Hanyu Pinyin 汉语拼音, 漢語拼音 | |
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Script type | romanization |
Created | 1950s |
Time period |
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Languages | Standard Chinese |
Pinyin | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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![]() Table of Hanyu Pinyin syllables, which includes 23 initials (top) and 24 finals (bottom) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Chinese | 拼音 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Scheme for the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Simplified Chinese | 汉语拼音方案 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Traditional Chinese | 漢語拼音方案 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Sinitic (Chinese) romanization |
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Mandarin |
Wu |
Yue |
Min |
Gan |
Hakka |
Xiang |
Polylectal |
See also |
Hanyu Pinyin (simplified Chinese: 汉语拼音; traditional Chinese: 漢語拼音; pinyin: hànyǔ pīnyīn), often shortened to just pinyin, is the most common romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese. It is used in official contexts where Standard Chinese is an official language (Greater China and Singapore) as well as by the United Nations and in other international contexts. It is used principally to teach Mandarin, normally written with Chinese characters, to students already familiar with the Latin alphabet. The system uses four diacritics to denote tones, though these are often omitted in various contexts, such as when spelling Chinese names in non-Chinese texts, and writing words from non-Chinese languages in Chinese-language texts. Hanyu Pinyin is also used in various input methods to type Chinese characters on computers, some Chinese dictionaries use it to arrange entries. The word Hànyǔ (simplified Chinese: 汉语; traditional Chinese: 漢語) literally means "Han language" (i.e. the Chinese language), while Pīnyīn (拼音) means "spelled sounds".[1]
Hanyu Pinyin was developed in the 1950s, led by a group of Chinese linguists including Wang Li, Lu Zhiwei, Li Jinxi, Luo Changpei[2] and Zhou Youguang,[3] who based their work in part on earlier romanization systems. The system was originally promulgated at the Fifth Session of the First National People's Congress in 1958, and has seen several rounds of revisions since.[4] The International Organization for Standardization propagated Hanyu Pinyin as ISO 7098 in 1982,[5] and the United Nations began using it in 1986.[3] Attempts to make Hanyu Pinyin standard in Taiwan occurred in 2002 and 2009, and while the system has been official since the latter attempt,[6][7][8] "Taiwan largely 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".[citation needed] Moreover, "some cities, businesses, and organizations, notably in the southern parts of Taiwan, did not accept [efforts to introduce Hanyu Pinyin] due to political reasons, as it suggested further integration with the PRC", and so it remains one of several rival romanization systems in use, along with Wade–Giles and the autochthonous Tongyong Pinyin.[9]
When a non-native writing system is designed to write a language, certain compromises may be made in an attempt to aid non-native speakers in reproducing the sounds of the target language. Native speakers of English tend to produce fairly accurate pronunciations when reading pinyin, with exceptions usually occurring with phonemes not generally found in English, spelled with characters usually associated with divergent English pronunciations: j /tɕ/, q /tɕʰ/, x /ɕ/, z /ts/, c /tsʰ/, zh /ʈʂ/, ch /ʈʂʰ/, h /x/ and r /ɻ/ exhibit the greatest discrepancies.
In this system, the correspondence between the Latin letters and the sound is sometimes idiosyncratic, though not necessarily more so than the way the Latin script is employed in other languages. For example, the aspiration distinction between b, d, g and p, t, k is similar to that of these syllable-initial consonants in English (in which the two sets are, however, also differentiated by voicing), but not to that of French. Letters z and c also have that distinction, pronounced as [ts] and [tsʰ] (which is reminiscent of these letters being used to represent the phoneme /ts/ in German and in Slavic languages written in the Latin script, respectively). From s, z, c come the digraphs sh, zh, ch by analogy with English sh, ch. Although this analogical use of digraphs introduces the novel combination zh, it is internally consistent in how the two series are related. In the x, j, q series, the pinyin use of x is similar to its use in Portuguese, Galician, Catalan, Basque, and Maltese to represent /ʃ/; the pinyin q is close to its value of /c͡ç/ in Albanian, though to the untrained ear both pinyin and Albanian pronunciations may sound similar to the ch. Pinyin vowels are pronounced in a similar way to vowels in Romance languages.
The pronunciations and spellings of Chinese words are generally given in terms of initials and finals, which represent the language's segmental phonemic portion, rather than letter by letter. Initials are initial consonants, whereas finals are all possible combinations of medials (semivowels coming before the vowel), a nucleus vowel, and coda (final vowel or consonant).
In 1605, the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci published Xizi Qiji (西字奇蹟; Xīzì Qíjì; Hsi-tzu Ch'i-chi; 'Miracle of Western Letters') in Beijing.[10] This was the first book to use the Roman alphabet to write the Chinese language. Twenty years later, another Jesuit in China, Nicolas Trigault, issued his Xī Rú Ěrmù Zī (《西儒耳目資》; Hsi Ju Erh-mu Tzu; 'Aid to the Eyes and Ears of Western Literati') at Hangzhou.[11] 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.[12]
One of the earliest Chinese thinkers to relate Western alphabets to Chinese was 17th century scholar-official Fang Yizhi (方以智; Fāng Yǐzhì; Fang I-chih; 1611–1671).[13]
The first late Qing reformer to propose that China adopt a system of spelling was Song Shu (1862–1910). A student of the great scholars Yu Yue and Zhang Taiyan, Song had been to Japan and observed the stunning effect of the kana syllabaries and Western learning there.[which?] This galvanized him into activity on a number of fronts, one of the most important being reform of the script. While Song did not himself actually create a system for spelling Sinitic languages, his discussion proved fertile and led to a proliferation of schemes for phonetic scripts.[12]
Main article: Wade–Giles |
The Wade–Giles system was produced by Thomas Wade in 1859, and further improved by Herbert Giles in the Chinese–English Dictionary of 1892. It was popular and used in English-language publications outside China until 1979.[14]
Main article: Latinxua Sin Wenz |
In the early 1930s, Chinese Communist Party leaders trained in Moscow introduced a phonetic alphabet using Roman letters which had been developed in the Soviet Oriental Institute of Leningrad and was originally intended to improve literacy in the Russian Far East.[15][note 1] This Sin Wenz or "New Writing"[16] was much more linguistically sophisticated than earlier alphabets, but with the major exception that it did not indicate tones of Chinese.[17]
In 1940, several thousand members attended a Border Region Sin Wenz Society convention. Mao Zedong and Zhu De, head of the army, both contributed their calligraphy (in characters) for the masthead of the Sin Wenz Society's new journal. Outside the CCP, other prominent supporters included Sun Yat-sen's son, Sun Fo; Cai Yuanpei, the country's most prestigious educator; Tao Xingzhi, a leading educational reformer; and Lu Xun. Over thirty journals soon appeared written in Sin Wenz, plus large numbers of translations, biographies of figures such as Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and Charlie Chaplin, some contemporary Chinese literature, and a variety of textbooks. In 1940, the movement reached an apex when Mao's Border Region Government declared that the Sin Wenz had the same legal status as traditional characters in government and public documents. Many educators and political leaders looked forward to the day when they would be universally accepted and completely replace Chinese characters. Opposition arose, however, because the system was less well adapted to writing regional languages, and therefore would require learning Mandarin. Sin Wenz fell into relative disuse during the following years.[18]
Main article: Yale romanization of Mandarin |
In 1943, the U.S. military engaged Yale University to develop a romanization of Mandarin Chinese for its pilots flying over China. The resulting system is very close to pinyin, but does not use English letters in unfamiliar ways; for example, pinyin x for [ɕ] is written as sy in the Yale system. Medial semivowels are written with y and w (instead of pinyin i and u), and apical vowels (syllabic consonants) with r or z. Accent marks are used to indicate tone.
