The different

varieties Variety may refer to: Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats * Variety (radio) * Variety show, in theater and television Films * ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont * ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...

of Chinese have been transcribed into many other writing systems.

General Chinese

General Chinese General Chinese () is a diaphonemic orthography invented by Yuen Ren Chao to represent the pronunciations of all major varieties of Chinese simultaneously. It is "the most complete genuine Chinese diasystem yet published". It can also be used for ...

is a

diaphonemic A diaphoneme is an abstract phonological unit that identifies a correspondence between related sounds of two or more varieties of a language or language cluster. For example, some English varieties contrast the vowel of ''late'' () with that o ...

orthography invented by

Yuen Ren Chao Yuen Ren Chao (; 3 November 1892 – 25 February 1982), also known as Zhao Yuanren, was a Chinese-American linguist, educator, scholar, poet, and composer, who contributed to the modern study of Chinese phonology and grammar. Chao was born a ...

to represent the pronunciations of all major varieties of Chinese simultaneously. It is "the most complete genuine Chinese

diasystem In the field of dialectology, a diasystem or polylectal grammar is a linguistic analysis set up to encode or represent a range of related varieties in a way that displays their structural differences. The term ''diasystem'' was coined by linguis ...

yet published". It can also be used for the

Korean Korean may refer to: People and culture * Koreans, ethnic group originating in the Korean Peninsula * Korean cuisine * Korean culture * Korean language **Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Chosŏn'gŭl **Korean dialects and the Jeju language ** ...

, Japanese and Vietnamese pronunciations of Chinese characters, and challenges the claim that

Chinese character Chinese characters () are logograms developed for the writing of Chinese. In addition, they have been adapted to write other East Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are known as ''kanji' ...

s are required for interdialectal communication in written Chinese. General Chinese is not specifically a romanisation system, but two alternative systems. One uses Chinese characters phonetically, as a

syllabary In the linguistic study of written languages, a syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent the syllables or (more frequently) moras which make up words. A symbol in a syllabary, called a syllabogram, typically represents an (option ...

of 2082 glyphs, and the other is an alphabetic

romanisation Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and ...

system with similar sound values and tone spellings to

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 la ...

Guanhua zimu

''Guanhua zimu'' 官話字母, developed by Wang Zhao 王照 (1859–1933), was the first alphabetic writing system for Chinese developed by a Chinese person. This system was modeled on Japanese

katakana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived f ...

, which he learned during a two-year stay in Japan, and consisted of letters that were based on components of Chinese characters. After returning to China in 1900, he taught his system in various parts of North China, but the government banned it in 1901. One of Wang's contemporaries, Lao Naixuan 勞乃宣 (1843–1921), later adapted ''guanhua zimu'' for use in two Wu dialects, those of

Ningbo Ningbo (; Ningbonese: ''gnin² poq⁷'' , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ), formerly romanized as Ningpo, is a major sub-provincial city in northeast Zhejiang province, People's Republic of China. It comprises 6 urban districts, 2 sate ...

and

Suzhou Suzhou (; ; Suzhounese: ''sou¹ tseu¹'' , Mandarin: ), alternately romanized as Soochow, is a major city in southern Jiangsu province, East China. Suzhou is the largest city in Jiangsu, and a major economic center and focal point of trad ...

. In doing this, he raised the issue that was ultimately responsible for the failure of all alphabetic writing systems in China: the notion that people should be introduced to literacy in their own local dialects. Such a proposal would both challenge the unique position of the millennia-old writing system and create more than one literary language, destroying China's linguistic unity in both the historical and geographic senses. Because of this, there was strong opposition from the very beginning to proposals of this kind.

Bopomofo

Wu Jingheng (who had developed a "beansprout alphabet") and Wang Zhao () (who had developed a Mandarin alphabet, Guanhua Zimu, in 1900) and

Lu Zhuangzhang Lu Zhuangzhang (盧戇章, 1854–1928) was the first Chinese scholar to develop a system for the romanization of Chinese, the ''Qieyin Xinzi'' (切音新字 "New Phonetic Alphabet") in 1892, which stimulated Chinese interest in script reform from ...

were part of the

Commission on the Unification of Pronunciation The Commission on the Unification of Pronunciation () was the organization established by the Beiyang government in 1912 to select ancillary phonetic symbols for Mandarin (resulting in the creation of Zhuyin) and set the standard Guoyu pronunc ...

