe above can be summarized as the following table The vowel letter taking the tone mark is indicated by the fourth tone mark Placement of the tone mark in Pinyin a e i o ua ai aoe eii ia iao ie io iuo ouu ua uai ue ui uou ua uePhonological intuition Edit The placement of the tone marker when more than one of the written letters a e i o and u appears can also be inferred from the nature of the vowel sound in the medial and final The rule is that the tone marker goes on the spelled vowel that is not a near semi vowel The exception is that for triphthongs that are spelled with only two vowel letters both of which are the semi vowels the tone marker goes on the second spelled vowel Specifically if the spelling of a diphthong begins with i as in ia or u as in ua which serves as a near semi vowel this letter does not take the tone marker Likewise if the spelling of a diphthong ends with o or u representing a near semi vowel as in ao or ou this letter does not receive a tone marker In a triphthong spelled with three of a e i o and u with i or u replaced by y or w at the start of a syllable the first and third letters coincide with near semi vowels and hence do not receive the tone marker as in iao or uai or iou But if no letter is written to represent a triphthong s middle non semi vowel sound as in ui or iu then the tone marker goes on the final second vowel letter Using tone colors Edit In addition to tone number and mark tone color has been suggested as a visual aid for learning Although there are no formal standards there are a number of different color schemes in use Dummitt s being one of the first Tone color schemes Scheme Tone 1 Tone 2 Tone 3 Tone 4 Neutral toneDummitt 40 red orange green blue none blackMDBG red orange green blue blackUnimelb a blue green purple red greyHanping 41 blue green orange red greyPleco red green blue purple greyThomas a green blue red black grey a b The colors used here to illustrate Unimelb and Thomas are only approximate The precise color values used by Dummitt the MDBG Chinese Online Dictionary Hanping and Pleco are taken from Laowai s blog Tone Colors and What Pleco Did with Them Indication of tone change in pinyin spelling Edit Tone sandhi tone change is usually not reflected in pinyin spelling the underlying tone i e the original tone before the sandhi is still written However ABC English Chinese Chinese English Dictionary 2010 42 uses the following notation to indicate both the original tone and the tone after the sandhi 一 yi pronounced in second tone yi is written as yị a e g 一共 underlying yigong realized as yigong is written as yị gong 一 yi pronounced in fourth tone yi is written as yi e g 一起 underlying yiqǐ realized as yiqǐ is written as yi qǐ 不 bu pronounced in second tone bu is written as bụ e g 不要 underlying buyao realized as buyao is written as bụ yao When there are two consecutive third tone syllables the first syllable is pronounced in second tone A dot is added below to the third tone pronounced in second tone i e written as ạ Ạ ẹ Ẹ ị a ọ Ọ ụ and ụ e g 了解 underlying liǎojie realized as liaojie is written as liạ ojieWenlin Software for learning Chinese also adopted this notation a b Due to a bug in some fonts a tittle overdot may be displayed in ị and ị They should be displayed without the tittle i e i or ǐ with a dot below like they appear in the cited dictionary Orthographic rules EditLetters Edit See also Pinyin table The Scheme for the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet lists the letters of pinyin along with their pronunciations as List of pinyin letters Letter Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy ZzPronunciation pinyin a be ce de e ef ge ha yi jie ke el em ne o pe qiu ar es te wu we wa xi ya zeBopomofo transcription ㄚ ㄅㄝ ㄘㄝ ㄉㄝ ㄜ ㄝㄈ ㄍㄝ ㄏㄚ ㄧ ㄐㄧㄝ ㄎㄝ ㄝㄌ ㄝㄇ ㄋㄝ ㄛ ㄆㄝ ㄑㄧㄡ ㄚㄦ ㄝㄙ ㄊㄝ ㄨ ㄪㄝ ㄨㄚ ㄒㄧ ㄧㄚ ㄗㄝPinyin differs from other romanizations in several aspects such as the following Syllables starting with u are written as w in place of u e g uan is written as wan Standalone u is written as wu Syllables starting with i are written as y in place of i e g ian is written as yan Standalone i is written as yi Syllables starting with u are written as yu in place of u e g ue is written as yue Standalone u is written as yu u is written as u when there is no ambiguity such as ju qu and xu but as u when there are corresponding u syllables such as lu and nu If there are corresponding u syllables it is often replaced with v on a computer to make it easier to type on a standard keyboard After by a consonant iou uei and uen are simplified as iu ui and un which do not represent the actual pronunciation As in zhuyin syllables that are actually pronounced as buo puo muo and fuo are given a separate representation bo po mo and fo The apostrophe is used before a syllable starting with a vowel a o or e in a syllable other than the first of a word the syllable being most commonly realized as ɰ unless it immediately follows a hyphen or other dash 34 That is done to remove ambiguity that could arise as in Xi an which consists of the two syllables xi 西 an 安 compared to such words as xian 先 The ambiguity does not occur when tone marks are used since both tone marks in Xian unambiguously show that the word has two syllables However even with tone marks the city is usually spelled with an apostrophe as Xi an Eh alone is written as e elsewhere as e Schwa is always written as e Zh ch and sh can be abbreviated as ẑ ĉ and ŝ z c s with a circumflex However the shorthands are rarely used because of the difficulty of entering them on computers and are confined mainly to Esperanto keyboard layouts Early drafts and some published material used diacritic hooks below instead ᶎ ȥ ʐ ꞔ ʂ ᶊ 43 Ng has the uncommon shorthand of ŋ which was also used in early drafts Early drafts also contained the symbol ɥ or the letter ch borrowed from the Cyrillic script in place of later j for the