Pinyin was created by a group of Chinese linguists, including Wang Li, Lu Zhiwei, Li Jinxi, Luo Changpei,[2] as well as Zhou Youguang who was an economist,[3] as part of a Chinese government project in the 1950s. Zhou, often called "the father of pinyin",[3][19][20][21] worked as a banker in New York when he decided to return to China to help rebuild the country after the People's Republic was established. Initially, Mao Zedong considered the development of a new, wholly-romanized writing system for Chinese, but during his first official visit to the Soviet Union in 1949, Joseph Stalin convinced him to maintain the existing system.[22] Zhou became an economics professor in Shanghai, and when China's Ministry of Education created a "Committee for the Reform of the Chinese Written Language" in 1955, Premier Zhou Enlai assigned him the task of developing a new romanization system[dubious ], despite the fact that he was not a linguist by trade.[3]
Hanyu Pinyin was based on several existing systems, including Gwoyeu Romatzyh from 1928, Latinxua Sin Wenz from 1931, and the diacritic markings from zhuyin (bopomofo).[23] "I'm not the father of pinyin", Zhou said years later; "I'm the son of pinyin. It's [the result of] a long tradition from the later years of the Qing dynasty down to today. But we restudied the problem and revisited it and made it more perfect."[24]
An initial draft was authored in January 1956 by Ye Laishi, Lu Zhiwei and Zhou Youguang.[25] A revised Pinyin scheme was proposed by Wang Li, Lu Zhiwei and Li Jinxi, and became the main focus of discussion among the group of Chinese linguists in June 1956, forming the basis of Pinyin standard later after incorporating a wide-range of feedbacks and further revisions.[2][25][26] The first edition of Hanyu Pinyin was approved and officially adopted at the Fifth Session of the 1st National People's Congress on February 11, 1958. It was then introduced to primary schools as a way to teach Standard Chinese pronunciation and used to improve the literacy rate among adults.[27]
During the height of the Cold War the use of pinyin system over the Yale romanization outside of China was regarded as a political statement or identification with the communist Chinese regime.[28] Beginning in the early 1980s, Western publications addressing Mainland China began using the Hanyu Pinyin romanization system instead of earlier romanization systems;[29] this change followed the normalization of diplomatic relations between the United States and the PRC in 1979.[30][31] In 2001, the PRC Government issued the National Common Language Law, providing a legal basis for applying pinyin.[27] The current specification of the orthographic rules is laid down in the National Standard GB/T 16159–2012.[32]
Unlike European languages, clusters of letters —initials (声母; 聲母; shēngmǔ) and finals (韵母; 韻母; yùnmǔ)— and not consonant and vowel letters, form the fundamental elements in pinyin (and most other phonetic systems used to describe the Han language). Every Mandarin syllable can be spelled with exactly one initial followed by one final, except for the special syllable er or when a trailing -r is considered part of a syllable (a phenomenon known as erhua). The latter case, though a common practice in some sub-dialects, is rarely used in official publications.
Even though most initials contain a consonant, finals are not always simple vowels, especially in compound finals (复韵母; 複韻母; fùyùnmǔ), i.e. when a "medial" is placed in front of the final. For example, the medials [i] and [u] are pronounced with such tight openings at the beginning of a final that some native Chinese speakers (especially when singing) pronounce yī (衣, clothes, officially pronounced /í/) as /jí/ and wéi (围; 圍, to enclose, officially pronounced /uěi/) as /wěi/ or /wuěi/. Often these medials are treated as separate from the finals rather than as part of them; this convention is followed in the chart of finals below.
In each cell below, the bold letters indicate pinyin and the brackets enclose the symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet.
1 y is pronounced [ɥ] (a labial-palatal approximant) before u.
2 The letters w and y are not included in the table of initials in the official pinyin system. They are an orthographic convention for the medials i, u and ü when no initial is present. When i, u, or ü are finals and no initial is present, they are spelled yi, wu, and yu, respectively.
The conventional lexicographical order (excluding w and y), derived from the zhuyin system ("bopomofo"), is:
b p m f | d t n l | g k h | j q x | zh ch sh r | z c s |
According to Scheme for the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet, zh, ch, and sh can be abbreviated as ẑ, ĉ, and ŝ (z, c, s with a circumflex). However, the shorthands are rarely used due to difficulty of entering them on computers and are confined mainly to Esperanto keyboard layouts.
