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Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for
Standard Mandarin Chinese Standard Chinese ()—in linguistics Standard Northern Mandarin or Standard Beijing Mandarin, in common speech simply Mandarin, better qualified as Standard Mandarin, Modern Standard Mandarin or Standard Mandarin Chinese—is a modern standar ...
in
China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
, 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
diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
s 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 ' () literally means "
Han Han may refer to: Ethnic groups * Han Chinese, or Han People (): the name for the largest ethnic group in China, which also constitutes the world's largest ethnic group. ** Han Taiwanese (): the name for the ethnic group of the Taiwanese p ...
language" (i.e. Chinese language), while ' () means "spelled sounds". The pinyin system was developed in the 1950s by a group of Chinese linguists including Zhou Youguang and was based on earlier forms of romanizations of Chinese. It was published by the Chinese Government in 1958 and revised several times. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) adopted pinyin as an
international standard international standard is a technical standard developed by one or more international standards organizations. International standards are available for consideration and use worldwide. The most prominent such organization is the International Or ...
, ISO 7098, in 1982 and was followed by the United Nations in 1986. 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". Moreover, "some cities, businesses, and organizations, notably in the south of Taiwan, did not accept fforts 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. 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'' /
The voiceless alveolo-palatal sibilant affricate is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represent this sound are , , and , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbols are t_s ...
/, ''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 and (which is reminiscent of these letters being used to represent the phoneme in the
German language German ( ) is a West Germanic languages, West Germanic language mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and Official language, official or co-official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and the Ita ...
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 Catalan may refer to: Catalonia From, or related to Catalonia: * Catalan language, a Romance language * Catalans, an ethnic group formed by the people from, or with origins in, Northern or southern Catalonia Places * 13178 Catalan, asteroid #1 ...
, Basque, and
Maltese Maltese may refer to: * Someone or something of, from, or related to Malta * Maltese alphabet * Maltese cuisine * Maltese culture * Maltese language, the Semitic language spoken by Maltese people * Maltese people, people from Malta or of Malte ...
to represent ; the pinyin ''q'' is close to its value of in
Albanian Albanian may refer to: *Pertaining to Albania in Southeast Europe; in particular: **Albanians, an ethnic group native to the Balkans **Albanian language **Albanian culture **Demographics of Albania, includes other ethnic groups within the country ...
, 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 Nucleus ( : nuclei) is a Latin word for the seed inside a fruit. It most often refers to: *Atomic nucleus, the very dense central region of an atom *Cell nucleus, a central organelle of a eukaryotic cell, containing most of the cell's DNA Nucle ...
vowel, and
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(final vowel or consonant).


History


Background: romanization of Chinese before 1949

In 1605, the
Jesuit , image = Ihs-logo.svg , image_size = 175px , caption = ChristogramOfficial seal of the Jesuits , abbreviation = SJ , nickname = Jesuits , formation = , founders ...
missionary
Matteo Ricci Matteo Ricci, SJ (; la, Mattheus Riccius; 6 October 1552 – 11 May 1610), was an Italians, Italian Society of Jesus, Jesuit Priesthood in the Catholic Church, priest and one of the founding figures of the Jesuit China missions. He create ...
published ''Xizi Qiji'' () in Beijing. 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 ' () at Hangzhou. 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. One of the earliest Chinese thinkers to relate Western alphabets to Chinese was late Ming to early Qing dynasty scholar-official,
Fang Yizhi A fang is a long, pointed tooth. In mammals, a fang is a modified maxillary tooth, used for biting and tearing flesh. In snakes, it is a specialized tooth that is associated with a venom gland (see snake venom). Spiders also have external Cheli ...
(; 1611–1671). 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 Yu Yue (; December 1821 5 February 1907), courtesy name Yinfu, '' hao'' Quyuan, was a prominent scholar and official of Qing dynasty China. An expert in philology and textual studies, he taught and wrote prolifically on the classics and his ...
and
Zhang Taiyan Zhang Binglin (January 12, 1869 – June 14, 1936), also known by his art name Zhang Taiyan, was a Chinese philologist, textual critic, philosopher, and revolutionary. His philological works include ''Wen Shi'' (文始 "The Origin of Writing"), t ...
, Song had been to Japan and 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 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.


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.