voiceless alveolo palatal sibilant affricate 43 The letter v is unused except in spelling foreign languages languages of minority nationalities and some dialects despite a conscious effort to distribute letters more evenly than in Western languages However the ease of typing into a computer causes the v to be sometimes used to replace u The Scheme table above maps the letter to bopomofo ㄪ which typically maps to v Most of the above are used to avoid ambiguity when words of more than one syllable are written in pinyin For example uenian is written as wenyan because it is not clear which syllables make up uenian uen ian uen i an u en i an u e nian and u e ni an are all possible combinations but wenyan is unambiguous since we nya etc do not exist in pinyin See the pinyin table article for a summary of possible pinyin syllables not including tones Words capitalization initialisms and punctuation Edit Many writers are not yet aware of the rules for dividing text into words by spaces and either put a space after each syllable or run all words together The manufacturer of this image s blankets put unnecessary spaces into the city name Bishikaike which is the correct pinyin for 比什凯克 Bishkek on the bottom line but wrote the English text in the arc on top with no spaces at all Although Chinese characters represent single syllables Mandarin Chinese is a polysyllabic language Spacing in pinyin is usually based on words and not on single syllables However there are often ambiguities in partitioning a word The Basic Rules of the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet Orthography 汉语拼音正词法基本规则 漢語拼音正詞法基本規則 Hanyǔ Pinyin Zhengcifǎ Jiben Guize were put into effect in 1988 by the National Educational Commission 国家教育委员会 國家教育委員會 Guojia Jiaoyu Weiyuanhui and the National Language Commission 国家语言文字工作委员会 國家語言文字工作委員會 Guojia Yǔyan Wenzi Gōngzuo Weiyuanhui 44 These rules became a Guobiao recommendation in 1996 44 45 and were updated in 2012 46 General Single meaning Words with a single meaning which are usually set up of two characters sometimes one seldom three are written together and not capitalized ren 人 person pengyou 朋友 friend qiǎokeli 巧克力 chocolate Combined meaning 2 or 3 characters Same goes for words combined of two words to one meaning hǎifeng 海风 海風 sea breeze wenda 问答 問答 question and answer quanguo 全国 全國 nationwide changyongci 常用词 常用詞 common words Combined meaning 4 or more characters Words with four or more characters having one meaning are split up with their original meaning if possible wufeng gangguǎn 无缝钢管 無縫鋼管 seamless steel tube huanjing bǎohu guihua 环境保护规划 環境保護規劃 environmental protection planning gaomengsuanjiǎ 高锰酸钾 高錳酸鉀 potassium permanganate Duplicated words AA Duplicated characters AA are written together renren 人人 everybody kankan 看看 to have a look niannian 年年 every year ABAB Two characters duplicated ABAB are written separated yanjiu yanjiu 研究研究 to study to research xuebai xuebai 雪白雪白 white as snow AABB Characters in the AABB schema are written together lailaiwǎngwǎng 来来往往 來來往往 come and go qianqianwanwan 千千万万 千千萬萬 numerous Prefixes 前附成分 qianfu chengfen and Suffixes 后附成分 後附成分 houfu chengfen Words accompanied by prefixes such as fu 副 vice zǒng 总 總 chief fei 非 non fǎn 反 anti chao 超 ultra lǎo 老 old a 阿 used before names to indicate familiarity ke 可 able wu 无 無 less and ban 半 semi and suffixes such as zi 子 noun suffix r 儿 兒 diminutive suffix tou 头 頭 noun suffix xing 性 ness ity zhe 者 er ist yuan 员 員 person jia 家 er ist shǒu 手 person skilled in a field hua 化 ize and men 们 們 plural marker are written together fubuzhǎng 副部长 副部長 vice minister chengwuyuan 乘务员 乘務員 conductor haizimen 孩子们 孩子們 children Nouns and names 名词 名詞 mingci Words of position are separated men wai 门外 門外 outdoor he li 河里 河裏 under the river huǒche shangmian 火车上面 火車上面 on the train Huang He yǐnan 黄河以南 黃河以南 south of the Yellow River Exceptions are words traditionally connected tianshang 天上 in the sky or outerspace dixia 地下 on the ground kōngzhōng 空中 in the air hǎiwai 海外 overseas Surnames are separated from the given names each capitalized Lǐ Hua 李华 李華 Zhang San 张三 張三 If the surname and or given name consists of two syllables it should be written as one Zhuge Kǒngming 诸葛孔明 諸葛孔明 Titles following the name are separated and are not capitalized Wang buzhǎng 王部长 王部長 Minister Wang Lǐ xiansheng 李先生 Mr Li Tian zhǔren 田主任 Director Tian Zhao tongzhi 赵同志 趙同志 Comrade Zhao The forms of addressing people with prefixes such as Lǎo 老 Xiǎo 小 Da 大 and A 阿 are capitalized Xiǎo Liu 小刘 小劉 young Ms Mr Liu Da Lǐ 大李 great elder Mr Li A San 阿三 Ah San Lǎo Qian 老钱 老錢 senior Mr Qian Lǎo Wu 老吴 老吳 senior Mr Wu Exceptions include Kǒngzǐ 孔子 Confucius Baogōng 包公 Judge Bao Xishi 西施 Xishi Mengchangjun 孟尝君 孟嘗君 Lord Mengchang Geographical names of China Beijing Shi 北京市 city of Beijing Hebei Sheng 河北省 province of Hebei Yalu Jiang 鸭绿江 鴨綠江 Yalu River Tai Shan 泰山 Mount Tai Dongting Hu 洞庭湖 Dongting Lake Qiongzhōu Hǎixia 琼州海峡 瓊州海峽 Qiongzhou Strait Monosyllabic prefixes and suffixes are written together with their related part Dōngsi Shitiao 东四十条 東四十條 Dongsi 10th Alley Common geographical nouns that have become part of proper nouns are written together Heilongjiang 黑龙江 黑龍江 Heilongjiang Non Chinese names are written in Hanyu Pinyin Apei Awangjinmei 阿沛 阿旺晋美 阿沛 阿旺晉美 Ngapoi Ngawang Jigme Dōngjing 东京 東京 Tokyo Verbs 动词 動詞 dongci Verbs and their suffixes zhe 着 著 le 了 or guo 过 過 are written as one kanzhe 看着 看著 seeing jinxingguo 进行过 進行過 have been implemented Le as it appears in the end of a sentence is separated though Huǒche dao le 火车到了 火車到了 The train has arrived Verbs and their objects are separated kan xin 看信 read a letter chi yu 吃鱼 吃魚 eat fish kai wanxiao 开玩笑 開玩笑 to be kidding If verbs and their complements are each monosyllabic they are written together if not they are separated gǎohuai 搞坏 搞壞 to make broken dǎsǐ 打死 hit to death huawei 化为 化為 to become zhenglǐ hǎo 整理好 to sort out gǎixie wei 改写为 