Hanyu Pinyin, or simply pinyin, is the most common romanization system for Standard Chinese. In official documents, it is referred to as the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet. Hanyu literally means 'Han language'—that is, the Chinese language—while pinyin literally means 'spelled sounds'. Pinyin is the official system used in China, Singapore, Taiwan, and by the United Nations. Its use has become common when transliterating Standard Chinese mostly regardless of region, though it is less ubiquitous in Taiwan. It is used to teach Standard Chinese, normally written with Chinese characters, to students already familiar with the Latin alphabet. Pinyin is also used by various input methods on computers and to categorize entries in some Chinese dictionaries.
Wade–Giles is a romanization system for Mandarin Chinese. It developed from the system produced by Thomas Francis Wade during the mid-19th century, and was given completed form with Herbert Giles's A Chinese–English Dictionary (1892).
In linguistics, romanization 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 transcription, for representing the spoken word, and combinations of both. Transcription methods can be subdivided into phonemic transcription, which records the phonemes or units of semantic meaning in speech, and more strict phonetic transcription, which records speech sounds with precision.
Tongyong Pinyin was the official romanization of Mandarin in Taiwan between 2002 and 2008. The system was unofficially used between 2000 and 2002, when a new romanization system for Taiwan was being evaluated for adoption. Taiwan's Ministry of Education approved the system in 2002, but its use was optional.
Gwoyeu Romatzyh (GR) is a system for writing Standard Chinese using the Latin alphabet. It was primarily conceived by Yuen Ren Chao (1892–1982), who led a group of linguists on the National Languages Committee in refining the system between 1925 and 1926. In September 1928, it was adopted by the Republic of China as the national romanization system for Standard Chinese. GR indicates the four tones of Standard Chinese by varying the spelling of syllables, a method originally proposed by team member Lin Yutang (1895–1976). Distinct sets of spellings are assigned to syllables in GR according to particular rules. This differs from approaches used by other systems to denote tones, like the numerals used by the earlier Wade–Giles system, or the diacritics used by the later Hanyu Pinyin system.
A tone contour or contour tone is a tone in a tonal language which shifts from one pitch to another over the course of the syllable or word. Tone contours are especially common in East Asia, Southeast Asia, West Africa, Nilo-Saharan languages, Khoisan languages, Oto-Manguean languages and some languages of South America.
Qu Qiubai was a Chinese writer, poet, translator, and a political activist. In the late 1920s and early 1930s he was the de facto leader of the Chinese Communist Party. In 1935, he was arrested and executed by the Republic of China Government led by the Kuomintang in Changting, Fujian.
The SASM/GNC/SRC romanization of Standard Tibetan, commonly known as Tibetan pinyin or ZWPY, is the official transcription system for the Tibetan language in China. It is based on the pronunciation used by China National Radio's Tibetan Radio, which is based on the Lhasa dialect. It has been used within China as an alternative to the Wylie transliteration for writing Tibetan in the Latin script since 1982.
Chang–Du or Chang–Jing, sometimes called Nanchang or Nanchangese after its principal dialect, is one of the Gan Chinese languages. It is named after Nanchang and Duchang County, and is spoken in those areas as well as in Xinjian, Anyi, Yongxiu, De'an, Xingzi, Hukou, and bordering regions in Jiangxi and in Pingjiang County, Hunan.
The Chinese transcription system invented by the French School of the Far East (EFEO) was the most widely used in the French-speaking world until the mid-20th century. While it is often deemed to have been devised by Séraphin Couvreur, who was not an EFEO member, its actual creator was Arnold Vissière (1858–1930). It was superseded by Hanyu Pinyin.
