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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 foremost romanization system for Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin
Chinese. It is used in either a formal, educational or official capacity in countries where the language 汉语拼音, 漢語拼音
is official, which are the People's Republic of China (PRC), the Republic of China (ROC, Taiwan) and Script type Alphabet
Singapore, as well as in the United Nations (UN). It is principally used to teach Mandarin, normally
romanization
written with Chinese characters, 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 Created 1950s
and words in languages written in the Latin script, and is also used in certain computer input Time People's
methods to enter Chinese characters and in some Chinese dictionaries to arrange entries. The word period Republic of China
Hànyǔ (simplified Chinese: 汉 语 ; traditional Chinese: 漢 語 ) literally means "Han language" (i.e.
(PRC) 1958–present
Chinese language), while Pīnyīn (拼音) means "spelled sounds".[1]
Republic of
The pinyin system was developed in the 1950s by a group of Chinese linguists including Zhou China (ROC) 2009–
Youguang[2] and was based on earlier forms of romanizations of Chinese. It was published by the present
Chinese Government in 1958 and revised several times.[3] The International Organization for Singapore
Standardization (ISO) adopted pinyin as an international standard, ISO 7098, in 1982[4] and was (1980–present)
followed by the United Nations in 1986.[2] Attempts to make pinyin standard in the ROC (Taiwan)
United Nations
occurred in 2002 and 2009, and while official since 2009, "Taiwan largely has no standardized
spelling system" so that in 2019 "alphabetic spellings in Taiwan are marked more by a lack of system (UN) 1982–present
than the presence of one".[5][6][7] Moreover, "some cities, businesses, and organizations, notably in Languages Standard Chinese
the southern parts of Taiwan, did not accept [efforts to introduce pinyin] due to political reasons, as
it suggested further integration with the PRC", and so it remains one of several rival romanization Pinyin
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 Table of Hanyu Pinyin syllables,
discrepancies. which includes 23 initials (top) and
24 finals (bottom)
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 Chinese 拼音
languages. For example, the aspiration distinction between b, d, g and p, t, k is similar to that of Transcriptions [show]
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 Standard Mandarin
[tsʰ] (which is reminiscent of these letters being used to represent the phoneme /ts/ in the German Hanyu Pinyin Pīnyīn
language and Slavic languages written in the Latin script, respectively). From s, z, c come the Bopomofo ㄆㄧㄣ ㄧㄣ
digraphs sh, zh, ch by analogy with English sh, ch. Although this analogical use of digraphs
Wade–Giles Pʻin1-yin1
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 Tongyong Pinyin Pinyin
Maltese to represent /ʃ/; the pinyin q is close to its value of /c͡ ç/ in Albanian, though to the untrained IPA [pʰín.ín]
ear both pinyin and Albanian pronunciations may sound similar to the ch. Pinyin vowels are
Wu
pronounced in a similar way to vowels in Romance languages.
Romanization phin平 in平
The pronunciations and spellings of Chinese words are generally given in terms of initials and finals, Hakka
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 Romanization pin24 im24
before the vowel), a nucleus vowel, and coda (final vowel or consonant). Yue: Cantonese
Yale Romanization Pingyām
History Jyutping Ping3jam1
Sidney Lau Ping3yam1°
Canton Romanization Ping3yem1
Background: romanization of Chinese before 1949
IPA [pʰeŋ˧ jɐm˥]
In 1605, the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci published Xizi Qiji (西字奇蹟; Xīzì Qíjī; Hsi-tzu Ch'i-chi; Southern Min
'Miracle of Western Letters') in Beijing.[9] This was the first book to use the Roman alphabet to write Hokkien POJ pheng-im
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 Scheme for the Chinese Phonetic
Hangzhou.[10] Neither book had much immediate impact on the way in which Chinese thought about Alphabet
their writing system, and the romanizations they described were intended more for Westerners than Simplified Chinese 汉语拼音方
for the Chinese.[11] 案
One of the earliest Chinese thinkers to relate Western alphabets to Chinese was late Ming to early Traditional Chinese 漢語拼音方
Qing dynasty scholar-official, Fang Yizhi (方以智; Fāng Yǐzhì; Fang I-chih; 1611–1671).[12] 案