In each cell below, the first line indicates IPA, the second indicates pinyin for a standalone (no-initial) form, and the third indicates pinyin for a combination with an initial. Other than finals modified by an -r, which are omitted, the following is an exhaustive table of all possible finals.1[33]
The only syllable-final consonants in Standard Chinese are -n and -ng, and -r, the last of which is attached as a grammatical suffix. A Chinese syllable ending with any other consonant either is from a non-Mandarin language (a southern Chinese language such as Cantonese, reflecting final consonants in Old Chinese), or indicates the use of a non-pinyin romanization system, such as one that uses final consonants to indicate tones.
Rime | ||||||||||||||||
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∅ | -e/-o | -a | -ei | -ai | -ou | -ao | -en | -an | -eng | -ang | er | |||||
Medial | ∅ | [ɨ] -i |
[ɤ] e -e |
[a] a -a |
[ei̯] ei -ei |
[ai̯] ai -ai |
[ou̯] ou -ou |
[au̯] ao -ao |
[ən] en -en |
[an] an -an |
[əŋ] eng -eng |
[aŋ] ang -ang |
[ɚ] er 1 | |||
y- -i- |
[i] yi -i |
[je] ye -ie |
[ja] ya -ia |
[jou̯] you -iu |
[jau̯] yao -iao |
[in] yin -in |
[jɛn] yan -ian |
[iŋ] ying -ing |
[jaŋ] yang -iang |
|||||||
w- -u- |
[u] wu -u |
[wo] wo -uo 3 |
[wa] wa -ua |
[wei̯] wei -ui |
[wai̯] wai -uai |
[wən] wen -un |
[wan] wan -uan |
[wəŋ~ʊŋ] weng -ong |
[waŋ] wang -uang |
|||||||
yu- -ü- |
[y] yu -ü 2 |
[ɥe] yue -üe 2 |
[yn] yun -ün 2 |
[ɥɛn] yuan -üan 2 |
[jʊŋ] yong -iong |
1 For other finals formed by the suffix -r, pinyin does not use special orthography; one simply appends r to the final that it is added to, without regard for any sound changes that may take place along the way. For information on sound changes related to final r, please see Erhua#Rules in Standard Mandarin.
2 ü is written as u after y, j, q, or x.
3 uo is written as o after b, p, m, f, or w.
Technically, i, u, ü without a following vowel are finals, not medials, and therefore take the tone marks, but they are more concisely displayed as above. In addition, ê [ɛ] (欸; 誒) and syllabic nasals m (呒, 呣), n (嗯, 唔), ng (嗯, 𠮾) are used as interjections.
According to Scheme for the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet, ng can be abbreviated with a shorthand of ŋ. However, this shorthand is rarely used due to difficulty of entering them on computers.
An umlaut is placed over the letter u when it occurs after the initials l and n when necessary in order to represent the sound [y]. This is necessary in order to distinguish the front high rounded vowel in lü (e.g. 驴; 驢; 'donkey') from the back high rounded vowel in lu (e.g. 炉; 爐; 'oven'). Tonal markers are added on top of the umlaut, as in lǘ.
However, the ü is not used in the other contexts where it could represent a front high rounded vowel, namely after the letters j, q, x, and y. For example, the sound of the word 鱼/魚 (fish) is transcribed in pinyin simply as yú, not as yǘ. This practice is opposed to Wade–Giles, which always uses ü, and Tongyong Pinyin, which always uses yu. Whereas Wade–Giles needs the umlaut to distinguish between chü (pinyin ju) and chu (pinyin zhu), this ambiguity does not arise with pinyin, so the more convenient form ju is used instead of jü. Genuine ambiguities only happen with nu/nü and lu/lü, which are then distinguished by an umlaut.
Many fonts or output methods do not support an umlaut for ü or cannot place tone marks on top of ü. Likewise, using ü in input methods is difficult because it is not present as a simple key on many keyboard layouts. For these reasons v is sometimes used instead by convention. For example, it is common for cellphones to use v instead of ü. Additionally, some stores in China use v instead of ü in the transliteration of their names. The drawback is that there are no tone marks for the letter v.
This also presents a problem in transcribing names for use on passports, affecting people with names that consist of the sound lü or nü, particularly people with the surname 吕 (Lǚ), a fairly common surname, particularly compared to the surnames 陆 (Lù), 鲁 (Lǔ), 卢 (Lú) and 路 (Lù). Previously, the practice varied among different passport issuing offices, with some transcribing as "LV" and "NV" while others used "LU" and "NU". On 10 July 2012, the Ministry of Public Security standardized the practice to use "LYU" and "NYU" in passports.[34][35]
Although nüe written as nue, and lüe written as lue are not ambiguous, nue or lue are not correct according to the rules; nüe and lüe should be used instead. However, some Chinese input methods (e.g. Microsoft Pinyin IME) support both nve/lve (typing v for ü) and nue/lue.
Most rules given here in terms of English pronunciation are approximations, as several of these sounds do not correspond directly to sounds in English.