改寫為 to rewrite as Adjectives 形容词 形容詞 xingrongci A monosyllabic adjective and its reduplication are written as one mengmengliang 矇矇亮 dim liangtangtang 亮堂堂 shining bright Complements of size or degree such as xie 些 yixie 一些 diǎnr 点儿 點兒 and yidiǎnr 一点儿 一點兒 are written separated da xie 大些 a little bigger kuai yidiǎnr 快一点儿 快一點兒 a bit faster Pronouns 代词 代詞 daici Personal pronouns and interrogative pronouns are separated from other words Wǒ ai Zhōngguo 我爱中国 我愛中國 I love China Shei shuō de 谁说的 誰說的 Who said it The demonstrative pronoun zhe 这 這 this na 那 that and the question pronoun nǎ 哪 which are separated zhe ren 这人 這人 this person na ci huiyi 那次会议 那次會議 that meeting nǎ zhang baozhǐ 哪张报纸 哪張報紙 which newspaper Exception If zhe na or nǎ are followed by diǎnr 点儿 點兒 ban 般 bian 边 邊 shi 时 時 huir 会儿 會兒 lǐ 里 裏 me 么 麼 or the general classifier ge 个 個 they are written together nalǐ 那里 那裏 there zhebian 这边 這邊 over here zhege 这个 這個 this Numerals 数词 數詞 shuci and measure words 量词 量詞 liangci Numbers and words like ge 各 each mei 每 each mǒu 某 any ben 本 this gai 该 該 that wǒ 我 my our and nǐ 你 your are separated from the measure words following them liǎng ge ren 两个人 兩個人 two people ge guo 各国 各國 every nation mei nian 每年 every year mǒu gōngchǎng 某工厂 某工廠 a certain factory wǒ xiao 我校 our school Numbers up to 100 are written as single words sanshisan 三十三 thirty three Above that the hundreds thousands etc are written as separate words jiǔyi qiwan erqian sanbǎi wǔshiliu 九亿七万二千三百五十六 九億七萬二千三百五十六 nine hundred million seventy two thousand three hundred fifty six Arabic numerals are kept as Arabic numerals 635 fenji 635 分机 635 分機 extension 635 According to 汉语拼音正词法基本规则 6 1 5 4 the di 第 used in ordinal numerals is followed by a hyphen di yi 第一 first di 356 第 356 356th The hyphen should not be used if the word in which di 第 and the numeral appear does not refer to an ordinal number in the context For example Diwǔ 第五 a Chinese compound surname 47 48 The chu 初 in front of numbers one to ten is written together with the number chushi 初十 tenth day Numbers representing month and day are hyphenated wǔ si 五四 May fourth yier jiǔ 一二 九 December ninth Words of approximations such as duō 多 lai 来 來 and jǐ 几 幾 are separated from numerals and measure words yibǎi duō ge 一百多个 一百多個 around a hundred shi lai wan ge 十来万个 十來萬個 around a hundred thousand jǐ jia ren 几家人 幾家人 a few families Shijǐ 十几 十幾 more than ten and jǐshi 几十 幾十 tens are written together shijǐ ge ren 十几个人 十幾個人 more than ten people jǐshi 几十根钢管 幾十根鋼管 tens of steel pipes Approximations with numbers or units that are close together are hyphenated san wǔ tian 三五天 three to five days qian bǎi ci 千百次 thousands of times Other function words 虚词 虛詞 xuci are separated from other words Adverbs 副词 副詞 fuci hen hǎo 很好 very good zui kuai 最快 fastest feichang da 非常大 extremely big Prepositions 介词 介詞 jieci zai qianmian 在前面 in front Conjunctions 连词 連詞 lianci nǐ he wǒ 你和我 you and I me Nǐ lai haishi bu lai 你来还是不来 你來還是不來 Are you coming or not Constructive auxiliaries 结构助词 結構助詞 jiegou zhuci such as de 的 地 得 zhi 之 and suǒ 所 manman de zou 慢慢地走 go slowly A monosyllabic word can also be written together with de 的 地 得 wǒ de shu wǒde shu 我的书 我的書 my book Modal auxiliaries at the end of a sentence Nǐ zhidao ma 你知道吗 你知道嗎 Do you know Kuai qu ba 快去吧 Go quickly Exclamations and interjections A Zhen mei 啊 真美 Oh it s so beautiful Onomatopoeia mo dao huohuo 磨刀霍霍 honing a knife hōnglōng yi sheng 轰隆一声 轟隆一聲 rumbling Capitalization The first letter of the first word in a sentence is capitalized Chuntian lai le 春天来了 春天來了 Spring has arrived The first letter of each line in a poem is capitalized The first letter of a proper noun is capitalized Beijing 北京 Beijing Guoji Shudian 国际书店 國際書店 International Bookstore Guojia Yǔyan Wenzi Gōngzuo Weiyuanhui 国家语言文字工作委员会 國家語言文字工作委員會 National Language Commission On some occasions proper nouns can be written in all caps BEIJiNG GUoJI SHuDIAN GUoJIA YǓYAN WENZI GŌNGZUO WEIYUANHUI If a proper noun is written together with a common noun to make a proper noun it is capitalized If not it is not capitalized Fojiao 佛教 Buddhism Tangchao 唐朝 Tang dynasty jingju 京剧 京劇 Beijing opera chuanxiōng 川芎 Szechuan lovage Initialisms Single words are abbreviated by taking the first letter of each character of the word Beǐjing 北京 Beijing BJ A group of words are abbreviated by taking the first letter of each word in the group guojia biaozhǔn 国家标准 國家標準 Guobiao standard GB Initials can also be indicated using full stops Beǐjing B J guojia biaozhǔn G B When abbreviating names the surname is written fully first letter capitalized or in all caps but only the first letter of each character in the given name is taken with full stops after each initial Lǐ Hua 李华 李華 Lǐ H or LǏ H Zhuge Kǒngming 诸葛孔明 諸葛孔明 Zhuge K M or ZHuGE K M Line wrapping Words can only be split by the character guangming 光明 bright guang ming not gu angming Initials cannot be split Wang J G 王建国 王建國 WangJ G not Wang J G Apostrophes are removed in line wrapping Xi an 西安 Xi an Xi an not Xi an When the original word has a hyphen the hyphen is added at the beginning of the new line cheshuǐ mǎlong 车水马龙 車水馬龍 heavy traffic carriage water horse dragon cheshuǐ mǎlong Hyphenation In addition to the situations mentioned above there are four situations where hyphens are used Coordinate and disjunctive compound words where the two elements are conjoined or opposed but retain their individual meaning gōng jian 弓箭 bow and arrow kuai man 快慢 speed fast slow shiqi ba sui 十七八岁 十七八歲 17 18 years old dǎ ma 打骂 打罵 beat and scold Ying Han 英汉 英漢 English Chinese dictionary Jing Jin 京津 Beijing Tianjin lu hǎi kōngjun 陆海空军 陸海空軍 army navy airforce Abbreviated compounds 略语 略語 lueyǔ gōnggong guanxi 公共关系 公共關係 public relations gōng guan 公关 公關 PR changtu dianhua 长途电话 長途電話 long distance calling chang hua 长话 長話 LDC Exceptions are made when the abbreviated term has become established as a word in its own right as in chuzhōng 初中 