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The first late Qing reformer to propose that China adopt a system of spelling was Song Shu (1862– Transcriptions [show]
1910). A student of the great scholars Yu Yue and Zhang Taiyan, Song had been to Japan and
Standard Mandarin
observed the stunning effect of the kana syllabaries and Western learning there. This galvanized him
into activity on a number of fronts, one of the most important being reform of the script. While Song Hanyu Pinyin Hànyǔ Pīnyīn
did not himself actually create a system for spelling Sinitic languages, his discussion proved fertile Fāng'àn
and led to a proliferation of schemes for phonetic scripts.[11] Bopomofo ㄏㄢˋ ㄩˇ ㄆㄧㄣ ㄧㄣ
ㄈㄤ ㄢˋ
Wade–Giles Wade–Giles Han4-yü3 Pʻin1-yin1
Fang1-an4
The Wade–Giles system was produced by Thomas Wade in 1859, and further improved by Herbert IPA [xân.ỳ pʰín.ín fáŋ.ân]
Giles in the Chinese–English Dictionary of 1892. It was popular and used in English-language
Wu
publications outside China until 1979.[13]
Romanization hoe去 nyiu上 phin平 in
平
faon平 oe去
Sin Wenz
Hakka
In the early 1930s, Chinese Communist Party leaders trained in Moscow introduced a phonetic Romanization hon55 ngi24 pin24
alphabet using Roman letters which had been developed in the Soviet Oriental Institute of Leningrad im24 fong24 on55
and was originally intended to improve literacy in the Russian Far East.[14][note 1] This Sin Wenz or
Yue: Cantonese
"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] Yale Honyúh Pingyām
Romanization Fōng'on
In 1940, several thousand members attended a Border Region Sin Wenz Society convention. Mao Jyutping Hon3jyu5 Ping3jam1
Zedong and Zhu De, head of the army, both contributed their calligraphy (in characters) for the Fong1on3
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 Sidney Lau Hon3yue5
Xingzhi, a leading educational reformer; and Lu Xun. Over thirty journals soon appeared written in Ping3yam1°
Sin Wenz, plus large numbers of translations, biographies (including Lincoln, Franklin, Edison, Fong1°on3
Ford, and Charlie Chaplin), some contemporary Chinese literature, and a spectrum of textbooks. In Canton Hon3yu5 Ping3yem1
1940, the movement reached an apex when Mao's Border Region Government declared that the Sin Romanization Fong1on3
Wenz had the same legal status as traditional characters in government and public documents. Many
IPA [hɔ̄ ːn.y̬ ː pʰēŋ.jɐ́ m
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 fɔ́ ːŋ.ɔ̄ ːn]
well adapted to writing regional languages, and therefore would require learning Mandarin. Sin Southern Min
Wenz fell into relative disuse during the following years.[17] Hokkien POJ hàn-gú pheng-im
hong-àn
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 Simplified Han characters and Hanyu Pinyin are
prominently reflected in this Kindergarten
economist,[2] as part of a Chinese government project in the 1950s. Zhou, often called "the
entrance in Zhengzhou, Henan, mainland China
father of pinyin",[2][18][19][20] worked as a banker in New York when he decided to return
(PRC).
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] In this station sign for Taichung Port railway
station in Taichung, Taiwan (ROC), the text
A draft was published on February 12, 1956. The first edition of Hanyu Pinyin was appears in both Traditional Han characters and
approved and adopted at the Fifth Session of the 1st National People's Congress on English (English word (Port), Wade–Giles
February 11, 1958. It was then introduced to primary schools as a way to teach Standard (Taichung) and in Hanyu Pinyin).
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
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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 yī ( 衣 , clothes, officially
pronounced /í/) as /jí/ and wéi (围; 圍, 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.