Pinyin | IPA | English approximation[36] | Explanation |
---|---|---|---|
b | [p] | spark | unaspirated p, as in spark |
p | [pʰ] | pay | strongly aspirated p, as in pit |
m | [m] | may | as in English mummy |
f | [f] | fair | as in English fun |
d | [t] | stop | unaspirated t, as in stop |
t | [tʰ] | take | strongly aspirated t, as in top |
n | [n] | nay | as in English nit |
l | [l] | lay | as in English love |
g | [k] | skill | unaspirated k, as in skill |
k | [kʰ] | kay | strongly aspirated k, as in kiss |
h | [x], [h] | loch | Varies between hat and Scottish loch. |
j | [tɕ] | churchyard | Alveo-palatal. No equivalent in English, but similar to an unaspirated "-chy-" sound when said quickly. Like q, but unaspirated. Is similar to the English name of the letter G, but curl the tip of the tongue downwards to stick it at the back of the teeth. |
q | [tɕʰ] | punch yourself | Alveo-palatal. No equivalent in English. Like punch yourself, with the lips spread wide as when one says ee. Curl the tip of the tongue downwards to stick it at the back of the teeth and strongly aspirate. |
x | [ɕ] | push yourself | Alveo-palatal. No equivalent in English. Like -sh y-, with the lips spread as when one says ee and with the tip of the tongue curled downwards and stuck to the back of the teeth. |
zh | [ʈʂ] | nurture | Unaspirated ch. Similar to hatching but retroflex, or marching in American English. Voiced in a toneless syllable. |
ch | [ʈʂʰ] | church | Similar to chin, but retroflex. |
sh | [ʂ] | shirt | Similar to shoe but retroflex, or marsh in American English. |
r | [ɻ~ʐ] | ray | No equivalent in English, but similar to a sound between r in reduce and s in measure but with the tongue curled upward against the top of the mouth (i.e. retroflex). |
z | [ts] | pizza | unaspirated c, similar to something between suds but voiceless, unless in a toneless syllable. |
c | [tsʰ] | hats | like the English ts in cats, but strongly aspirated, very similar to the Czech, Polish, Esperanto, and Slovak c. |
s | [s] | say | as in sun |
w | [w] | way | as in water. Before an e or a it is sometimes pronounced like v as in violin.* |
y | [j], [ɥ] | yes | as in yes. Before a u, pronounced with rounded lips, as if pronouncing German ü.* |
Y and w are equivalent to the semivowel medials i, u, and ü (see below). They are spelled differently when there is no initial consonant in order to mark a new syllable: fanguan is fan-guan, while fangwan is fang-wan (and equivalent to *fang-uan). With this convention, an apostrophe only needs to be used to mark an initial a, e, or o: Xi'an (two syllables: [ɕi.an]) vs. xian (one syllable: [ɕi̯ɛn]). In addition, y and w are added to fully vocalic i, u, and ü when these occur without an initial consonant, so that they are written yi, wu, and yu. Some Mandarin speakers do pronounce a [j] or [w] sound at the beginning of such words—that is, yi [i] or [ji], wu [u] or [wu], yu [y] or [ɥy],—so this is an intuitive convention. See below for a few finals which are abbreviated after a consonant plus w/u or y/i medial: wen → C+un, wei → C+ui, weng → C+ong, and you → Q+iu.
The apostrophe (') (隔音符号; 隔音符號; géyīn fúhào; 'syllable-dividing mark') is used before a syllable starting with a vowel (a, o, or e) in a multiple-syllable word, unless the syllable starts the word or immediately follows a hyphen or other dash. For example, 西安 is written as Xi'an or Xī'ān, and 天峨 is written as Tian'e or Tiān'é, but 第二 is written "dì-èr", without an apostrophe.[37] This apostrophe is not used in the Taipei Metro names.[38]
Apostrophes (as well as hyphens and tone marks) are omitted on Chinese passports.[39]
IPA: Vowels | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Legend: unrounded • rounded |
The following is a list of finals in Standard Chinese, excepting most of those ending with r.
To find a given final:
Pinyin | IPA | Form with zero initial | Explanation |
---|---|---|---|
-i | [ɹ̩~z̩], [ɻ̩~ʐ̩] | (N/A) | -i is a buzzed continuation of the consonant following z-, c-, s-, zh-, ch-, sh- or r-. (In all other cases, -i has the sound of bee; this is listed below.) |
a | [a] | a | like English father, but a bit more fronted |
e | [ɤ] i | e | a back, unrounded vowel (similar to English duh, but not as open). Pronounced as a sequence [ɰɤ]. |
ai | [ai̯] | ai | like English eye, but a bit lighter |
ei | [ei̯] | ei | as in hey |
ao | [au̯] | ao | approximately as in cow; the a is much more audible than the o |
ou | [ou̯] | ou | as in North American English so |
an | [an] | an | like British English ban, but more central |
en | [ən] | en | as in taken |
ang | [aŋ] | ang | as in German Angst. (Starts with the vowel sound in father and ends in the velar nasal; like song in some dialects of American English) |
eng | [əŋ] | eng | like e in en above but with ng appended |
ong | [ʊŋ] | (weng) | starts with the vowel sound in book and ends with the velar nasal sound in sing. Varies between [oŋ] and [uŋ] depending on the speaker. |
er | [aɚ̯] | er | Similar to the sound in bar in English. Can also be pronounced [ɚ] depending on the speaker. |
Finals beginning with i- (y-) | |||
i | [i] | yi | like English bee |
ia | [ja] | ya | as i + a; like English yard |
ie | [je] | ye | as i + ê where the e (compare with the ê interjection) is pronounced shorter and lighter |
iao | [jau̯] | yao | as i + ao |
iu | [jou̯] | you | as i + ou |
ian | [jɛn] | yan | as i + an; like English yen. Varies between [jen] and [jan] depending on the speaker. |
in | [in] | yin | as i + n |
iang | [jaŋ] | yang | as i + ang |
ing | [iŋ] | ying | as i + ng |
iong | [jʊŋ] | yong | as i + ong. Varies between [joŋ] and [juŋ] depending on the speaker. |
Finals beginning with u- (w-) | |||
u | [u] | wu | like English oo |
ua | [wa] | wa | as u + a |
uo/o | [wo] | wo | as u + o where the o (compare with the o interjection) is pronounced shorter and lighter (spelled as o after b, p, m or f) |
uai | [wai̯] | wai | as u + ai, as in English why |
ui | [wei̯] | wei | as u + ei, as in English way |
uan | [wan] | wan | as u + an |
un | [wən] | wen | as u + en; as in English won |
uang | [waŋ] | wang | as u + ang |
(ong) | [wəŋ] | weng | as u + eng |
Finals beginning with ü- (yu-) | |||
ü | [y] i | yu | as in German über or French lune (pronounced as English ee with rounded lips; spelled as u after j, q or x) |
üe | [ɥe] | yue | as ü + ê where the e (compare with the ê interjection) is pronounced shorter and lighter (spelled as ue after j, q or x) |
üan | [ɥɛn] | yuan | as ü + an. Varies between [ɥen] and [ɥan] depending on the speaker (spelled as uan after j, q or x) |
ün | [yn] | yun | as ü + n (spelled as un after j, q or x) |
Interjections | |||
ê | [ɛ] | (N/A) | as in bet |
o | [ɔ] | (N/A) | approximately as in British English office; the lips are much more rounded |
io | [jɔ] | yo | as i + o |
The pinyin system also uses diacritics to mark the four tones of Mandarin. The diacritic is placed over the letter that represents the syllable nucleus, unless that letter is missing (see below).
If the tone mark is written over an i, the tittle above the i is omitted, as in yī.