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. This Sin Wenz or "New Writing" was much more linguistically sophisticated than earlier alphabets, but with the major exception that it did not indicate tones of Chinese. 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 Sun Yat-sen (; also known by several other names; 12 November 1866 – 12 March 1925)Singtao daily. Saturday edition. 23 October 2010. section A18. Sun Yat-sen Xinhai revolution 100th anniversary edition . was a Chinese politician who serve ...
'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 Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These invention ...
, Ford, and
Charlie Chaplin Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin Jr. (16 April 188925 December 1977) was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp, and is consider ...
), 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 Mandarin or The Mandarin may refer to: Language * Mandarin Chinese, branch of Chinese originally spoken in northern parts of the country ** Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Mandarin, the official language of China ** Taiwanese Mandarin, Stand ...
. Sin Wenz fell into relative disuse during the following years.


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 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 consonant A syllabic consonant or vocalic consonant is a consonant that forms a syllable on its own, like the ''m'', ''n'' and ''l'' in some pronunciations of the English words ''rhythm'', ''button'' and ''bottle''. To represent it, the understroke diacrit ...
s) 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, as part of a Chinese government project in the 1950s. Zhou, often called "the father of pinyin," worked as a banker in
New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...
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. 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. Hanyu Pinyin was based on several existing systems: ''
Gwoyeu Romatzyh Gwoyeu Romatzyh (), abbreviated GR, is a system for writing Mandarin Chinese in the Latin alphabet. The system was conceived by Yuen Ren Chao and developed by a group of linguists including Chao and Lin Yutang from 1925 to 1926. Chao himself lat ...
'' of 1928, '' Latinxua Sin Wenz'' of 1931, and the diacritic markings from '' zhuyin'' (bopomofo). "I'm not the father of pinyin," Zhou said years later; "I'm the son of pinyin. It's
he result of He or HE may refer to: Language * He (pronoun), an English pronoun * He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ * He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets * He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' in ...
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." 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 The 1st National People's Congress () was in session from 1954 to 1959. It held four sessions in this period. There were 1226 deputies to the Congress. These were the first legislative elections to take place after the founding of the People's R ...
on February 11, 1958. It was then introduced to primary schools as a way to teach
Standard Chinese Standard Chinese ()—in linguistics Standard Northern Mandarin or Standard Beijing Mandarin, in common speech simply Mandarin, better qualified as Standard Mandarin, Modern Standard Mandarin or Standard Mandarin Chinese—is a modern Standar ...
pronunciation and used to improve the literacy rate among adults. During the height of the
Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
, the use of pinyin system over the
Yale romanization The Yale romanizations are four romanization systems created at Yale University for the following four East Asian languages: * Yale romanization of Mandarin, developed in 1943 by the Yale sinologist George Kennedy. * Yale romanization of Cantonese ...
outside of China was regarded as a political statement or identification with the communist Chinese regime. Beginning in the early 1980s, Western publications addressing Mainland China began using the Hanyu Pinyin romanization system instead of earlier romanization systems; this change followed the normalization of diplomatic relations between the United States and the PRC in 1979. In 2001, the PRC Government issued the ''National Common Language Law'', providing a legal basis for applying pinyin. The current specification of the orthographic rules is laid down in the National Standard GB/T 16159–2012.


Initials and finals

Unlike European languages, clusters of letters —initials () and finals ()— 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 (), i.e. when a "medial" is placed in front of the final. For example, the medials and are pronounced with such tight openings at the beginning of a final that some native Chinese speakers (especially when singing) pronounce ''yī'' (, clothes, officially pronounced ) as and ''wéi'' (, to enclose, officially pronounced ) as or . 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 The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic transcription, phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standa ...
. 1 ''y'' is pronounced (a
labial-palatal approximant A labio-palatalized sound is one that is simultaneously labialization, labialized and Palatalization (phonetics), palatalized. Typically the roundedness is compressed, like , rather than protruded like . The symbol in the International Phonetic Al ...
) 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 In mathematics, the lexicographic or lexicographical order (also known as lexical order, or dictionary order) is a generalization of the alphabetical order of the dictionaries to sequences of ordered symbols or, more generally, of elements of a ...
(excluding ''w'' and ''y''), derived from the zhuyin system ("bopomofo"), is: : 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 The circumflex () is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from la, circumflexus "bent around"a ...
). However, the shorthands are rarely used due to difficulty of entering them on computers and are confined mainly to
Esperanto Esperanto ( or ) is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by the Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international communi ...
keyboard layouts.