Labial Alveolar Retroflex Alveolo-palatal Velar

unaspirated b [p] d [t] g [k]

Plosive
aspirated p [pʰ] t [tʰ] k [kʰ]
Nasal m [m] n [n]
unaspirated z [ts] zh [ʈʂ] j [tɕ]
Affricate
aspirated c [tsʰ] ch [ʈʂʰ] q [tɕʰ]
Fricative f [f] s [s] sh [ʂ] x [ɕ] h [x]
Liquid l [l] r [ɻ]~[ʐ]
2 y [j]/[ɥ]1 and w [w]
Semivowel

1y 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 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
Standard Chinese vowels (with IPA and Pinyin)
In each cell below, the first line indicates IPA, the second indicates pinyin for
Front Central Back
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 Close i ⟨i⟩ • y ⟨ü⟩ ɨ ⟨i⟩ u ⟨u⟩
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, Close-mid ɤ ⟨e⟩ • o ⟨o⟩
the last of which is attached as a grammatical suffix. A Chinese syllable e̞ ⟨ê⟩ ɚ ⟨er⟩
ending with any other consonant either is from a non-Mandarin language (a
southern Chinese language such as Cantonese, or a minority language of Open-mid
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). a ⟨a⟩
Open

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Rime

∅ -⁠e/-⁠o -⁠a -⁠ei -⁠ai -⁠ou -⁠ao -⁠n -⁠en -⁠an -⁠ng -⁠ong -⁠eng -⁠ang er

[ɨ] [ɤ] [a] [ei̯ ] [ai̯ ] [ou̯ ] [au̯ ] [ən] [an] [ʊŋ] [əŋ] [aŋ] [ɚ]
∅ e a ei ai ou ao en an eng ang er 1
-⁠i -⁠e -⁠a -⁠ei -⁠ai -⁠ou -⁠ao -⁠en -⁠an -⁠ong -⁠eng -⁠ang

[i] [je] [ja] [jou̯ ] [jau̯ ] [in] [jɛn] [iŋ] [jʊŋ] [jaŋ]
y⁠-
yi ye ya you yao yin yan ying yong yang
-⁠i⁠-
-⁠i -⁠ie -⁠ia -⁠iu -⁠iao -⁠in -⁠ian -⁠ing -⁠iong -⁠iang
Medial
[u] [wo] [wa] [wei̯ ] [wai̯ ] [wən] [wan] [wəŋ] [waŋ]
w⁠- wo
wu wa wei wai wen wan weng wang
-⁠u⁠-
-⁠u -⁠uo 3 -⁠ua -⁠ui -⁠uai -⁠un -⁠uan -⁠uang

[y] [ɥe] [yn] [ɥɛn]

yu⁠- yu yue yun yuan
-⁠ü⁠-
-⁠ü 2 -⁠üe 2 -⁠ün 2 -⁠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] (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 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 lü (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 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 鱼/魚 (fish) is transcribed in pinyin simply as yú, not as yǘ. 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 jü.
Genuine ambiguities only happen with nu/nü and lu/lü, 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 lü or nü,
particularly people with the surname 吕 (Lǚ), a fairly common surname, particularly compared to the surnames 陆 (Lù), 鲁 (Lǔ), 卢
(Lú) and 路 (Lù). 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

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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
English
Pinyin IPA Explanation
approximation[33]
b [p] spark unaspirated p, as in spark
p [pʰ] 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 [tʰ] 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 [kʰ] kay strongly aspirated k, as in kiss

[x],
h loch Varies between hat and Scottish loch.
[h]
Alveo-palatal. No equivalent in English, but similar to an unaspirated "-chy-" sound when
j [tɕ] churchyard 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.
Alveo-palatal. No equivalent in English. Like punch yourself, with the lips spread wide as
q [tɕʰ] punch yourself when one says ee. Curl the tip of the tongue downwards to stick it at the back of the teeth
and strongly aspirate.
Alveo-palatal. No equivalent in English. Like -sh y-, with the lips spread as when one says
x [ɕ] push yourself
ee and with the tip of the tongue curled downwards and stuck to the back of the teeth.
Unaspirated ch. Similar to hatching but retroflex, or marching in American English. Voiced
zh [ʈʂ] nurture
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.