for chuji zhōngxue 初级中学 初級中學 junior high school Abbreviations of proper name compounds however should always be hyphenated Beijing Daxue 北京大学 北京大學 Peking University Bei Da 北大 PKU Four syllable idioms fengping langjing 风平浪静 風平浪靜 calm and tranquil wind calm waves down huijin rutǔ 挥金如土 揮金如土 spend money like water throw gold like dirt zhǐ bǐ mo yan 纸笔墨砚 紙筆墨硯 paper brush ink inkstone four coordinate words 49 Other idioms are separated according to the words that make up the idiom bei heiguō 背黑锅 背黑鍋 to be made a scapegoat to carry a black pot zhǐ xǔ zhōuguan fanghuǒ bu xǔ bǎixing diǎndeng 只许州官放火 不许百姓点灯 只許州官放火 不許百姓點燈 Gods may do what cattle may not only the official is allowed to light the fire the commoners are not allowed to light a lamp Punctuation The Chinese full stop is changed to a western full stop The hyphen is a half width hyphen Ellipsis can be changed from 6 dots to 3 dots The enumeration comma is changed to a normal comma All other punctuation marks are the same as the ones used in normal textsComparison with other orthographies EditPinyin is now used by foreign students learning Chinese as a second language as well as Bopomofo Pinyin assigns some Latin letters sound values which are quite different from those of most languages This has drawn some criticism as it may lead to confusion when uninformed speakers apply either native or English assumed pronunciations to words However this problem is not limited only to pinyin since many languages that use the Latin alphabet natively also assign different values to the same letters A recent study on Chinese writing and literacy concluded By and large pinyin represents the Chinese sounds better than the Wade Giles system and does so with fewer extra marks 50 As Pinyin is a phonetic writing system for modern Standard Chinese it is not designed to replace Chinese characters for writing Literary Chinese the standard written language prior to the early 1900s In particular Chinese characters retains semantic cues that helps distinguish differently pronounced words in the ancient classical language that are now homophones in Mandarin Thus Chinese characters remain indispensable for recording and transmitting the corpus of Chinese writing from the past Pinyin is also not designed to transcribe Chinese language varieties other than Standard Chinese which is based on the phonological system of Beijing Mandarin Other romanization schemes have been devised to transcribe those other Chinese varieties such as Jyutping for Cantonese and Pe h ōe ji for Hokkien Comparison charts Edit Vowels a e o IPA a ɔ ɛ ɤ ai ei au ou an en aŋ eŋ ʊŋ aɚPinyin a o e e ai ei ao ou an en ang eng ong erTongyong Pinyin eWade Giles eh e o en eng ung erhBopomofo ㄚ ㄛ ㄝ ㄜ ㄞ ㄟ ㄠ ㄡ ㄢ ㄣ ㄤ ㄥ ㄨㄥ ㄦexample 阿 喔 誒 俄 艾 黑 凹 偶 安 恩 昂 冷 中 二Vowels i u y IPA i je jou jɛn in iŋ jʊŋ u wo wei wen weŋ y ɥe ɥɛn ynPinyin yi ye you yan yin ying yong wu wo o wei wen weng yu yue yuan yunTongyong Pinyin wun wongWade Giles i yi yeh yu yen yung wen weng yu yueh yuan yunBopomofo ㄧ ㄧㄝ ㄧㄡ ㄧㄢ ㄧㄣ ㄧㄥ ㄩㄥ ㄨ ㄨㄛ ㄛ ㄨㄟ ㄨㄣ ㄨㄥ ㄩ ㄩㄝ ㄩㄢ ㄩㄣexample 一 也 又 言 音 英 用 五 我 位 文 翁 玉 月 元 雲Non sibilant consonants IPA p pʰ m feŋ tjou twei twen tʰɤ ny ly kɤɚ kʰɤ xɤPinyin b p m feng diu dui dun te nu lu ge ke heTongyong Pinyin fong diou duei nyu lyuWade Giles p pʻ feng tiu tui tun tʻe nu lu ko kʻo hoBopomofo ㄅ ㄆ ㄇ ㄈㄥ ㄉㄧㄡ ㄉㄨㄟ ㄉㄨㄣ ㄊㄜ ㄋㄩ ㄌㄩ ㄍㄜ ㄎㄜ ㄏㄜexample 玻 婆 末 封 丟 兌 頓 特 女 旅 歌 可 何Sibilant consonants IPA tɕjɛn tɕjʊŋ tɕʰin ɕɥɛn ʈʂɤ ʈʂɨ ʈʂʰɤ ʈʂʰɨ ʂɤ ʂɨ ɻɤ ɻɨ tsɤ tswo tsɨ tsʰɤ tsʰɨ sɤ sɨPinyin jian jiong qin xuan zhe zhi che chi she shi re ri ze zuo zi ce ci se siTongyong Pinyin jyong cin syuan jhe jhih chih shih rih zih cih sihWade Giles chien chiung chʻin shuan che chih chʻe chʻih she shih je jih tse tso tzŭ tsʻe tzʻŭ se ssŭBopomofo ㄐㄧㄢ ㄐㄩㄥ ㄑㄧㄣ ㄒㄩㄢ ㄓㄜ ㄓ ㄔㄜ ㄔ ㄕㄜ ㄕ ㄖㄜ ㄖ ㄗㄜ ㄗㄨㄛ ㄗ ㄘㄜ ㄘ ㄙㄜ ㄙexample 件 窘 秦 宣 哲 之 扯 赤 社 是 惹 日 仄 左 字 策 次 色 斯Tones IPA ma ma ma ma maPinyin ma ma mǎ ma maTongyong Pinyin ma maWade Giles ma1 ma2 ma3 ma4 maBopomofo ㄇㄚ ㄇㄚˊ ㄇㄚˇ ㄇㄚˋ ㄇㄚexample Chinese characters 媽 麻 馬 罵 嗎Unicode code points EditBased on ISO 7098 2015 Information and Documentation Chinese Romanization 信息与文献 中文罗马字母拼写法 tonal marks for pinyin should use the symbols from Combining Diacritical Marks as opposed by the use of Spacing Modifier Letters in Bopomofo Lowercase letters with tone marks are included in GB T 2312 and their uppercase counterparts are included in JIS X 0212 51 thus Unicode includes all the common accented characters from pinyin 52 Due to The Basic Rules of the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet Orthography all accented letters are required to have both uppercase and lowercase characters as per their normal counterparts Accented pinyin characters 1 2 Letter First tone Second tone Third tone Fourth toneCombining Diacritical Marks U 0304 U 0301 U 030C U 0300 Common lettersUppercase A A U 0100 A U 00C1 Ǎ U 01CD A U 00C0 E E U 0112 E U 00C9 E U 011A E U 00C8 I i U 012A I U 00CD Ǐ U 01CF I U 00CC O Ō U 014C o U 00D3 Ǒ U 01D1 O U 00D2 U u U 016A U U 00DA Ǔ U 01D3 U U 00D9 U U 00DC Ǖ U 01D5 Ǘ U 01D7 Ǚ U 01D9 Ǜ U 01DB Lowercase a a U 0101 a U 00E1 ǎ U 01CE a U 00E0 e e U 0113 e U 00E9 e U 011B e U 00E8 i i U 012B i U 00ED ǐ U 01D0 i U 00EC o ō U 014D o U 00F3 ǒ U 01D2 o U 00F2 u u U 016B u U 00FA ǔ U 01D4 u U 00F9 u U 00FC ǖ U 01D6 ǘ U 01D8 ǚ U 01DA ǜ U 01DC Rare lettersUppercase E U 00CA E U 00CA U 0304 Ế U 1EBE E U 00CA U 030C Ề U 1EC0 M M U 004D U 0304 Ḿ U 1E3E M U 004D U 030C M U 004D U 0300 N N U 004E U 0304 N U 0143 N U 0147 Ǹ U 01F8 Lowercase e U 00EA e U 00EA U 0304 ế U 1EBF e U 00EA U 030C ề U 1EC1 m m U 006D U 0304 ḿ U 1E3F m U 006D U 030C m U 006D U 0300 n n U 006E U 0304 n U 0144 n U 0148 ǹ U 01F9 Notes 1 Yellow cells indicate that there are no single Unicode character for that letter the character shown here uses Combining Diacritical Mark characters to display the letter 52 2 Grey cells indicate that Xiandai Hanyu Cidian does not include pinyin