Finals

In each cell below, the first line indicates
IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners ...
, 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 The only syllable-final consonants in Standard Chinese are ''-n'' and ''-ng'', and ''-r'', the last of which is attached as a grammatical
suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry ...
. 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). 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'' () and syllabic nasals ''m'' (, ), ''n'' (, ), ''ng'' (, ) 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 This is necessary in order to distinguish the front high rounded vowel in ''lü'' (e.g. ) from the back high rounded vowel in ''lu'' (e.g. ). 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 / (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 ('' ''), 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. 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 Microsoft Pinyin IME () is the pinyin input method implementation developed by Microsoft and Harbin Institute of Technology. It is bundled with Microsoft Windows and Chinese editions of Microsoft Office. Various versions can be downloaded from ...
) 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

;* 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: ) vs. ''xian'' (one syllable: ). 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 or sound at the beginning of such words—that is, ''yi'' or , ''wu'' or , ''yu'' or ,—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 The apostrophe ( or ) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritical mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet and some other alphabets. In English, the apostrophe is used for two basic purposes: * The marking of the omission of one o ...
(') () is used before a syllable starting with a vowel (, , or ) in a multiple-syllable word, unless the syllable starts the word or immediately follows a hyphen or other dash. For example, is written as Xi'an or Xī'ān, and is written as Tian'e or Tiān'é, but is written "dì-èr", without an apostrophe. This apostrophe is not used in the Taipei Metro names. Apostrophes (as well as hyphens and tone marks) are omitted on
Chinese passport The People's Republic of China Passport (), commonly referred to as the Chinese passport, is a passport issued to citizens of the People's Republic of China (PRC) for the purpose of international travel, and entitles its bearer to the protecti ...
s.


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: #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 ''ü''.


Tones

The pinyin system also uses
diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
s to mark the four
tones of Mandarin This article summarizes the phonology (the sound system, or in more general terms, the pronunciation) of Standard Chinese (Standard Mandarin). Standard Chinese phonology is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. Actual production varies widel ...
. The diacritic is placed over the letter that represents the
syllable nucleus A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...
, 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. # 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 # The second tone (rising or high-rising tone) is denoted by an
acute accent The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed ch ...
(ˊ): #:á é í ó ú ǘ Á É Í Ó Ú Ǘ # 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 # The fourth tone (falling or high-falling tone) is represented by a
grave accent The grave accent () ( or ) is a diacritical mark used to varying degrees in French, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian and many other western European languages, as well as for a few unusual uses in English. It is also used in other languages using t ...
(ˋ): #:à è ì ò ù ǜ À È Ì Ò Ù Ǜ # 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'' ().


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 An interrogative clause is a clause whose form is typically associated with question-like meanings. For instance, the English sentence "Is Hannah sick?" has interrogative syntax which distinguishes it from its declarative counterpart "Hannah is ...
marker.


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


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 A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...
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.


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) uses the following notation to indicate both the original tone and the tone after the sandhi: # (''yī'') pronounced in second tone (''yí'') is written as ''yị̄''. #* e.g. (underlying ''yīgòng'', realized as ''yígòng'') is written as ''yị̄gòng'' # (''yī'') pronounced in fourth tone (''yì'') is written as ''yī̠''. #* e.g. (underlying ''yīqǐ'', realized as ''yìqǐ'') is written as ''yī̠qǐ'' # (''bù'') pronounced in second tone (''bú'') is written as ''bụ̀''. #* e.g. (underlying ''bùyào'', realized as ''búyào'') is written as ''bụ̀yào'' # 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'', ''ọ̌''/''Ọ̌'', ''ụ̌'', and ''ụ̈̌''). #* e.g. (underlying ''liǎojiě'', realized as ''liáojiě'') is written as ''liạ̌ojiě'' Wenlin Software for learning Chinese also adopted this notation.


Orthographic rules


Letters

The ''Scheme for the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet'' lists the letters of pinyin, along with their pronunciations, as: 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 ''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 The apostrophe ( or ) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritical mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet and some other alphabets. In English, the apostrophe is used for two basic purposes: * The marking of the omission of one o ...
(') 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 unless it immediately follows a hyphen or other dash. That is done to remove ambiguity that could arise, as in '' Xi'an'', which consists of the two syllables ''xi'' () ''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 In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa (, rarely or ; sometimes spelled shwa) is a vowel sound denoted by the IPA symbol , placed in the central position of the vowel chart. In English and some other languages, it rep ...
is always written as ''e''. *''Zh'', ''ch'', and ''sh'' can be abbreviated as ''ẑ'', ''ĉ'', and ''ŝ'' (''z'', ''c'', ''s'' with a
circumflex The circumflex () is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from la, circumflexus "bent around"a ...
). However, the shorthands are rarely used because of the difficulty of entering them on computers and are confined mainly to
Esperanto Esperanto ( or ) is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by the Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international communi ...
keyboard layouts. Early drafts and some published material used diacritic hooks below instead: ' (''/''), ', ' ('). *''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 The voiceless alveolo-palatal sibilant affricate is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represent this sound are , , and , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbols are t_s ...
. *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 .) 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 This pinyin table is a complete listing of all Hanyu Pinyin syllables used in Standard Chinese. Each syllable in a cell is composed of an initial (columns) and a final (rows). An empty cell indicates that the corresponding syllable does not exist in ...
article for a summary of possible pinyin syllables (not including tones).