No equivalent in English, but similar to a sound between r in reduce and s in measure but
r [ɻ~ʐ] ray
with the tongue curled upward against the top of the mouth (i.e. retroflex).
unaspirated c, similar to something between suds but voiceless, unless in a toneless
z [ts] pizza
syllable.
like the English ts in cats, but strongly aspirated, very similar to the Czech, Polish,
c [tsʰ] hats
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.*
[j],
y yes as in yes. Before a u, pronounced with rounded lips, as if pronouncing German ü.*
[ɥ]

* 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: [ɕi̯ ɛn]). 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]

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

Pronunciation of finals
IPA: Vowels
The following is a list of finals in Standard Chinese, excepting most of those
ending with r. Front Central Back
Close
To find a given final: i y ɨ ʉ ɯ u
Near-close
1. Remove the initial consonant. zh, ch, and sh count as initial ɪ ʏ ʊ
consonants. Close-mid
2. Change initial w to u and initial y to i. For weng, wen, wei, you, look
e ø ɘ ɵ ɤ o
under ong, un, ui, iu. Mid e̞ ø̞ ə ɤ̞ o̞
3. For u (including the ones starting with u) after j, q, x, or y, look under ü.
Open-mid ɛ œ ɜ ɞ ʌ ɔ
Near-open æ ɐ
Open a ɶ ä ɑ ɒ

IPA help · audio · full chart · template

Legend:
unrounded • rounded

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Form with zero

Pinyin IPA Explanation
initial
-i is a buzzed continuation of the consonant following z-, c-, s-, zh-, ch-, sh- or r-.
[ɹ̩ ~z̩ ],
-i (N/A)
[ɻ̩ ~ʐ̩ ] (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

[ɤ] a back, unrounded vowel (similar to English duh, but not as open). Pronounced as a
e e
( listen) 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
as in German Angst.

ang [aŋ] ang (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

starts with the vowel sound in book and ends with the velar nasal sound in sing. Varies
ong [ʊŋ] (weng)
between [oŋ] and [uŋ] depending on the speaker.
Similar to the sound in bar in English. Can also be pronounced [ɚ] depending on the
er [aɚ̯ ] er
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.

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Finals beginning with u- (w-)

u [u] wu like English oo
ua [wa] wa as u + a
as u + o where the o (compare with the o interjection) is pronounced shorter and lighter
uo/o [wo] wo
(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-)
[y] as in German über or French lune (pronounced as English ee with rounded lips; spelled as
ü yu
( listen) u after j, q or x)
as ü + ê where the e (compare with the ê interjection) is pronounced shorter and lighter
üe [ɥe] yue
(spelled as ue after j, q or x)

as ü + an. Varies between [ɥen] and [ɥan] depending on the speaker (spelled as uan after
üan [ɥɛn] yuan
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
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 yī.

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
Relative pitch
1. The first tone (flat or high-level tone) is represented by a macron (ˉ) added to the pinyin vowel:
changes of the
four tones
āēīōūǖĀĒĪŌŪǕ
2. The second tone (rising or high-rising tone) is denoted by an acute accent (ˊ):

áéíóúǘÁÉÍÓÚǗ
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.

ǎěǐǒǔǚǍĚǏǑǓǙ
4. The fourth tone (falling or high-falling tone) is represented by a grave accent (ˋ):

àèìòùǜÀÈÌÒÙǛ
5. The fifth tone (neutral tone) is represented by a normal vowel without any accent mark:

aeiouüAEIOUÜ

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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 吗／嗎,
an interrogative marker.

Number added to end of syllable Example using Example using

Tone Tone Mark IPA
in place of tone mark tone mark number

First macron ( ◌̄ ) 1 mā ma1 ma˥

Second acute accent ( ◌́ ) 2 má 2 ma˧˥

ma

Third caron ( ◌̌ ) 3 mǎ 3 ma˨˩˦

ma

Fourth grave accent ( ◌̀ ) 4 mà 4 ma˥˩

ma

no number ma
No mark ma
"Neutral" 5 ma5 ma
or middle dot before syllable ( ·◌ ) ·ma
0 ma0

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 iè iò iù
o- òu

u- uà, uài uè uì uò
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

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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
[40] red orange green blue none/black
Dummitt
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

[a] green blue red black grey
Thomas

a. 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 (http://laow
aichinese.net/tone-colors-and-what-pleco-did-with-them.htm).