with that specific letter 52 53 Microsoft Pinyin IMEWhen using pinyin IME choosing ḿ ǹ outputs PUA U E7C7 and U E7C8 GBK has mapped two characters ḿ and ǹ to Private Use Areas in Unicode as U E7C7 and U E7C8 respectively 54 thus some Simplified Chinese fonts e g SimSun that adheres to GBK include both characters in the Private Use Areas and some input methods e g Sogou Pinyin also outputs the Private Use Areas code point instead of the original character As the superset GB 18030 changed the mappings of ḿ and ǹ 53 this has an caused issue where the input methods and font files use different encoding standard and thus the input and output of both characters are mixed up 52 Shorthand pinyin letters 52 Uppercase Lowercase Note Example 1 Ĉ U 0108 ĉ U 0109 Abbreviation of ch 长 長 can be spelled as ĉaŋŜ U 015C ŝ U 015D Abbreviation of sh 伤 傷 can be spelled as ŝaŋẐ U 1E90 ẑ U 1E91 Abbreviation of zh 张 張 can be spelled as ẐaŋŊ U 014A ŋ U 014B Abbreviation of ng 让 讓 can be spelled as raŋ 嗯 can be spelled as ŋ Notes 1 Example given is the abbreviated shorthand version according to Scheme for the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet it is inadvisable to use them for real life usage Other symbols that are used in pinyin is as follow Pinyin symbols Symbol in Chinese Symbol in pinyin Usage Example U 3002 U 002E Marks end of sentence 你好 Nǐ hǎo U FF0C U 3001 U 002C Marks connecting sentence 你 好吗 Nǐ hǎo ma U 2014 U 2014 U 2014 Indicates breaking of meaning mid sentence 枢纽部分 中央大厅 shuniǔ bufen zhōngyang dating U 2026 U 2026 U 2026 Used for omitting a word phrase line paragraph or more from a quoted passage 我 Wǒ U 00B7 Marks for the neutral tone can be placed before the neutral tone syllable 吗 ma U 002D Hyphenation between abbreviated compounds 公关 gōng guan U 0027 Indicates separate syllables 西安 Xi an compared to 先 xian Other punctuation mark and symbols in Chinese are to use the equivalent symbol in English noted in to GB T 15834 Single storey a in four different Kai script fonts Notice that accented pinyin letters are different in style and width with the regular letter In educational usage to match the handwritten style some fonts used a different style for the letter a and g to have an appearance of single storey a and single storey g Fonts that follow GB T 2312 usually make single storey a in the accented pinyin characters but leaving unaccented double storey a causing a discrepancy in the font itself 52 Unicode did not provide an official way to encode single storey a and single storey g but as IPA require the differentiation of single storey and double storey a and g thus the single storey character ɑ ɡ in IPA should be used if the need to separate single storey a and g arises For daily usage there is no need to differentiate single storey and double storey a g Single storey alphabet Alphabet Single storey representation Notesa ɑ U 0251 IPA ɑ a U 03B1 Greek alpha not suggestedg ɡ U 0261 IPA ɡ Usage Edit A school slogan asking elementary students to speak Standard Chinese is annotated with pinyin but without tonal marks Pinyin superseded older romanization systems such as Wade Giles 1859 modified 1892 and postal romanization and replaced zhuyin as the method of Chinese phonetic instruction in mainland China The ISO adopted pinyin as the standard romanization for modern Chinese in 1982 ISO 7098 1982 superseded by ISO 7098 2015 The United Nations followed suit in 1986 2 55 It has also been accepted by the government of Singapore the United States s Library of Congress the American Library Association and many other international institutions 56 failed verification The spelling of Chinese geographical or personal names in pinyin has become the most common way to transcribe them in English Pinyin has also become the dominant method for entering Chinese text into computers in Mainland China in contrast to Taiwan where Bopomofo is most commonly used Families outside of Taiwan who speak Mandarin as a mother tongue use pinyin to help children associate characters with spoken words which they already know Chinese families outside of Taiwan who speak some other language as their mother tongue use the system to teach children Mandarin pronunciation when they learn vocabulary in elementary school 57 58 Since 1958 pinyin has been actively used in adult education as well making it easier for formerly illiterate people to continue with self study after a short period of pinyin literacy instruction 59 Pinyin has become a tool for many foreigners to learn Mandarin pronunciation and is used to explain both the grammar and spoken Mandarin coupled with Chinese characters 汉字 漢字 Hanzi Books containing both Chinese characters and pinyin are often used by foreign learners of Chinese Pinyin s role in teaching pronunciation to foreigners and children is similar in some respects to furigana based books with hiragana letters written above or next to kanji directly analogous to zhuyin in Japanese or fully vocalised texts in Arabic vocalised Arabic The tone marking diacritics are commonly omitted in popular news stories and even in scholarly works as well as in the traditional Mainland Chinese Braille system which is similar to pinyin but meant for blind readers 60 This results in some degree of ambiguity as to which words are being represented Computer input systems Edit Simple computer systems able to display only 7 bit ASCII text essentially the 26 Latin letters 10 digits and punctuation marks long provided a convincing argument for using unaccented pinyin instead of Chinese characters Today however most computer systems are able to display characters from Chinese and many other writing systems as well and have them entered with a Latin keyboard using an input method editor Alternatively some PDAs tablet computers and digitizing tablets allow users to input characters graphically by writing with a stylus with concurrent online handwriting