Many books printed in China use a mix of fonts, with vowels and tone marks rendered in a different font from the surrounding text, tending to give such pinyin texts a typographically ungainly appearance. This style, most likely rooted in early technical limitations, has led many to believe that pinyin's rules call for this practice, e.g. the use of a Latin alpha (ɑ) rather than the standard style (a) found in most fonts, or g often written with a single-storey ɡ. The rules of Hanyu Pinyin, however, specify no such practice.[40]: 3.3.4.1:8
Before the advent of computers, many typewriter fonts did not contain vowels with macron or caron diacritics. Tones were thus represented by placing a tone number at the end of individual syllables. For example, tóng is written tong². The number used for each tone is as the order listed above, except the neutral tone, which is either not numbered, or given the number 0 or 5, e.g. ma⁵ for 吗/嗎, an interrogative marker.
Tone | Tone Mark | Number added to end of syllable in place of tone mark |
Example using tone mark |
Example using number |
IPA |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
First | macron ( ◌̄ ) | 1 | mā | ma1 | ma˥ |
Second | acute accent ( ◌́ ) | 2 | má | ma2 | ma˧˥ |
Third | caron ( ◌̌ ) | 3 | mǎ | ma3 | ma˨˩˦ |
Fourth | grave accent ( ◌̀ ) | 4 | mà | ma4 | ma˥˩ |
Neutral | none or middle dot before syllable ( ·◌ ) |
5 0 |
ma ·ma |
ma ma5 ma0 |
ma |
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:[42]
Worded differently,
The above can be summarized as the following table. The vowel letter taking the tone mark is indicated by the fourth-tone mark.
-a | -e | -i | -o | -u | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
a- | ài | ào | |||
e- | èi | ||||
i- | ià, iào | iè | iò | iù | |
o- | òu | ||||
u- | uà, uài | uè | uì | uò | |
ü- | (üà) | üè |
The placement of the tone marker, when more than one of the written letters a, e, i, o, and u appears, can also be inferred from the nature of the vowel sound in the medial and final. The rule is that the tone marker goes on the spelled vowel that is not a (near-)semi-vowel. The exception is that, for triphthongs that are spelled with only two vowel letters, both of which are the semi-vowels, the tone marker goes on the second spelled vowel.
Specifically, if the spelling of a diphthong begins with i (as in ia) or u (as in ua), which serves as a near-semi-vowel, this letter does not take the tone marker. Likewise, if the spelling of a diphthong ends with o or u representing a near-semi-vowel (as in ao or ou), this letter does not receive a tone marker. In a triphthong spelled with three of a, e, i, o, and u (with i or u replaced by y or w at the start of a syllable), the first and third letters coincide with near-semi-vowels and hence do not receive the tone marker (as in iao or uai or iou). But if no letter is written to represent a triphthong's middle (non-semi-vowel) sound (as in ui or iu), then the tone marker goes on the final (second) vowel letter.
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.
Scheme | Tone 1 | Tone 2 | Tone 3 | Tone 4 | Neutral tone |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Dummitt[43] | red | orange | green | blue | none/black |
MDBG | red | orange | green | blue | black |
Unimelb[a] | blue | green | purple | red | grey |
Hanping[44] | blue | green | orange | red | grey |
Pleco | red | green | blue | purple | grey |
Thomas[a] | green | blue | red | black | grey |
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)[45] uses the following notation to indicate both the original tone and the tone after the sandhi:
Wenlin Software for learning Chinese also adopted this notation.
See also: Pinyin table |
The Scheme for the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet lists the letters of pinyin, along with their pronunciations, as:
Letter | Aa | Bb | Cc | Dd | Ee | Ff | Gg | Hh | Ii | Jj | Kk | Ll | Mm | Nn | Oo | Pp | Rr | Ss | Tt | Uu | Vv | Ww | Xx | Yy | Zz | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Pronunciation (pinyin) | a | bê | cê | dê | e | êf | gê | ha | yi | jie | kê | êl | êm | nê | o | pê | qiu | ar | ês | tê | wu | vê | wa | xi | ya | zê |
Bopomofo transcription | ㄚ | ㄅㄝ | ㄘㄝ | ㄉㄝ | ㄜ | ㄝㄈ | ㄍㄝ | ㄏㄚ | ㄧ | ㄐㄧㄝ | ㄎㄝ | ㄝㄌ | ㄝㄇ | ㄋㄝ | ㄛ | ㄆㄝ | ㄑㄧㄡ | ㄚㄦ | ㄝㄙ | ㄊㄝ | ㄨ | ㄪㄝ | ㄨㄚ | ㄒㄧ | ㄧㄚ | ㄗㄝ |
Pinyin differs from other romanizations in several aspects, such as the following:
Most of the above are used to avoid ambiguity when words of more than one syllable are written in pinyin. For example, uenian is written as wenyan because it is not clear which syllables make up uenian; uen-ian, uen-i-an, u-en-i-an, u-e-nian, and u-e-ni-an are all possible combinations, but wenyan is unambiguous since we, nya, etc. do not exist in pinyin. See the pinyin table article for a summary of possible pinyin syllables (not including tones).
Although Chinese characters represent single syllables, Mandarin Chinese is a polysyllabic language. Spacing in pinyin is usually based on words, and not on single syllables. However, there are often ambiguities in partitioning a word.
The Basic Rules of the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet Orthography (汉语拼音正词法基本规则; 漢語拼音正詞法基本規則; Hànyǔ Pīnyīn Zhèngcífǎ Jīběn Guīzé) were put into effect in 1988 by the National Educational Commission (国家教育委员会; 國家教育委員會; Guójiā Jiàoyù Wěiyuánhuì) and the National Language Commission (国家语言文字工作委员会; 國家語言文字工作委員會; Guójiā Yǔyán Wénzì Gōngzuò Wěiyuánhuì).[47] These rules became a Guóbiāo recommendation in 1996[47][48] and were updated in 2012.[49]
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."[55]
As Pinyin is a phonetic writing system for modern Standard Chinese, it is not designed to replace Chinese characters for writing Literary Chinese, the standard written language prior to the early 1900s. In particular, Chinese characters retain semantic cues that help 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.