Words, capitalization, initialisms and punctuation

Although Chinese characters represent single
syllables A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...
, 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'' () were put into effect in 1988 by the National Educational Commission () and the National Language Commission (). These rules became a Guóbiāo recommendation in 1996 and were updated in 2012. #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: ''rén'' (, person); ''péngyou'' (, friend); ''qiǎokèlì'' (, chocolate) ##Combined meaning (2 or 3 characters): Same goes for words combined of two words to one meaning: ''hǎifēng'' (, sea breeze); ''wèndá'' (, question and answer); ''quánguó'' (, nationwide); ''chángyòngcí'' (, 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: ''wúfèng gāngguǎn'' (, seamless steel-tube); ''huánjìng bǎohù guīhuà'' (, environmental protection planning); ''gāoměngsuānjiǎ'' (, potassium permanganate) #Duplicated words ##AA: Duplicated characters (AA) are written together: ''rénrén'' (, everybody), ''kànkan'' (, to have a look), ''niánnián'' (, every year) ##ABAB: Two characters duplicated (ABAB) are written separated: ''yánjiū yánjiū'' (, to study, to research), ''xuěbái xuěbái'' (, white as snow) ##AABB: Characters in the AABB schema are written together: ''láiláiwǎngwǎng'' (, come and go), ''qiānqiānwànwàn'' (, numerous) #Prefixes () and Suffixes (): Words accompanied by prefixes such as ''fù'' (, vice), ''zǒng'' (, chief), ''fēi'' (, non-), ''fǎn'' (, anti-), ''chāo'' (, ultra-), ''lǎo'' (, old), ''ā'' (, used before names to indicate familiarity), ''kě'' (, -able), ''wú'' (, -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'' (, vice minister), ''chéngwùyuán'' (, conductor), ''háizimen'' (, children) #Nouns and names () ##Words of position are separated: ''mén wài'' (, outdoor), ''hé li'' (, under the river), ''huǒchē shàngmian'' (, on the train), ''Huáng Hé yǐnán'' (, south of the Yellow River) ###Exceptions are words traditionally connected: ''tiānshang'' (, in the sky or outerspace), ''dìxia'' (, on the ground), ''kōngzhōng'' (, in the air), ''hǎiwài'' (, overseas) ##Surnames are separated from the given names, each capitalized: ''Lǐ Huá'' (), ''Zhāng Sān'' (). If the surname and/or given name consists of two syllables, it should be written as one: ''Zhūgě Kǒngmíng'' (). ##Titles following the name are separated and are not capitalized: ''Wáng bùzhǎng'' (, Minister Wang), ''Lǐ xiānsheng'' (, Mr. Li), ''Tián zhǔrèn'' (, Director Tian), ''Zhào tóngzhì'' (, Comrade Zhao). ##The forms of addressing people with prefixes such as ''Lǎo'' (), ''Xiǎo'' (), ''Dà'' () and ''Ā'' () are capitalized: ''Xiǎo Liú'' (, oungMs./Mr. Liu), ''Dà Lǐ'' (, reat; elderMr. Li), ''Ā Sān'' (, Ah San), ''Lǎo Qián'' (, eniorMr. Qian), ''Lǎo Wú'' (, eniorMr. Wu) ###Exceptions include ''Kǒngzǐ'' (, Confucius), ''Bāogōng'' (, Judge Bao), ''Xīshī'' (, Xishi), ''Mèngchángjūn'' (,
Lord Mengchang Lord Mengchang (; died 279 BC), born Tian Wen, was an aristocrat and statesman of the Qi Kingdom of ancient China, one of the famed Four Lords of the Warring States period. He was a son of Tian Ying and grandson of King Wei of Qi. He succeeded to ...
) ##Geographical names of China: ''Běijīng Shì'' (, city of Beijing), ''Héběi Shěng'' (, province of Hebei), ''Yālù Jiāng'' (, Yalu River), ''Tài Shān'' (, Mount Tai), ''Dòngtíng Hú'' (, Dongting Lake), ''Qióngzhōu Hǎixiá'' (, Qiongzhou Strait) ###Monosyllabic prefixes and suffixes are written together with their related part: ''Dōngsì Shítiáo'' (, Dongsi 10th Alley) ###Common geographical nouns that have become part of proper nouns are written together: ''Hēilóngjiāng'' (, Heilongjiang) ##Non-Chinese names are written in Hanyu Pinyin: ''Āpèi Āwàngjìnměi'' (, Ngapoi Ngawang Jigme); ''Dōngjīng'' (, Tokyo) #Verbs (): Verbs and their suffixes ''-zhe'' (), ''-le'' () or ''-guo'' (() are written as one: ''kànzhe'' (, seeing), ''jìnxíngguo'' (, have been implemented). ''Le'' as it appears in the end of a sentence is separated though: ''Huǒchē dào le.'' (, The train asarrived). ##Verbs and their objects are separated: ''kàn xìn'' (, read a letter), ''chī yú'' (, eat fish), ''kāi wánxiào'' (, to be kidding). ##If verbs and their complements are each monosyllabic, they are written together; if not, they are separated: ''gǎohuài'' (, to make