recognition Pinyin with accents can be entered with the use of special keyboard layouts or various character map utilities X keyboard extension includes a Hanyu Pinyin altgr layout for AltGr triggered dead key input of accented characters 61 In Taiwan Edit See also Chinese language romanization in Taiwan Taiwan Republic of China adopted Tongyong Pinyin a modification of Hanyu Pinyin as the official romanization system on the national level between October 2002 and January 2009 when it decided to promote Hanyu Pinyin Tongyong Pinyin common phonetic a romanization system developed in Taiwan was designed to romanize languages and dialects spoken on the island in addition to Mandarin Chinese The Kuomintang KMT party resisted its adoption preferring the Hanyu Pinyin system used in mainland China and in general use internationally Romanization preferences quickly became associated with issues of national identity Preferences split along party lines the KMT and its affiliated parties in the pan blue coalition supported the use of Hanyu Pinyin while the Democratic Progressive Party and its affiliated parties in the pan green coalition favored the use of Tongyong Pinyin Tongyong Pinyin was made the official system in an administrative order that allowed its adoption by local governments to be voluntary Locales in Kaohsiung Tainan and other areas use romanizations derived from Tongyong Pinyin for some district and street names A few localities with governments controlled by the KMT most notably Taipei Hsinchu and Kinmen County overrode the order and converted to Hanyu Pinyin before the January 1 2009 national level decision 5 6 though with a slightly different capitalization convention than mainland China Most areas of Taiwan adopted Tongyong Pinyin consistent with the national policy Today many street signs in Taiwan are using Tongyong Pinyin derived romanizations 62 63 but some especially in northern Taiwan display Hanyu Pinyin derived romanizations It is not unusual to see spellings on street signs and buildings derived from the older Wade Giles MPS2 and other systems Attempts to make pinyin standard in Taiwan have had uneven success with most place and proper names remaining unaffected including all major cities Personal names on Taiwanese passports honor the choices of Taiwanese citizens who can choose Wade Giles Hakka Hoklo Tongyong aboriginal or pinyin 64 Official pinyin use is controversial as when pinyin use for a metro line in 2017 provoked protests despite government responses that The romanization used on road signs and at transportation stations is intended for foreigners Every foreigner learning Mandarin learns Hanyu pinyin because it is the international standard The decision has nothing to do with the nation s self determination or any ideologies because the key point is to ensure that foreigners can read signs 65 In Singapore Edit See also Chinese language romanization in Singapore Singapore implemented Hanyu Pinyin as the official romanization system for Mandarin in the public sector starting in the 1980s in conjunction with the Speak Mandarin Campaign 66 Hanyu Pinyin is also used as the romanization system to teach Mandarin Chinese at schools 67 While the process of Pinyinisation has been mostly successful in government communication placenames and businesses established in the 1980s and onward it continues to be unpopular in some areas most notably for personal names and vocabulary borrowed from other varieties of Chinese already established in the local vernacular 66 In these situations romanization continues to be based on the Chinese language variety it originated from especially the three largest Chinese varieties traditionally spoken in Singapore Hokkien Teochew and Cantonese For other languages Edit See also SASM GNC romanization Tibetan pinyin and Guangdong Romanization Pinyin like systems have been devised for other variants of Chinese Guangdong Romanization is a set of romanizations devised by the government of Guangdong province for Cantonese Teochew Hakka Moiyen dialect and Hainanese All of these are designed to use Latin letters in a similar way to pinyin In addition in accordance to the Regulation of Phonetic Transcription in Hanyu Pinyin Letters of Place Names in Minority Nationality Languages 少数民族语地名汉语拼音字母音译转写法 少數民族語地名漢語拼音字母音譯寫法 promulgated in 1976 place names in non Han languages like Mongolian Uyghur and Tibetan are also officially transcribed using pinyin in a system adopted by the State Administration of Surveying and Mapping and Geographical Names Committee known as SASM GNC romanization The pinyin letters 26 Roman letters plus u and e are used to approximate the non Han language in question as closely as possible This results in spellings that are different from both the customary spelling of the place name and the pinyin spelling of the name in Chinese Customary Official pinyin for local name Traditional Chinese name Simplified Chinese name Pinyin for Chinese nameShigatse Xigaze 日喀則 日喀则 RikazeUrumchi Urumqi 烏魯木齊 乌鲁木齐 WulǔmuqiLhasa Lhasa 拉薩 拉萨 LasaHohhot Hohhot 呼和浩特 呼和浩特 HuhehaoteGolmud Golmud 格爾木 格尔木 Ge ermuQiqihar Qiqihar 齊齊哈爾 齐齐哈尔 Qiqiha erTongyong Pinyin was developed in Taiwan for use in rendering not only Mandarin Chinese but other languages and dialects spoken on the island such as Taiwanese Hakka and aboriginal languages See also EditCombining character Cyrillization of Chinese Pinyin input method Romanization of Japanese Tibetan pinyin Transcription into Chinese characters Comparison of Chinese transcription systems Two cell Chinese BrailleNotes Edit This was part of the Soviet program of Latinization meant to reform alphabets for languages in that country to use Latin characters References Edit The online version of the canonical clarification needed According to which group Guoyu Cidian 國語辭典 defines this term as 標語音 不標語義的符號系統 足以明確紀錄某一種語言 a system of symbols for