IPA | a | ɔ | ɛ | ɤ | ai | ei | au | ou | an | ən | aŋ | əŋ | ʊŋ | aɹ |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Pinyin | a | o | ê | e | ai | ei | ao | ou | an | en | ang | eng | ong | er |
Tongyong Pinyin | e | |||||||||||||
Wade–Giles | eh | ê/o | ên | êng | ung | êrh | ||||||||
Bopomofo | ㄚ | ㄛ | ㄝ | ㄜ | ㄞ | ㄟ | ㄠ | ㄡ | ㄢ | ㄣ | ㄤ | ㄥ | ㄨㄥ | ㄦ |
example | 阿 | 喔 | 誒 | 俄 | 艾 | 黑 | 凹 | 偶 | 安 | 恩 | 昂 | 冷 | 中 | 二 |
IPA | i | je | jou | jɛn | in | iŋ | jʊŋ | u | wo | wei | wən | wəŋ | y | ɥe | ɥɛn | yn |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Pinyin | yi | ye | you | yan | yin | ying | yong | wu | wo/o | wei | wen | weng | yu | yue | yuan | yun |
Tongyong Pinyin | wun | wong | ||||||||||||||
Wade–Giles | i/yi | yeh | yu | yen | yung | wên | wêng | yü | yüeh | yüan | yün | |||||
Bopomofo | ㄧ | ㄧㄝ | ㄧㄡ | ㄧㄢ | ㄧㄣ | ㄧㄥ | ㄩㄥ | ㄨ | ㄨㄛ/ㄛ | ㄨㄟ | ㄨㄣ | ㄨㄥ | ㄩ | ㄩㄝ | ㄩㄢ | ㄩㄣ |
example | 一 | 也 | 又 | 言 | 音 | 英 | 用 | 五 | 我 | 位 | 文 | 翁 | 玉 | 月 | 元 | 雲 |
IPA | p | pʰ | m | fəŋ | tjou | twei | twən | tʰɤ | ny | ly | kɤɹ | kʰɤ | xɤ |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Pinyin | b | p | m | feng | diu | dui | dun | te | nü | lü | ge | ke | he |
Tongyong Pinyin | fong | diou | duei | nyu | lyu | ||||||||
Wade–Giles | p | pʻ | fêng | tiu | tui | tun | tʻê | nü | lü | ko | kʻo | ho | |
Bopomofo | ㄅ | ㄆ | ㄇ | ㄈㄥ | ㄉㄧㄡ | ㄉㄨㄟ | ㄉㄨㄣ | ㄊㄜ | ㄋㄩ | ㄌㄩ | ㄍㄜ | ㄎㄜ | ㄏㄜ |
example | 玻 | 婆 | 末 | 封 | 丟 | 兌 | 頓 | 特 | 女 | 旅 | 歌 | 可 | 何 |
IPA | tɕjɛn | tɕjʊŋ | tɕʰin | ɕɥɛn | ʈʂɤ | ʈʂɨ | ʈʂʰɤ | ʈʂʰɨ | ʂɤ | ʂɨ | ɻɤ | ɻɨ | tsɤ | tswo | tsɨ | tsʰɤ | tsʰɨ | sɤ | sɨ |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Pinyin | jian | jiong | qin | xuan | zhe | zhi | che | chi | she | shi | re | ri | ze | zuo | zi | ce | ci | se | si |
Tongyong Pinyin | jyong | cin | syuan | jhe | jhih | chih | shih | rih | zih | cih | sih | ||||||||
Wade–Giles | chien | chiung | chʻin | shüan | chê | chih | chʻê | chʻih | shê | shih | jê | jih | tsê | tso | tzŭ | tsʻê | tzʻŭ | sê | ssŭ |
Bopomofo | ㄐㄧㄢ | ㄐㄩㄥ | ㄑㄧㄣ | ㄒㄩㄢ | ㄓㄜ | ㄓ | ㄔㄜ | ㄔ | ㄕㄜ | ㄕ | ㄖㄜ | ㄖ | ㄗㄜ | ㄗㄨㄛ | ㄗ | ㄘㄜ | ㄘ | ㄙㄜ | ㄙ |
example | 件 | 窘 | 秦 | 宣 | 哲 | 之 | 扯 | 赤 | 社 | 是 | 惹 | 日 | 仄 | 左 | 字 | 策 | 次 | 色 | 斯 |
IPA | ma˥˥ | ma˧˥ | ma˨˩˦ | ma˥˩ | ma |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Pinyin | mā | má | mǎ | mà | ma |
Tongyong Pinyin | ma | mȧ | |||
Wade–Giles | ma1 | ma2 | ma3 | ma4 | ma |
Bopomofo | ㄇㄚ | ㄇㄚˊ | ㄇㄚˇ | ㄇㄚˋ | ˙ㄇㄚ |
example (Chinese characters) | 媽 | 麻 | 馬 | 罵 | 嗎 |
Based on ISO 7098:2015, Information and Documentation: Chinese Romanization (《信息与文献——中文罗马字母拼写法》), tonal marks for pinyin should use the symbols from Combining Diacritical Marks, as opposed by the use of Spacing Modifier Letters in Bopomofo. Lowercase letters with tone marks are included in GB/T 2312 and their uppercase counterparts are included in JIS X 0212;[56] thus Unicode includes all the common accented characters from pinyin.[57]
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.