Romanization of Chinese is the use of the Latin alphabet to transliterate Chinese. Chinese uses a logographic script and its characters do not represent phonemes directly. There have been many systems using Roman characters to represent Chinese throughout history. Linguist Daniel Kane wrote, "It used to be said that sinologists had to be like musicians, who might compose in one key and readily transcribe into other keys." The dominant international standard for Standard Mandarin since about 1982 has been Hanyu Pinyin, invented by a group of Chinese linguists, including Zhou Youguang, in the 1950s. Other well-known systems include Wade–Giles and Yale romanization.
The spelling of Gwoyeu Romatzyh (GR) can be divided into its treatment of initials, finals and tones. GR uses contrasting unvoiced/voiced pairs of consonants to represent aspirated and unaspirated initials in Chinese: for example b and p represent IPA [p] and [pʰ]. The letters j, ch and sh represent two different series of initials: the alveolo-palatal and the retroflex sounds. Although these spellings create no ambiguity in practice, readers more familiar with Pinyin should pay particular attention to them: GR ju, for example, corresponds to Pinyin zhu, not ju.
Bopomofo, also called zhuyin or zhuyin fuhao, is a transliteration system for Standard Chinese and other Sinitic languages. It is commonly used in Taiwan. It consists of 37 characters and five tone marks, which together can transcribe all possible sounds in Mandarin Chinese.
The different varieties of Chinese have been transcribed into many other writing systems.
Zhou Youguang, also known as Chou Yu-kuang or Chou Yao-ping, was a Chinese economist, banker, linguist, sinologist, Esperantist, publisher, and supercentenarian. He has been credited as the father of pinyin, the most popular romanization system for Chinese, which was adopted by the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1958, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in 1982, and the United Nations (UN) in 1986.
Sichuanese Pinyin (Si4cuan1hua4 Pin1yin1; simplified Chinese: 四川话拼音; traditional Chinese: 四川話拼音; pinyin: Sìchuānhuà pīnyīn), is a romanization system specifically designed for the Chengdu dialect of Sichuanese. It is mostly used in selected Sichuanese dictionaries, such as the Sichuan Dialect Dictionary, Sichuan Dialect's Vocabulary Explanation, and the Chengdu Dialect Dictionary. Sichuanese Pinyin is based on Hanyu Pinyin, the only Chinese romanization system officially instructed within the People's Republic of China, for convenience amongst users. However, Hanyu Pinyin is unable to match the phonology of Sichuanese with complete precision, especially in the case for the Minjiang dialect, as there are many differences between Sichuanese and Standard Chinese in phonology.
Standard Zhuang is the official standardized form of the Zhuang languages, which are a branch of the Northern Tai languages. Its pronunciation is based on that of the Yongbei Zhuang dialect of Shuangqiao Town in Wuming District, Guangxi with some influence from Fuliang, also in Wuming District, while its vocabulary is based mainly on northern dialects. The official standard covers both spoken and written Zhuang. It is the national standard of the Zhuang languages, though in Yunnan a local standard is used.
The Yale romanization of Mandarin is a system for transcribing the sounds of Standard Chinese, based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. It was devised in 1943 by the Yale sinologist George Kennedy for a course teaching Chinese to American soldiers, and was popularized by continued development of that course at Yale. The system approximated Chinese sounds using English spelling conventions, in order to accelerate acquisition of correct pronunciation by English speakers.
The ABC Chinese–English Dictionary or ABC Dictionary (1996), compiled under the chief editorship of John DeFrancis, is the first Chinese dictionary to collate entries in single-sort alphabetical order of pinyin romanization, and a landmark in the history of Chinese lexicography. It was also the first publication in the University of Hawaiʻi Press's "ABC" series of Chinese dictionaries. They republished the ABC Chinese–English Dictionary in a pocket edition (1999) and desktop reference edition (2000), as well as the expanded ABC Chinese–English Comprehensive Dictionary (2003), and dual ABC English–Chinese, Chinese–English Dictionary (2010). Furthermore, the ABC Dictionary databases have been developed into computer applications such as Wenlin Software for learning Chinese (1997).
Wu Chinese has four major schools of romanization.