notation of the sounds of words rather than for their meanings that is sufficient to accurately record some language See this entry online permanent dead link Retrieved 14 September 2012 a b c d e f Margalit Fox 14 January 2017 Zhou Youguang Who Made Writing Chinese as Simple as ABC Dies at 111 The New York Times Pinyin celebrates 50th birthday Xinhua News Agency 11 February 2008 Retrieved 20 September 2008 ISO 7098 1982 Documentation Romanization of Chinese Retrieved 1 March 2009 a b Shih Hsiu Chuan 18 September 2008 Hanyu Pinyin to be standard system in 2009 Taipei Times p 2 a b Government to improve English friendly environment The China Post 18 September 2008 Archived from the original on 19 September 2008 Copper John F 2014 Historical Dictionary of Taiwan Republic of China Rowman amp Littlefield ISBN 978 1 4422 4307 1 Retrieved 20 July 2020 Copper John F 2015 Historical Dictionary of Taiwan Republic of China Lanham Rowman amp Littlefield p xv ISBN 9781442243064 Retrieved 4 December 2017 But some cities businesses and organizations notably in the south of Taiwan did not accept this as it suggested that Taiwan is more closely tied to the PRC Sin Kiong Wong 2012 Confucianism Chinese History and Society World Scientific p 72 ISBN 978 9814374477 Retrieved 13 July 2014 Brockey Liam Matthew 2009 Journey to the East The Jesuit Mission to China 1579 1724 Harvard University Press p 261 ISBN 978 0674028814 Retrieved 13 July 2014 a b Chan Wing tsit Adler Joseph 2013 Sources of Chinese Tradition Columbia University Press pp 303 304 ISBN 978 0231517997 Retrieved 13 July 2014 Mair Victor H 2002 Sound and Meaning in the History of Characters Views of China s Earliest Script Reformers In Erbaugh Mary S ed Difficult Characters Interdisciplinary Studies of Chinese and Japanese Writing Columbus Ohio Ohio State University National East Asian Language Resource Center Ao Benjamin 1997 History and Prospect of Chinese Romanization Chinese Librarianship An International Electronic Journal 4 Norman Jerry 1988 Chinese Cambridge Language Surveys Cambridge University Press p 261 ISBN 0521296536 Retrieved 13 July 2014 Jensen Lionel M Weston Timothy B 2007 China s Transformations The Stories Beyond the Headlines Rowman amp Littlefield p XX ISBN 978 0742538634 Chen Ping 1999 Modern Chinese History and Sociolinguistics Cambridge University Press p 186 ISBN 0521645727 Retrieved 13 July 2014 Latinxua Sin Wenz tones John DeFrancis The Chinese Language Fact and Fantasy Honolulu University of Hawaii Press 1984 pp 246 247 Father of pinyin China Daily 26 March 2009 Retrieved 12 July 2009 Reprinted in part as Simon Alan 21 27 January 2011 Father of Pinyin China Daily Asia Weekly Hong Kong Xinhua p 20 Dwyer Colin 14 January 2017 Obituary Zhou Youguang Architect Of A Bridge Between Languages Dies At 111 NPR National Public Radio Retrieved 20 December 2018 Branigan Tania 21 February 2008 Sound Principles The Guardian London Retrieved 20 September 2008 Hessler Peter 8 February 2004 Oracle Bones The New Yorker Retrieved 17 March 2022 Rohsenow John S 1989 Fifty years of script and written language reform in the PRC the genesis of the language law of 2001 In Zhou Minglang and Sun Hongkai eds Language Policy in the People s Republic of China Theory and Practice Since 1949 p 23 Branigan Tania 21 February 2008 Sound principles The Guardian London a b Hanyu Pinyin system turns 50 Straits Times 11 February 2008 Retrieved 20 September 2008 Wiedenhof Jeroen Leiden University 2004 Purpose and effect in the transcription of Mandarin PDF Proceedings of the International Conference on Chinese Studies 2004 漢學研究國際學術研討會論文集 National Yunlin University of Science and Technology pp 387 402 ISBN 9860040117 Archived PDF from the original on 1 May 2013 Retrieved 18 July 2009 In the Cold War era the use of this system outside China was typically regarded as a political statement or a deliberate identification with the Chinese communist regime p390 Terry Edith How Asia Got Rich Japan China and the Asian Miracle M E Sharpe 2002 632 Retrieved from Google Books on August 7 2011 ISBN 0 7656 0356 X 9780765603562 Terry Edith How Asia Got Rich Japan China and the Asian Miracle M E Sharpe 2002 633 Retrieved from Google Books on August 7 2011 ISBN 0 7656 0356 X 9780765603562 Times due to revise its Chinese spelling New York Times February 4 1979 page 10 GB T 16159 2012 PDF Retrieved 17 February 2020 You can hear recordings of the Finals here Archived 9 January 2011 at the Wayback Machine Huang Rong 公安部最新规定 护照上的 u 规范成 YU Archived from the original on 14 July 2014 Retrieved 29 August 2012 Li Zhiyan 吕 拼音到怎么写 公安部称应拼写成 LYU Archived from the original on 28 May 2013 Retrieved 23 August 2012 Shea Marilyn Pinyin Ting The Chinese Experience hua umf maine edu Archived from the original on 12 June 2010 Retrieved 21 December 2010 a b Apostrophes in Hanyu Pinyin when and where to use them Archived from the original on 31 July 2010 Retrieved 27 April 2010 怪 北捷景安站 英譯如 金幹站 Apple Daily Taiwan 23 December 2012 Retrieved 2 April 2019 北市捷運局指出 目前有7大捷運站名英譯沒有隔音符號 常讓外國人問路鬧烏龍 如大安站 Daan 被誤唸為丹站 景安站 Jingan 變成金幹站等 捷運局擬加撇號 或橫線 以利分辨音節 Section 5 1 6 of the current standard GB T 28039 2011 Chinese phonetic alphabet spelling rules for Chinese names Tung Bobby Chen Yijun Liang Hai LIU Eric Q Zhang Aijie Wu Xiaoqian Li Angel Ishida Richard Requirements for Chinese Text Layout W3C Retrieved 18 March 2016 Section 7 3 of the current standard GB T 16159 2012 Swofford Mark Where do the tone marks go Pinyin info Retrieved 20 September 2008 Dummitt Nathan 2008 Chinese Through Tone amp Color Hippocrene Books ISBN 978 0781812047 Hanping Chinese Dictionary Pro 3 2 11 released 10 January 2013 Retrieved 26 November 2020 DeFrancis John ed 2010 ABC English Chinese Chinese English Dictionary University of Hawai i Press ISBN 9780824834852 a b Proposal to encode three uppercase Latin letters used in early Pinyin PDF Retrieved 21 June 