(1912–1913), which developed the rudimentary Jiyin Zimu () system of

Zhang Binglin 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"), ...

into the Mandarin-specific phonetic system now known as

Zhuyin Fuhao 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 ...

or Bopomofo, which was eventually proclaimed on 23 November 1918. The significant feature of Bopomofo is that it is composed entirely of "

ruby character Ruby characters or rubi characters () are small, annotative glosses that are usually placed above or to the right of logographic characters of languages in the East Asian cultural sphere, such as Chinese ''hanzi'', Japanese ''kanji'', and Ko ...

s" which can be written beside any Chinese text whether written vertically, right-to-left, or left-to-right. The characters within the Bopomofo system are unique phonetic characters, and are not part of the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the ...

. In this way, it is not technically a form of romanisation, but because it is used for phonetic transcription the alphabet is often grouped with the romanisation systems.

Taiwanese kana

Taiwanese kana Taiwanese kana (, Pe̍h-ōe-jī : "tâi oân gí ká biêng", IPA : ) is a katakana-based writing system that was used to write Taiwanese Hokkien (commonly called "Taiwanese") when the island of Taiwan was under Japanese rule. It functione ...

is a

-based writing system once used to write Holo Taiwanese, when

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the no ...

was ruled by Japan. It functioned as a phonetic guide to

Chinese characters Chinese characters () are logograms developed for the writing of Chinese. In addition, they have been adapted to write other East Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are known as ''kanji ...

, much like

furigana is a Japanese reading aid consisting of smaller kana or syllabic characters printed either above or next to kanji (logographic characters) or other characters to indicate their pronunciation. It is one type of ruby text. Furigana is also kn ...

in Japanese or Bopomofo. There were similar systems for other languages in Taiwan as well, including

Hakka The Hakka (), sometimes also referred to as Hakka Han, or Hakka Chinese, or Hakkas are a Han Chinese subgroup whose ancestral homes are chiefly in the Hakka-speaking provincial areas of Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan, Zhej ...

and

Formosan languages The Formosan languages are a geographic grouping comprising the languages of the indigenous peoples of Taiwan, all of which are Austronesian. They do not form a single subfamily of Austronesian but rather nine separate subfamilies. The Taiwa ...

Phags-pa script

The Phags-pa script was an alphabet designed by the

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 diale ...

Lama Zhogoin Qoigyai Pagba (

Drogön Chögyal Phagpa Drogön Chogyal Phagpa (; ; 1235 – 15 December 1280), was the fifth leader of the Sakya school of Tibetan Buddhism. He was also the first Imperial Preceptor of the Yuan dynasty, and was concurrently named the director of the Bureau of Buddhi ...

) for Yuan emperor

Kublai Khan Kublai ; Mongolian script: ; (23 September 1215 – 18 February 1294), also known by his temple name as the Emperor Shizu of Yuan and his regnal name Setsen Khan, was the founder of the Yuan dynasty of China and the fifth khagan-emperor of ...

, as a unified script for the literary languages of the Yuan Dynasty. The Phags-pa script has helped reconstruct the pronunciation of pre-modern forms of Chinese but it totally ignores tone.

Manchu alphabet

The

Manchu alphabet The Manchu alphabet ( mnc, m=, v=manju hergen, a=manju hergen) is the alphabet used to write the now nearly-extinct Manchu language. A similar script is used today by the Sibe people, Xibe people, who speak a Xibe language, language consider ...

was used to write Chinese in the

Qing dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speak ...

Mongolian alphabet

In Inner Mongolia the Mongolian alphabet is used to transliterate Chinese.

Xiao'erjing

Xiao'erjing Xiao'erjing or Xiao'erjin or Xiaor jin or in its shortened form, Xiaojing, literally meaning "children's script" or "minor script" (cf. "original script" referring to the original Perso-Arabic script; zh, s=本经, t=本經, p=Běnjīng, Xiao ...

is a system for transcribing Chinese using the Arabic alphabet. It is used on occasion by many

ethnic minorities The term 'minority group' has different usages depending on the context. According to its common usage, a minority group can simply be understood in terms of demographic sizes within a population: i.e. a group in society with the least number o ...

who adhere to the

Islamic Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God (or '' Allah'') as it was revealed to Muhammad, the ma ...

faith in China (mostly the Hui, but also the Dongxiang, and the Salar), and formerly by their

Dungan Dungan may refer to: * Donegan, an Irish surname, sometimes spelled Dungan * Dungan people, a group of Muslim people of Hui origin ** Dungan language ** Dungan, sometimes used to refer to Hui Chinese people generally * Dungan Mountains in Sibi Di ...

descendants in

Central Asia Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a region of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes the fo ...