broken), ''dǎsǐ'' (, hit to death), ''huàwéi'' (, to become), ''zhěnglǐ hǎo'' (, to sort out), ''gǎixiě wéi'' (, to rewrite as) #Adjectives (): A monosyllabic adjective and its reduplication are written as one: ''mēngmēngliàng'' (, dim), ''liàngtángtáng'' (, shining bright) ## Complements of size or degree such as ''xiē'' (), ''yīxiē'' (), ''diǎnr'' () and ''yīdiǎnr'' () are written separated: ''dà xiē'' (), a little bigger), ''kuài yīdiǎnr'' (, a bit faster) #Pronouns () ##Personal pronouns and interrogative pronouns are separated from other words: ''Wǒ ài Zhōngguó.'' (, I love China); ''Shéi shuō de?'' (, Who said it?) ##The demonstrative pronoun ''zhè'' (, this), ''nà'' (, that) and the question pronoun ''nǎ'' (, which) are separated: ''zhè rén'' (, this person), ''nà cì huìyì'' (, that meeting), ''nǎ zhāng bàozhǐ'' (, which newspaper) ###Exception—If ''zhè'', ''nà'' or ''nǎ'' are followed by ''diǎnr'' (), ''bān'' (), ''biān'' (), ''shí'' (), ''huìr'' (), ''lǐ'' (), ''me'' () or the general classifier ''ge'' (), they are written together: ''nàlǐ'' (, there), ''zhèbiān'' (, over here), ''zhège'' (, this) #Numerals () and measure words () ##Numbers and words like ''gè'' (, each), ''měi'' (, each), ''mǒu'' (, any), ''běn'' (, this), ''gāi'' (, that), ''wǒ'' (, my, our) and ''nǐ'' (, your) are separated from the measure words following them: ''liǎng gè rén'' (, two people), ''gè guó'' (, every nation), ''měi nián'' (, every year), ''mǒu gōngchǎng'' (, a certain factory), ''wǒ xiào'' (, our school) ##Numbers up to 100 are written as single words: ''sānshísān'' (, thirty-three). Above that, the hundreds, thousands, etc. are written as separate words: ''jiǔyì qīwàn èrqiān sānbǎi wǔshíliù'' (, nine hundred million, seventy-two thousand, three hundred fifty-six). Arabic numerals are kept as Arabic numerals: ''635 fēnjī'' (, extension 635) ##According to 6.1.5.4, the ''dì'' () used in ordinal numerals is followed by a hyphen: ''dì-yī'' (, first), ''dì-356'' (, 356th). The hyphen should not be used if the word in which ''dì'' () and the numeral appear does not refer to an ordinal number in the context. For example: ''Dìwǔ'' (, a
Chinese compound surname A Chinese compound surname is a Chinese surname using more than one Chinese character, character. Many of these compound surnames derive from Zhou dynasty Chinese noble and official titles, professions, place names and other areas, to serve a purp ...
). The ''chū'' () in front of numbers one to ten is written together with the number: ''chūshí'' (, tenth day) ##Numbers representing month and day are hyphenated: ''wǔ-sì'' (, May fourth), ''yīèr-jiǔ'' (, December ninth) ##Words of approximations such as ''duō'' (), ''lái'' () and ''jǐ'' () are separated from numerals and measure words: ''yībǎi duō gè'' (, around a hundred); ''shí lái wàn gè'' (, around a hundred thousand); ''jǐ jiā rén'' (, a few families) ###''Shíjǐ'' (, more than ten) and ''jǐshí'' (, tens) are written together: ''shíjǐ gè rén'' (, more than ten people); ''jǐshí'' (, tens of steel pipes) ##Approximations with numbers or units that are close together are hyphenated: ''sān-wǔ tiān'' (, three to five days), ''qiān-bǎi cì'' (, thousands of times) #Other function words () are separated from other words ##Adverbs (): ''hěn hǎo'' (, very good), ''zuì kuài'' (, fastest), ''fēicháng dà'' (, extremely big) ##Prepositions (): ''zài qiánmiàn'' (, in front) ##Conjunctions (): ''nǐ hé wǒ'' (, you and I/me), ''Nǐ lái háishi bù lái?'' (, Are you coming or not?) ##"Constructive auxiliaries" () such as ''de'' (), ''zhī'' () and ''suǒ'' (): ''mànmàn de zou'' (), go slowly) ###A monosyllabic word can also be written together with ''de'' (): ''wǒ de shū'' / ''wǒde shū'' (, my book) ##Modal auxiliaries at the end of a sentence: ''Nǐ zhīdào ma?'' (, Do you know?), ''Kuài qù ba!'' (, Go quickly!) ##Exclamations and interjections: ''À! Zhēn měi!'' (), Oh, it's so beautiful!) ##Onomatopoeia: ''mó dāo huòhuò'' (, honing a knife), ''hōnglōng yī shēng'' (, rumbling) #Capitalization ##The first letter of the first word in a sentence is capitalized: ''Chūntiān lái le.'' (, Spring has arrived.) ##The first letter of each line in a poem is capitalized. ##The first letter of a proper noun is capitalized: ''Běijīng'' (, Beijing), ''Guójì Shūdiàn'' (, International Bookstore), ''Guójiā Yǔyán Wénzì Gōngzuò Wěiyuánhuì'' (, National Language Commission) ###On some occasions, proper nouns can be written in all caps: ''BĚIJĪNG'', ''GUÓJÌ SHŪDIÀN'', ''GUÓJIĀ YǓYÁN WÉNZÌ GŌNGZUÒ WĚIYUÁNHUÌ'' ##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'' (, Buddhism), ''Tángcháo'' (, Tang dynasty), ''jīngjù'' (, Beijing opera), ''chuānxiōng'' (, Szechuan lovage) #