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. 一 (yī) pronounced in second tone (yí) is written as yị̄.[a]

e.g. 一共 (underlying yīgòng, realized as yígòng) is written as yị̄gòng

2. 一 (yī) pronounced in fourth tone (yì) is written as yī̠.

e.g. 一起 (underlying yīqǐ, realized as yìqǐ) is written as yī̠qǐ

3. 不 (bù) pronounced in second tone (bú) is written as bụ̀ .

e.g. 不要 (underlying bùyào, realized as búyào) is written as bụ̀ yào

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 liạ̌ ojiě

Wenlin Software for learning Chinese also adopted this notation.

a. 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
a bê cê dê e êf gê ha yi jie kê êl êm nê o pê qiu ar ês tê wu vê wa xi ya zê
(pinyin)

ㄐ ㄑ
Bopomofo
ㄚ
ㄅ ㄘ ㄉ
ㄜ
ㄝ ㄍ ㄏ
ㄧ ㄧ
ㄎ ㄝ ㄝ ㄋ
ㄛ
ㄆ
ㄧ
ㄚ ㄝ ㄊ
ㄨ ㄪ ㄨ ㄒ ㄧ ㄗ
transcription ㄝ ㄝ ㄝ ㄈ ㄝ ㄚ ㄝ ㄌ ㄇ ㄝ ㄝ ㄦ ㄙ ㄝ ㄝ ㄚ ㄧ ㄚ ㄝ
ㄝ ㄡ

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.

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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 lü
and nü). 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 "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.
Example of incorrect use of the
Zh, ch, and sh can be abbreviated as ẑ, ĉ, and ŝ (z, c, s with a circumflex). However, the
apostrophe: Tian'gongyuan should
shorthands are rarely used because of the difficulty of entering them on computers and are
be Tiangongyuan
confined mainly to Esperanto keyboard layouts. Early drafts and some published material used
[43]
diacritic hooks below instead: ᶎ (ȥ/ʐ), ꞔ, ʂ (ᶊ).
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

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
Many writers do not use the formal
were updated in 2012.[46] rules for dividing text into words by
spaces, and either put a space after
1. General each syllable, or run all words
1. Single meaning: Words with a single meaning, which are usually set up of two characters together. The manufacturer of this
(sometimes one, seldom three), are written together and not capitalized: rén (人, person); image's blankets put spaces into
the city name, 'Bishikaike' (which is
péngyou (朋友, friend); qiǎokèlì (巧克力, chocolate)
the correct pinyin for 比什凯克,
2. Combined meaning (2 or 3 characters): Same goes for words combined of two words to
'Bishkek') on the bottom line, but
one meaning: hǎifēng (海风; 海風, sea breeze); wèndá (问答; 問答, question and answer); wrote the English text in the arc on
quánguó (全国; 全國, nationwide); chángyòngcí (常用词; 常用詞, common words) top with no spaces at all.
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
fù (副, vice), zǒng (总; 總, chief), fēi (非, non-), fǎn (反, anti-), chāo (超, ultra-), lǎo (老, old), ā (阿, used before names to indicate
familiarity), kě (可, -able), wú (无; 無, -less) and bàn (半, semi-) and suffixes such as zi (子, noun suffix), r (儿; 兒, diminutive suffix),
tou (头; 頭, noun suffix), xìng (性, -ness, -ity), zhě (者, -er, -ist), yuán (员; 員, person), jiā (家, -er, -ist), shǒu (手, person skilled in a
field), huà (化, -ize) and men (们; 們, 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)

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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 (老), Xiǎo (小), Dà (大) and Ā (阿) 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 (东四十条; 東四十條, 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 (着; 著), -le (了) or -guo ((过; 過) 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 (些), 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 (这; 這, this), nà (那, that) and the question pronoun nǎ (哪, 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, nà or nǎ are followed by diǎnr (点儿; 點兒), bān (般), biān (边; 邊), shí (时; 時), huìr (会儿; 會兒), lǐ (里; 裏),
me (么; 麼) or the general classifier ge (个; 個), 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 gè (各, each), měi (每, each), mǒu (某, any), běn (本, this), gāi (该; 該, that), wǒ (我, my, our) and nǐ (你,
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 dì (第) used in ordinal numerals is followed by a hyphen: dì-yī (第一, first),
dì-356 (第 356, 356th). The hyphen should not be used if the word in which dì (第) 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 (初) 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 (多), lái (来; 來) and jǐ (几; 幾) 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)