. Soviet writing reforms forced the Dungan to replace Xiao'erjing with a

Roman alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the o ...

and later a Cyrillic alphabet, which they continue to use up until today.

Romanisation

There have been many systems of

throughout history. However,

Hanyu Pinyin Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese for ...

has become the international standard since 1982. Other well-known systems include Wade-Giles and

Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...

Cyrillisation

The Russian system for Cyrillisation of Chinese is the Palladius system. The

Dungan language Dungan ( or ) is a Sinitic language spoken primarily in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan by the Dungan people, an ethnic group related to the Hui people of China. Although it is derived from the Central Plains Mandarin of Gansu and Shaanxi, it is wr ...

(a variety of Mandarin used by the Dungan people) was once written in the Latin script but now employs

Cyrillic The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking co ...

. Some people use the Cyrillic alphabet instead of the Latin alphabet to shorten pinyin (Ex.是 (Shì ш)) Cyrillic-using countries other than Russia use different systems.

Braille

A number of

braille Braille (Pronounced: ) is a tactile writing system used by people who are visually impaired, including people who are blind, deafblind or who have low vision. It can be read either on embossed paper or by using refreshable braille displ ...

transcriptions have been developed for Chinese. In mainland China, 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 writte ...

and Two-Cell Chinese Braille are used in parallel to transcribe

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 standa ...

Taiwanese Braille Taiwanese Braille is the braille script used in Taiwan for Taiwanese Mandarin (''Guoyu''). Although based marginally on international braille, most consonants have been reassigned; also, like Chinese Braille, Taiwanese Braille is a semi-syllaba ...

is used in Taiwan for

Taiwanese Mandarin Taiwanese Mandarin, ''Guoyu'' ( zh, s=, t=國語, p=Guóyǔ, l=National Language, first=t) or ''Huayu'' ( zh, s=, t=華語, p=Huáyǔ, first=t, l=Mandarin Language, labels=no) refers to Mandarin Chinese spoken in Taiwan. A large majority of the T ...

. In traditional Mainland Chinese Braille, consonants and basic finals conform to

international braille The goal of braille uniformity is to unify the braille alphabets of the world as much as possible, so that literacy in one braille alphabet readily transfers to another. Unification was first achieved by a convention of the ''International Congre ...

, but additional finals form a

semi-syllabary A semi-syllabary is a writing system that behaves partly as an alphabet and partly as a syllabary. The main group of semi-syllabic writing are the Paleohispanic scripts of ancient Spain, a group of semi-syllabaries that transform redundant plosiv ...

, as in bopomofo. Each syllable is written with up to three Braille cells, representing the

initial In a written or published work, an initial capital, also referred to as a drop capital or simply an initial cap, initial, initcapital, initcap or init or a drop cap or drop, is a letter at the beginning of a word, a chapter, or a paragraph tha ...

final Final, Finals or The Final may refer to: *Final (competition), the last or championship round of a sporting competition, match, game, or other contest which decides a winner for an event ** Another term for playoffs, describing a sequence of con ...

and tone, respectively. In practice tone is generally omitted. In Two-Cell Chinese Braille, designed in the 1970s, each syllable is rendered with two braille characters. The first combines the

and medial; the second the

rhyme A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds (usually, the exact same phonemes) in the final stressed syllables and any following syllables of two or more words. Most often, this kind of perfect rhyming is consciously used for a musical or aesthetic ...

and tone. The base letters represent the initial and rhyme; these are modified with diacritics for the medial and tone. Like traditional Mainland Chinese Braille, Taiwanese Braille is a semi-syllabary. Although based marginally on international braille, the majority of consonants have been reassigned.Only ''p m d n g c a e ê ü'' (from p m d n k j ä è dropped-e ü) approximate the French norm. Other letters have been reassigned so that the sets of letters in groups such as ''d t n l'' and ''g k h'' are similar in shape.

References

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