Initialisms An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...
##Single words are abbreviated by taking the first letter of each character of the word: ''Beǐjīng'' (, Beijing) → ''BJ'' ##A group of words are abbreviated by taking the first letter of each word in the group: ''guójiā biāozhǔn'' (, Guóbiāo standard) → ''GB'' ##Initials can also be indicated using full stops: ''Beǐjīng'' → ''B.J.'', ''guójiā biāozhǔn'' → ''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 Huá'' () → ''Lǐ H.'' or ''LǏ H.'', ''Zhūgě Kǒngmíng'' () → ''Zhūgě K. M.'' or ''ZHŪGĚ K. M.'' #Line wrapping ##Words can only be split by the character:
''guāngmíng'' (, bright) → ''guāng-
míng'', not ''gu-
āngmíng'' ##Initials cannot be split:
''Wáng J. G.'' () → ''Wáng
J. G.'', not ''Wáng J.-
G.'' ##Apostrophes are removed in line wrapping:
''Xī'ān'' (, Xi'an) → ''Xī-
ān'', not ''Xī-
'ān'' ##When the original word has a hyphen, the hyphen is added at the beginning of the new line:
''chēshuǐ-mǎlóng'' (, heavy traffic: "carriage, water, horse, dragon") → ''chēshuǐ-
-mǎlóng'' #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-jiàn'' (, bow and arrow), ''kuài-màn'' (, speed: "fast-slow"), ''shíqī-bā suì'' (, 17–18 years old), ''dǎ-mà'' (, beat and scold), ''Yīng-Hàn'' (, English–Chinese ictionary, ''Jīng-Jīn'' (, Beijing–Tianjin), ''lù-hǎi-kōngjūn'' (, army-navy-airforce). ##Abbreviated compounds (): ''gōnggòng guānxì'' (, public relations) → ''gōng-guān'' (, PR), ''chángtú diànhuà'' (, long-distance calling) → ''cháng-huà'' (, LDC).
Exceptions are made when the abbreviated term has become established as a word in its own right, as in ''chūzhōng'' () for ''chūjí zhōngxué'' (, junior high school). Abbreviations of proper-name compounds, however, should always be hyphenated: ''Běijīng Dàxué'' (,
Peking University Peking University (PKU; ) is a public research university in Beijing, China. The university is funded by the Ministry of Education. Peking University was established as the Imperial University of Peking in 1898 when it received its royal charter ...
) → ''Běi-Dà'' (, PKU). ## Four-syllable idioms: ''fēngpíng-làngjìng'' (), calm and tranquil: "wind calm, waves down"), ''huījīn-rútǔ'' (, spend money like water: "throw gold like dirt"), ''zhǐ-bǐ-mò-yàn'' (, paper-brush-ink-inkstone
our coordinate words Our or OUR may refer to: * The possessive form of " we" * Our (river), in Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany * Our, Belgium, a village in Belgium * Our, Jura, a commune in France * Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR), a government utility regulato ...
. ###Other idioms are separated according to the words that make up the idiom: ''bēi hēiguō'' (, to be made a scapegoat: "to carry a black pot"), ''zhǐ xǔ zhōuguān fànghuǒ, bù xǔ bǎixìng diǎndēng'' (, 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 The comma is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. It has the same shape as an apostrophe or single closing quotation mark () in many typefaces, but it differs from them in being placed on the baseline o ...
(、) is changed to a normal comma (,) ##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." As Pinyin is a phonetic writing system for ''modern''
Standard Chinese Standard Chinese ()—in linguistics Standard Northern Mandarin or Standard Beijing Mandarin, in common speech simply Mandarin, better qualified as Standard Mandarin, Modern Standard Mandarin or Standard Mandarin Chinese—is a modern Standar ...
, it is not designed to replace Chinese characters for writing
Literary Chinese Classical Chinese, also known as Literary Chinese (古文 ''gǔwén'' "ancient text", or 文言 ''wényán'' "text speak", meaning "literary language/speech"; modern vernacular: 文言文 ''wényánwén'' "text speak text", meaning "literar ...
, the standard written language prior to the early 1900s. In particular, Chinese characters retains
semantic Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and comput ...
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