Letter | First tone | Second tone | Third tone | Fourth tone | ||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Combining Diacritical Marks | ̄ (U+0304) | ́ (U+0301) | ̌ (U+030C) | ̀ (U+0300) | ||||||||||||
Common letters | ||||||||||||||||
Uppercase | A | Ā (U+0100) | Á (U+00C1) | Ǎ (U+01CD) | À (U+00C0) | |||||||||||
E | Ē (U+0112) | É (U+00C9) | Ě (U+011A) | È (U+00C8) | ||||||||||||
I | Ī (U+012A) | Í (U+00CD) | Ǐ (U+01CF) | Ì (U+00CC) | ||||||||||||
O | Ō (U+014C) | Ó (U+00D3) | Ǒ (U+01D1) | Ò (U+00D2) | ||||||||||||
U | Ū (U+016A) | Ú (U+00DA) | Ǔ (U+01D3) | Ù (U+00D9) | ||||||||||||
Ü (U+00DC) | Ǖ (U+01D5) | Ǘ (U+01D7) | Ǚ (U+01D9) | Ǜ (U+01DB) | ||||||||||||
Lowercase | a | ā (U+0101) | á (U+00E1) | ǎ (U+01CE) | à (U+00E0) | |||||||||||
e | ē (U+0113) | é (U+00E9) | ě (U+011B) | è (U+00E8) | ||||||||||||
i | ī (U+012B) | í (U+00ED) | ǐ (U+01D0) | ì (U+00EC) | ||||||||||||
o | ō (U+014D) | ó (U+00F3) | ǒ (U+01D2) | ò (U+00F2) | ||||||||||||
u | ū (U+016B) | ú (U+00FA) | ǔ (U+01D4) | ù (U+00F9) | ||||||||||||
ü (U+00FC) | ǖ (U+01D6) | ǘ (U+01D8) | ǚ (U+01DA) | ǜ (U+01DC) | ||||||||||||
Rare letters | ||||||||||||||||
Uppercase | Ê (U+00CA) | Ê̄ (U+00CA U+0304) | Ế (U+1EBE) | Ê̌ (U+00CA U+030C) | Ề (U+1EC0) | |||||||||||
M | M̄ (U+004D U+0304) | Ḿ (U+1E3E) | M̌ (U+004D U+030C) | M̀ (U+004D U+0300) | ||||||||||||
N | N̄ (U+004E U+0304) | Ń (U+0143) | Ň (U+0147) | Ǹ (U+01F8) | ||||||||||||
Lowercase | ê (U+00EA) | ê̄ (U+00EA U+0304) | ế (U+1EBF) | ê̌ (U+00EA U+030C) | ề (U+1EC1) | |||||||||||
m | m̄ (U+006D U+0304) | ḿ (U+1E3F) | m̌ (U+006D U+030C) | m̀ (U+006D U+0300) | ||||||||||||
n | n̄ (U+006E U+0304) | ń (U+0144) | ň (U+0148) | ǹ (U+01F9) | ||||||||||||
Notes |
GBK has mapped two characters 'ḿ' and 'ǹ' to Private Use Areas in Unicode as U+E7C7 () and U+E7C8 () respectively,[59] 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',[58] 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.[57]
Uppercase | Lowercase | Note | Example[1] |
---|---|---|---|
Ĉ (U+0108) | ĉ (U+0109) | Abbreviation of ch | 长/長 can be spelled as ĉáŋ |
Ŝ (U+015C) | ŝ (U+015D) | Abbreviation of sh | 伤/傷 can be spelled as ŝāŋ |
Ẑ (U+1E90) | ẑ (U+1E91) | Abbreviation of zh | 张/張 can be spelled as Ẑāŋ |
Ŋ (U+014A) | ŋ (U+014B) | Abbreviation of ng | 让/讓 can be spelled as ràŋ, 嗯 can be spelled as ŋ̀ |
Notes
|
Other symbols that are used in pinyin is as follow:
Symbol in Chinese | Symbol in pinyin | Usage | Example |
---|---|---|---|
。(U+3002) | . (U+002E) | Marks end of sentence. | 你好。 Nǐ hǎo. |
,(U+FF0C)/、 (U+3001) | , (U+002C) | Marks connecting sentence. | 你,好吗? Nǐ, hǎo ma? |
—— (U+2014 U+2014) | — (U+2014) | Indicates breaking of meaning mid-sentence. | 枢纽部分——中央大厅 shūniǔ bùfèn — zhōngyāng dàtīng |
…… (U+2026 U+2026) | … (U+2026) | Used for omitting a word, phrase, line, paragraph, or more from a quoted passage. | 我…… Wǒ… |
· (U+00B7) | Marks for the neutral tone, can be placed before the neutral-tone syllable. | 吗 ·ma | |
- (U+002D) | Hyphenation between abbreviated compounds. | 公关 gōng-guān | |
' (U+0027) | Indicates separate syllables. | 西安 Xī'ān (compared to 先 xiān) |
Other punctuation mark and symbols in Chinese are to use the equivalent symbol in English noted in to GB/T 15834.
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.[57] 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.
Alphabet | Single-storey representation | Notes |
---|---|---|
a | ɑ (U+0251) | IPA /ɑ/ |
α (U+03B1) | Greek alpha, not suggested | |
g | ɡ (U+0261) | IPA /ɡ/ |
Pinyin superseded older romanization systems such as Wade–Giles (1859; modified 1892) and postal romanization, and replaced zhuyin as the method of Chinese phonetic instruction in mainland China. The ISO adopted pinyin as the standard romanization for modern Chinese in 1982 (ISO 7098:1982, superseded by ISO 7098:2015). The United Nations followed suit in 1986.[3][60] It has also been accepted by the government of Singapore, the United States's Library of Congress, the American Library Association, and many other international institutions.[61][failed verification]
The spelling of Chinese geographical or personal names in pinyin has become the most common way to transcribe them in English. Pinyin has also become the dominant method for entering Chinese text into computers in Mainland China, in contrast to Taiwan; where Bopomofo is most commonly used.
Families outside of Taiwan who speak Mandarin as a mother tongue use pinyin to help children associate characters with spoken words which they already know. Chinese families outside of Taiwan who speak some other language as their mother tongue use the system to teach children Mandarin pronunciation when they learn vocabulary in elementary school.[62][63]
Since 1958, pinyin has been actively used in adult education as well, making it easier for formerly illiterate people to continue with self-study after a short period of pinyin literacy instruction.[64]
Pinyin has become a tool for many foreigners to learn Mandarin pronunciation, and is used to explain both the grammar and spoken Mandarin coupled with Chinese characters (汉字; 漢字; Hànzì). Books containing both Chinese characters and pinyin are often used by foreign learners of Chinese. Pinyin's role in teaching pronunciation to foreigners and children is similar in some respects to furigana-based books (with hiragana letters written above or next to kanji, directly analogous to zhuyin) in Japanese or fully vocalised texts in Arabic ("vocalised Arabic").