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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); jǐ shí gēn gāngguǎn (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 (之) and suǒ (所): 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)
5. Title case is used for the names of books,[49] newspapers,[50] magazines[50] and other artistic works.[49] As in English, certain
function words (e.g. de, hé, zài) are not capitalized:[49] Kuángrén Rìjì (狂人日记, Diary of a Madman), Tàiyáng Zhào zài Sānggàn
Hé shàng (太阳照在桑干河上, The Sun Shines over the Sanggan River), Zhōngguó Qīngnián Bào (中国青年报 China Youth
Daily).
11. Initialisms

1. Single words are abbreviated by taking the first letter of each character of the word: Beǐjīng (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: Beǐjīng → B.J., guójiā biāozhǔn → G.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

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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]).[51]

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."[52]

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 Pe̍ h-ōe-jī for Hokkien.

Comparison charts

Vowels a, e, o
IPA a ɔ ɛ ɤ ai ei au ou an ən aŋ əŋ ʊŋ aɹ

Pinyin ê
e en eng ong er
Tongyong Pinyin a o e ai ei ao ou an ang
Wade–Giles eh ê/o ên êng ung êrh

Bopomofo ㄚ ㄛ ㄝ ㄜ ㄞ ㄟ ㄠ ㄡ ㄢ ㄣ ㄤ ㄥ ㄨㄥ ㄦ

example 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 wən wəŋ y ɥe ɥɛn yn

Pinyin wen weng
yi ye you yan yong yu yue yuan yun
Tongyong Pinyin yin ying wu wo/o wei wun wong

Wade–Giles i/yi yeh yu yen yung wên wêng yü yüeh yüan yün
Bopomofo ㄧ ㄧㄝ ㄧㄡ ㄧㄢ ㄧㄣ ㄧㄥ ㄩㄥ ㄨ ㄨㄛ/ㄛ ㄨㄟ ㄨㄣ ㄨㄥ ㄩ ㄩㄝ ㄩㄢ ㄩㄣ

example 一 也 又 言 音 英 用 五 我 位 文 翁 玉 月 元 雲

Non-sibilant consonants
IPA p pʰ m fəŋ tjou twei twən tʰɤ ny ly kɤɹ kʰɤ xɤ

Pinyin feng diu dui nü lü

b p dun te ge ke he
Tongyong Pinyin m fong diou duei nyu lyu

Wade–Giles p pʻ fêng tiu tui tun tʻê nü lü ko kʻo ho

Bopomofo ㄅ ㄆ ㄇ ㄈㄥ ㄉㄧㄡ ㄉㄨㄟ ㄉㄨㄣ ㄊㄜ ㄋㄩ ㄌㄩ ㄍㄜ ㄎㄜ ㄏㄜ

example 玻 婆 末 封 丟 兌 頓 特 女 旅 歌 可 何

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Sibilant consonants
IPA tɕjɛn tɕjʊŋ tɕʰin ɕɥɛn ʈʂɤ ʈʂɨ ʈʂʰɤ ʈʂʰɨ ʂɤ ʂɨ ɻɤ ɻɨ tsɤ tswo tsɨ tsʰɤ tsʰɨ sɤ sɨ

Pinyin jiong qin xuan zhe zhi chi shi ri zi ci si

Tongyong jian che she re ze zuo ce se

jyong cin syuan jhe jhih chih shih rih zih cih sih
Pinyin
Wade–Giles chien chiung chʻin shüan chê chih chʻê chʻih shê shih jê jih tsê tso tzŭ tsʻê tzʻŭ sê ssŭ