Unicode code points

Based on ISO 7098:2015, ''Information and Documentation: Chinese Romanization'' (), tonal marks for pinyin should use the symbols from
Combining Diacritical Marks Combining Diacritical Marks is a Unicode block containing the most common combining characters. It also contains the character "Combining Grapheme Joiner", which prevents canonical reordering of combining characters, and despite the name, actual ...
, as opposed by the use of Spacing Modifier Letters in
Bopomofo Bopomofo (), or Mandarin Phonetic Symbols, also named Zhuyin (), is a Chinese transliteration system for Mandarin Chinese and other related languages and dialects. More commonly used in Taiwanese Mandarin, it may also be used to transcribe ...
. Lowercase letters with tone marks are included in GB/T 2312 and their uppercase counterparts are included in JIS X 0212; thus Unicode includes all the common accented characters from pinyin. 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. GBK has mapped two characters ‘ḿ’ and ‘ǹ’ to
Private Use Areas In Unicode, a Private Use Area (PUA) is a range of code points that, by definition, will not be assigned characters by the Unicode Consortium. Three private use areas are defined: one in the Basic Multilingual Plane (), and one each in, and nearl ...
in Unicode as U+E7C7 () and U+E7C8 () respectively, 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’, 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. Other symbols that are used in pinyin is as follow: 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. 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''.


Usage

Pinyin superseded older romanization systems such as Wade–Giles (1859; modified 1892) and
postal romanization Postal romanization was a system of transliterating Chinese place names developed by postal authorities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For many cities, the corresponding postal romanization was the most common English-language for ...
, 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. It has also been accepted by the
government of Singapore The Government of Singapore is defined by the Constitution of Singapore to mean the executive branch of the state, which is made up of the president and the Cabinet. Although the president acts in their personal discretion in the exercise ...
, the United States's Library of Congress, the American Library Association, and many other international institutions. 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 Bopomofo (), or Mandarin Phonetic Symbols, also named Zhuyin (), is a Chinese transliteration system for Mandarin Chinese and other related languages and dialects. More commonly used in Taiwanese Mandarin, it may also be used to transcribe ...
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 Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...
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 A primary school (in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Australia, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, and South Africa), junior school (in Australia), elementary school or grade school (in North America and the Philippines) is a school for primary ed ...
. Since 1958, pinyin has been actively used in
adult education Adult education, distinct from child education, is a practice in which adults engage in systematic and sustained self-educating activities in order to gain new forms of knowledge, skills, attitudes, or values. Merriam, Sharan B. & Brockett, Ralp ...
as well, making it easier for formerly illiterate people to continue with self-study after a short period of pinyin literacy instruction. 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 (). 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 (Mainland) Chinese Braille is a braille script used for Standard Mandarin in China. Consonants and basic finals conform to international braille, but additional finals form a semi-syllabary, as in zhuyin (bopomofo). Each syllable is writt ...
system, which is similar to pinyin, but meant for blind readers. 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 A stylus (plural styli or styluses) is a writing utensil or a small tool for some other form of marking or shaping, for example, in pottery. It can also be a computer accessory that is used to assist in navigating or providing more precision w ...
, 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.