The tone-marking diacritics are commonly omitted in popular news stories and even in scholarly works, as well as in the traditional Mainland Chinese Braille system, which is similar to pinyin, but meant for blind readers.[65] This results in some degree of ambiguity as to which words are being represented.
Simple computer systems, able to display only 7-bit ASCII text (essentially the 26 Latin letters, 10 digits, and punctuation marks), long provided a convincing argument for using unaccented pinyin instead of Chinese characters. Today, however, most computer systems are able to display characters from Chinese and many other writing systems as well, and have them entered with a Latin keyboard using an input method editor. Alternatively, some PDAs, tablet computers, and digitizing tablets allow users to input characters graphically by writing with a stylus, with concurrent online handwriting recognition.
Pinyin with accents can be entered with the use of special keyboard layouts or various character map utilities. X keyboard extension includes a "Hanyu Pinyin (altgr)" layout for AltGr-triggered dead key input of accented characters.[66]
Main article: Pinyin alphabetical order |
Chinese characters and words can be sorted for convenient lookup by their Pinyin expressions alphabetically, for example, 汉字拼音排序法 (Pinyin sorting method of Chinese characters) is sorted into "法(fǎ)汉(hàn)排(pái)拼(pīn)序(xù)音(yīn)字(zì)", with pinyin in brackets. Pinyin expressions of similar letters are ordered by their tones in the order of "tone 1, tone 2, tone 3, tone 4 and tone 5 (light tone)", such as "妈(mā), 麻(má), 马(mǎ), 骂(mà), 吗(ma)". Characters of the same sound, i.e., same Pinyin letters and tones, are normally arranged by stroke-based sorting.
Words of multiple characters can be sorted in two different ways.[67] One is to sort character by characters, if the first characters are the same, then sort by the second character, and so on. For example, 归并(guībìng),归还(guīhuán),规划(guīhuà),鬼话(guǐhuà),桂花(guìhuā). This method is used in Xiandai Hanyu Cidian. Another method is to sort according to the pinyin letters of the whole words, followed by sorting on tones when word letters are the same. For example, 归并(guībìng),规划(guīhuà),鬼话(guǐhuà),桂花(guìhuā),归还(guīhuán). This method is used in the ABC Chinese–English Dictionary.
Pinyin-based sorting is very convenient for looking up words whose pronunciations are known, but not words whose pronunciations the looker does not know.[citation needed]
See also: Chinese language romanization in Taiwan |
Taiwan (Republic of China) adopted Tongyong Pinyin, a modification of Hanyu Pinyin, as the official romanization system on the national level between October 2002 and January 2009, when it decided to promote Hanyu Pinyin. Tongyong Pinyin ("common phonetic"), a romanization system developed in Taiwan, was designed to romanize languages and dialects spoken on the island in addition to Mandarin Chinese. The Kuomintang (KMT) party resisted its adoption, preferring the Hanyu Pinyin system used in mainland China and in general use internationally. Romanization preferences quickly became associated with issues of national identity. Preferences split along party lines: the KMT and its affiliated parties in the pan-blue coalition supported the use of Hanyu Pinyin while the Democratic Progressive Party and its affiliated parties in the pan-green coalition favored the use of Tongyong Pinyin.
Tongyong Pinyin was made the official system in an administrative order that allowed its adoption by local governments to be voluntary. Locales in Kaohsiung, Tainan and other areas use romanizations derived from Tongyong Pinyin for some district and street names. A few localities with governments controlled by the KMT, most notably Taipei, Hsinchu, and Kinmen County, overrode the order and converted to Hanyu Pinyin before the January 1, 2009 national-level decision,[6][7] 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,[68][69] but some, especially in northern Taiwan, display Hanyu Pinyin-derived romanizations. It is not unusual to see spellings on street signs and buildings derived from the older Wade–Giles, MPS2 and other systems.
Attempts to make pinyin standard in Taiwan have had uneven success, with most place and proper names remaining unaffected, including all major cities. Personal names on Taiwanese passports honor the choices of Taiwanese citizens, who can choose Wade-Giles, Hakka, Hoklo, Tongyong, aboriginal, or pinyin.[70] 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."[71]
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.[72] Hanyu Pinyin is also used as the romanization system to teach Mandarin Chinese at schools.[73] 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.[72] 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).
See also: SASM/GNC romanization, Tibetan pinyin, and Guangdong Romanization |
Pinyin-like systems have been devised for other variants of Chinese. Guangdong Romanization is a set of romanizations devised by the government of Guangdong province for Cantonese, Teochew, Hakka (Moiyen dialect), and Hainanese. All of these are designed to use Latin letters in a similar way to pinyin.
In addition, in accordance to the Regulation of Phonetic Transcription in Hanyu Pinyin Letters of Place Names in Minority Nationality Languages (少数民族语地名汉语拼音字母音译转写法; 少數民族語地名漢語拼音字母音譯寫法) promulgated in 1976, place names in non-Han languages like Mongolian, Uyghur, and Tibetan are also officially transcribed using pinyin in a system adopted by the State Administration of Surveying and Mapping and Geographical Names Committee known as SASM/GNC romanization. The pinyin letters (26 Roman letters, plus ü and ê) are used to approximate the non-Han language in question as closely as possible. This results in spellings that are different from both the customary spelling of the place name, and the pinyin spelling of the name in Chinese:
Customary | Official (pinyin for local name) | Traditional Chinese name | Simplified Chinese name | Pinyin for Chinese name |
---|---|---|---|---|
Shigatse | Xigazê | 日喀則 | 日喀则 | Rìkāzé |
Urumchi | Ürümqi | 烏魯木齊 | 乌鲁木齐 | Wūlǔmùqí |
Lhasa | Lhasa | 拉薩 | 拉萨 | Lāsà |
Hohhot | Hohhot | 呼和浩特 | 呼和浩特 | Hūhéhàotè |
Golmud | Golmud | 格爾木 | 格尔木 | Gé'ěrmù |
Qiqihar | Qiqihar | 齊齊哈爾 | 齐齐哈尔 | Qíqíhā'ěr |
Tongyong Pinyin was developed in Taiwan for use in rendering not only Mandarin Chinese, but other languages and dialects spoken on the island such as Taiwanese, Hakka, and aboriginal languages.