ㄐㄧ ㄑㄧ ㄒㄩ ㄓ ㄔ ㄕ ㄖ ㄗ ㄗㄨ ㄘ ㄙ
Bopomofo ㄐㄩㄥ ㄓ ㄔ ㄕ ㄖ ㄗ ㄘ ㄙ
ㄢ ㄣ ㄢ ㄜ ㄜ ㄜ ㄜ ㄜ ㄛ ㄜ ㄜ

example 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˥˩ ma

Pinyin mā ma
má mǎ mà
Tongyong Pinyin ma mȧ

Wade–Giles 1 2 3 4 ma
ma ma ma ma
Bopomofo ㄇㄚ ㄇㄚˊ ㄇㄚˇ ㄇㄚˋ ˙ㄇㄚ

example (Chinese characters) 媽 麻 馬 罵 嗎

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;[53] thus Unicode includes all the common accented characters from pinyin.[54]

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

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)

Uppercase
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)

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)

Lowercase
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
Ê (U+00CA) Ê̄ (U+00CA U+0304) Ế (U+1EBE) Ê̌ (U+00CA U+030C) Ề (U+1EC0)

Uppercase 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)

ê (U+00EA) ê̄ (U+00EA U+0304) ế (U+1EBF) ê̌ (U+00EA U+030C) ề (U+1EC1)

Lowercase 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.[54]
2.^ Grey cells indicate that Xiandai Hanyu Cidian does not include pinyin with that specific letter.[54][55]

GBK has mapped two characters 'ḿ' and 'ǹ' to Private Use Areas in Unicode as U+E7C7 () and U+E7C8 () respectively,[56] 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
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the mappings of 'ḿ' and 'ǹ',[55]
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.[54]

Shorthand pinyin letters[54]

Microsoft Pinyin IME
Uppercase Lowercase Note Example[1]
When using pinyin IME, choosing ḿ/ǹ outputs PUA U+E7C7 and U+E7C8.
Abbreviation of 长/長 can be spelled as
Ĉ (U+0108) ĉ (U+0109)
ch ĉáŋ

Ŝ (U+015C) ŝ (U+015D)
Abbreviation of 伤/傷 can be spelled as
sh ŝāŋ

Abbreviation of 张/張 can be spelled as

Ẑ (U+1E90) ẑ (U+1E91)
zh Ẑāŋ

Abbreviation of 让/讓 can be spelled as

Ŋ (U+014A) ŋ (U+014B)
ng 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
Symbol in Chinese Usage Example
pinyin

。(U+3002) . (U+002E) Marks end of sentence. 你好。 Nǐ hǎo.

，(U+FF0C)/、 , (U+002C) Marks connecting sentence. 你，好吗？ Nǐ, hǎo ma?

(U+3001)

—— (U+2014 枢纽部分——中央大厅 shūniǔ bùfèn —

— (U+2014) Indicates breaking of meaning mid-sentence.
U+2014) zhōngyāng dàtīng

…… (U+2026 Used for omitting a word, phrase, line, paragraph, or more from a
… (U+2026) 我…… Wǒ…
U+2026) quoted passage.

Marks for the neutral tone, can be placed before the neutral-tone
· (U+00B7) 吗 ·ma
syllable.

- (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.

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.[54] 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 a in four different Kai
Single-storey alphabet script fonts. Accented pinyin letters
are different in style and width with
Alphabet Single-storey representation Notes
the regular letter.
ɑ (U+0251) IPA /ɑ/
a
α (U+03B1) Greek alpha, not suggested

g ɡ (U+0261) IPA /ɡ/

Usage
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][57] 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.[58]
A school slogan asking elementary students to
The spelling of Chinese geographical or personal names in pinyin has become the most speak Standard Chinese is annotated with pinyin,
common way to transcribe them in English. Pinyin has also become the dominant method but without tonal marks.
for entering Chinese text into computers in Mainland China, in contrast to Taiwan; where

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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.[59][60]

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.[61]

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.[62] 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.[63]

Pinyin-based sorting

Chinese characters and words can be sorted for convenient lookup by their Pinyin expressions alphabetically, for example, 汉字拼音排序
法 (Pinyin sorting method of Chinese characters) is sorted into " 法 (fǎ) 汉 (hàn) 排 (pái) 拼 (pīn) 序 (xù) 音 (yīn) 字 (zì)", with pinyin in
brackets. Pinyin expressions of similar letters are ordered by their tones in the order of "tone 1, tone 2, tone 3, tone 4 and tone 5 (light
tone)", such as " 妈 (mā), 麻 (má), 马 (mǎ), 骂 (mà), 吗 (ma)". Characters of the same sound, i.e., same Pinyin letters and tones, are
normally arranged by stroke-based sorting.