2019 a b Basic Rules of the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet Orthography Qingdao Vocational and Technical College of Hotel Management in Chinese Department of Educational Administration 10 April 2014 Archived from the original on 19 August 2014 Retrieved 11 August 2014 拼音正词法基本规则 pinyin info Release of the National Standard Basic Rules of the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet Orthography China Education and Research Network in Chinese China Education and Research Network 20 July 2012 Archived from the original on 28 July 2014 Retrieved 11 August 2014 现代汉语词典 第七版 A Dictionary of Current Chinese Seventh Edition Beijing The Commercial Press 1 September 2016 p 289 ISBN 978 7 100 12450 8 第五 Diwǔ 名 姓 现代汉语规范词典 第3版 A Standard Dictionary of Current Chinese Third Edition Beijing 外语教学与研究出版社 Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press May 2014 p 294 ISBN 978 7 513 54562 4 第五 diwǔ 名 复姓 Use of the Hyphen Abbreviations and Short Forms Pinyin info Retrieved 6 April 2012 Taylor Insup and Maurice M Taylor 1995 Writing and literacy in Chinese Korean and Japanese Volume 3 of Studies in written language and literacy John Benjamins p 124 Chapter 7 Europe I Unicode 14 0 Core Specification PDF 14 0 ed Mountain View CA Unicode 2021 p 297 ISBN 978 1 936213 29 0 a b c d e f Eric Q LIU The Type Wǒ ai pinyin The Type Retrieved 4 June 2020 a b 奈白不弍 关于带声调汉语拼音字母的输入 知乎专栏 in Chinese Retrieved 4 June 2020 林卯 自制像素字体7年后总算升了0 5版本 Ozla 5 5 Mendelev 钔捷列夫 bangumi tv Lin Mei chun 8 October 2000 Official challenges romanization Taipei Times Ao Benjamin 1 December 1997 History and Prospect of Chinese Romanization Chinese Librarianship An International Electronic Journal Internet Chinese Librarians Club 4 ISSN 1089 4667 Retrieved 20 September 2008 Snowling Margaret J Hulme Charles 2005 The science of reading a handbook Blackwell handbooks of developmental psychology Vol 17 Wiley Blackwell pp 320 22 ISBN 1 4051 1488 6 R F Price 2005 Education in Modern China Volume 23 of China history philosophy economics 2 illustrated ed Routledge p 123 ISBN 0 415 36167 2 Price 2005 pp 206 208 Braille s invention still a boon to visually impaired Chinese readers South China Morning Post 5 January 2018 Retrieved 2 March 2022 mainland Chinese Braille for standard Mandarin and Taiwanese Braille for Taiwanese Mandarin are phonetically based tone generally omitted for Mandarin systems symbols cn in xkeyboard config Freedesktop org Cgit Retrieved 28 April 2018 劉婉君 15 October 2018 路牌改通用拼音 南市府 已採用多年 Liberty Times in Chinese Taiwan Retrieved 28 July 2019 基進黨台南市東區市議員參選人李宗霖今天指出 台南市路名牌拼音未統一 音譯錯誤等 建議統一採用通用拼音 對此 台南市政府交通局回應 南市已實施通用拼音多年 將全面檢視路名牌 依現行音譯方式進行校對改善 Eryk Smith 27 November 2017 OPINION Hanyu Pinyin Should Not Be Political Kaohsiung Retrieved 13 July 2019 why does Kaohsiung City insist on making visitors guess what Shihcyuan is supposed to represent Especially when a few blocks away the same road has somehow morphed into Shiquan 十全路 Road Move away from Kaohsiung s city center and streets neighborhoods or townships can have several romanized names sometimes on the same signage The refusal to adopt Hanyu in Kaohsiung seems based on nothing more than groundless fear of loss of identity or diminished regional autonomy Listen Kaohsiung we won t lose our identity or our freedom by changing the romanized spelling of Singjhong Road 興中 to Xingzhong Everington Keoni Taiwan passport can now include names in Hoklo Hakka indigenous languages Taiwan News Retrieved 20 July 2020 Lin Sean 11 January 2017 Groups protest use of Hanyu pinyin for new MRT line Taipei Times www taipeitimes com Retrieved 20 July 2020 a b Wendy Bockhorst Heng Lionel Lee November 2007 Language Planning in Singapore On Pragmatism Communitarianism and Personal Names Current Issues in Language Planning p 3 p 485 Chan Sin Wai The Routledge Encyclopedia of the Chinese Language Routledge 2016 Further reading EditGao Johnson K 2005 Pinyin shorthand a bilingual handbook Jack Sun ISBN 9781599712512 Kimball Richard L 1988 Quick reference Chinese a practical guide to Mandarin for beginners and travelers in English Pinyin romanization and Chinese characters China Books amp Periodicals ISBN 9780835120364 Pinyin Chinese English dictionary Beijing Commercial Press 1979 ISBN 9780471867968 Yǐn Binyōng 尹斌庸 Felley Mary 1990 汉语拼音和正词法 Chinese romanization pronunciation and orthography ISBN 9787800521485 External links EditPinyin at Wikipedia s sister projects Definitions from Wiktionary Media from Commons Data from Wikidata Chinese Wikisource has original text related to this article 汉语拼音方案 Wikibooks has a book on the topic of Pinyin The Wikibook Chinese Mandarin has a page on the topic of Pinyin Pronunciation Scheme for the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet The original 1958 Scheme apparently scanned from a reprinted copy in Xinhua Zidian PDF version from the Chinese Ministry of Education in Chinese Basic rules of the Chinese phonetic alphabet orthography The official standard GB T 16159 2012 in Chinese PDF version from the Chinese Ministry of Education in Chinese HTML version in Chinese Chinese phonetic alphabet spelling rules for Chinese names The official standard GB T 28039 2011 in Chinese PDF version from the Chinese Ministry of Education in Chinese HTML version in Chinese Pinyin Guide com Pronunciation and FAQs related to Pinyin Pinyin Tone Tool archive Online editor to create Pinyin with tones Preceded byGwoyeu Romatzyh Official romanization adopted by the People s Republic of China1958 CurrentPreceded byWade Giles de facto used romanization by the People s Republic of China1978 Preceded by Romanization used by the United Nations1986 Preceded byTongyong Pinyin Official romanization adopted by the Republic of China Taiwan 2009 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Pinyin amp oldid 1130167993, 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