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 The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is a Taiwanese nationalist and centre-left political party in the Republic of China (Taiwan). Controlling both the Republic of China presidency and the unicameral Legislative Yuan, it is the majori ...
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 Kaohsiung City (Mandarin Chinese: ; Wade–Giles: ''Kao¹-hsiung²;'' Pinyin: ''Gāoxióng'') is a special municipality located in southern Taiwan. It ranges from the coastal urban center to the rural Yushan Range with an area of . Kaohsi ...
, 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 Kinmen, alternatively known as Quemoy, is a group of islands governed as a county by the Republic of China (Taiwan), off the southeastern coast of mainland China. It lies roughly east of the city of Xiamen in Fujian, from which it is separate ...
, overrode the order and converted to ''Hanyu Pinyin'' before the January 1, 2009 national-level decision, 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, 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 Mandarin Phonetic Symbols II ( zh, t= ), abbreviated MPS II, is a romanization system formerly used in the Republic of China (Taiwan). It was created to replace the complex tonal-spelling Gwoyeu Romatzyh, and to co-exist with the popular Wa ...
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. 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."


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. ''Hanyu Pinyin'' is also used as the romanization system to teach Mandarin Chinese at schools.p.485, Chan, Sin-Wai. ''The Routledge Encyclopedia of the Chinese Language'', Routledge, 2016. 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. 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 Meixian (, Hakka: Moiyen), formerly Meihsien, is a district of Meizhou City, in northeastern Guangdong Province, China. The county is an important Hakka settlement and is the ancestral home of many Hakka descendants living in Taiwan. Histor ...
), and
Hainanese Hainanese (Hainan Romanised: ', Hainanese Pinyin: ',), also known as Qióngwén, Heng2 vun2 () or Qióngyǔ, Heng2 yi2 (), is a group of Min Chinese varieties spoken in the southern Chinese island province of Hainan and Overseas Chinese su ...
. 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'' () promulgated in 1976, place names in non-Han languages like Mongolian, Uyghur, and
Tibetan Tibetan may mean: * of, from, or related to Tibet * Tibetan people, an ethnic group * Tibetan language: ** Classical Tibetan, the classical language used also as a contemporary written standard ** Standard Tibetan, the most widely used spoken dial ...
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: '' 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 Taiwanese may refer to: * Taiwanese language, another name for Taiwanese Hokkien * Something from or related to Taiwan ( Formosa) * Taiwanese aborigines, the indigenous people of Taiwan * Han Taiwanese, the Han people of Taiwan * Taiwanese people, ...
, Hakka, and
aboriginal languages Aboriginal language may refer to: * Indigenous language * Australian Aboriginal languages * Taiwanese aboriginal languages * Indigenous languages of the Americas * Aboriginal Malay languages The Malayic languages are a branch of the Malayo-P ...
.


See also

*
Combining character In digital typography, combining characters are characters that are intended to modify other characters. The most common combining characters in the Latin script are the combining diacritical marks (including combining accents). Unicode also ...
*
Cyrillization of Chinese The Cyrillization of Chinese (''Hanyu Cyril Pinyin'') is the transcription of Chinese characters into the Cyrillic alphabet. The Palladius System is the official Russian standard for transcribing Chinese into Russian, with variants existing for U ...
* Pinyin input method *
Romanization of Japanese The romanization of Japanese is the use of Latin script to write the Japanese language. This method of writing is sometimes referred to in Japanese as . Japanese is normally written in a combination of logographic characters borrowed from Ch ...
* Tibetan pinyin * Transcription into Chinese characters *
Comparison of Chinese transcription systems This comparison of Standard Mandarin transcription systems comprises a list of all syllables which are considered phonemically distinguishable within Standard Mandarin. Gwoyeu Romatzyh employs a different ''spelling'' for each tone, whereas ot ...
* Two-cell Chinese Braille


Notes


References


Further reading

* * * *


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.
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. *


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 *


Pinyin-Guide.com
Pronunciation and FAQs related to Pinyin
Pinyin Tone Toolarchive
Online editor to create Pinyin with tones , - , - , - {{Authority control Writing systems introduced in 1958 Chinese language Chinese words and phrases ISO standards Mandarin words and phrases Phonetic alphabets Phonetic guides Romanization of Chinese Ruby characters