Words of multiple characters can be sorted in two different ways.[64] One is to sort character by characters, if the first characters are the
same, then sort by the second character, and so on. For example, 归并(guībìng)，归还(guīhuán)，规划(guīhuà)，鬼话(guǐhuà)，桂花
(guìhuā). This method is used in Xiandai Hanyu Cidian. Another method is to sort according to the pinyin letters of the whole words,
followed by sorting on tones when word letters are the same. For example, 归 并 (guībìng) ， 规 划 (guīhuà) ， 鬼 话 (guǐhuà) ， 桂 花
(guìhuā)，归还(guīhuán). This method is used in the ABC Chinese–English Dictionary.

Pinyin-based sorting is very convenient for looking up words whose pronunciations are known, but not words whose pronunciations the
looker does not know.

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,[65][66] 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.[67] 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

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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."[68]

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.[69] Hanyu Pinyin is also used as the romanization system to teach Mandarin Chinese
at schools.[70] 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.[69] 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
Combining character
Comparison of Chinese transcription systems
Cyrillization of Chinese
Pinyin input method
Romanization of Japanese
Transcription into Chinese characters
Two-cell Chinese Braille

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

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Felley. Sinolingua, 1990. ISBN 9787800521485. p. 185. ("These, like book titles, [are written with]...each word capitalized.")
51. "Use of the Hyphen; Abbreviations and Short Forms" (http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/hyphens.html). Pinyin.info. Retrieved
6 April 2012.
52. 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.
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(14.0 ed.). Mountain View, CA: Unicode. 2021. p. 297. ISBN 978-1-936213-29-0.
54. Eric Q. LIU. "The Type — Wǒ ài pīnyīn!" (https://www.thetype.com/2017/08/11606/#pinyin-yin). The Type. Retrieved 4 June 2020.
55. 奈白不弍. "关于带声调汉语拼音字母的输入" (https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/27416251). 知乎专栏 (in Chinese). Retrieved 4 June
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56. 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)" (http://bangumi.tv/group/topic/342177). bangumi.tv.
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3oC). Blackwell handbooks of developmental psychology). Vol. 17. Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 320–22. ISBN 1-4051-1488-6.
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same signage.{...}The refusal to adopt Hanyu in Kaohsiung seems based on nothing more than groundless fear of loss of identity or
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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 (https://archive.org/details/quickreferencech0000kimb). 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 (http://www.moe.gov.cn/ewebeditor/uploadfile/2015/03/02/20150302165814246.pdf)—
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 (http://www.moe.gov.cn/ewebeditor/uploadfile/2012/08/21/2012082110023
3165.pdf)—The official standard GB/T 16159–2012 in Chinese. PDF version from the Chinese Ministry of Education. (in Chinese)
HTML version (https://www.babelstone.co.uk/CJK/GBT16159-2012.html) (in Chinese)
Chinese phonetic alphabet spelling rules for Chinese names (http://www.moe.gov.cn/ewebeditor/uploadfile/2012/06/01/20120601104
529410.pdf)—The official standard GB/T 28039–2011 in Chinese. PDF version from the Chinese Ministry of Education (in Chinese)
HTML version (https://www.babelstone.co.uk/CJK/GBT28039-2011.html) (in Chinese)
Pinyin-Guide.com (https://www.pinyin-guide.com/) Pronunciation and FAQs related to Pinyin
Pinyin Tone Tool (http://toshuo.com/chinese-tools/pinyin-tone-tool/) (archived 30 April 2019 (https://web.archive.org/web/2019043019
3349/http://toshuo.com/chinese-tools/pinyin-tone-tool/)) Online editor to create Pinyin with tones

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