pinyin

=Pinyin=

It is also often used to spell Chinese names in foreign publications and used as an input method to enter Chinese characters (//hanzi//) into computers. The romanization system was developed by a government committee in the People's Republic of China (PRC) and published by the Chinese government in 1958. The International Organization for Standardization adopted pinyin as the international standard in 1982. This romanization system also became the national standard in the Republic of China (ROC, commonly known as Taiwan) on January 1, 2009.
 * Pinyin** (Chinese: 拼音; **pinyin**: //pīnyīn//) is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Republic of China (Taiwan), Malaysia and Singapore to teach Mandarin Chinese.

Name
In Chinese language education, pinyin is the common name to refer to the system. The more official name **Hanyu Pinyin** (汉语拼音 / 漢語拼音) is sometimes used, where ** Hànyǔ ** means the language of Han (putonghua) and pinyin literally means "spelled sound" (phonetics)

History
In 1954, the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China (PRC) created a Committee for the Reform of the Chinese Written Language. This committee developed //Hanyu pinyin// based upon several preexisting systems: //(Gwoyeu Romatzyh// of 1928, //Latinxua Sin Wenz// of 1931, and the diacritic markings from //zhuyin)//. The main force behind pinyin was Zhou Youguang. Zhou was working in a New York bank when he decided to return to China to help rebuild the country after establishment of the PRC in 1949. He became an economics professor in Shanghai and was assigned to help the development of a new romanization system. A first 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 on February 11, 1958. It was then introduced to primary schools as a way to teach Standard Mandarin pronunciation and used to improve the literacy rate among adults. In 2001, the Chinese Government issued the //National Common Language Law//, providing a legal basis for applying pinyin.

Usage
Pinyin superseded older romanization systems such as Wade-Giles (1859; modified 1892) and Chinese Postal Map Romanization, and replaced zhuyin as the method of Chinese phonetic instruction in mainland China. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) adopted pinyin as the standard romanization for modern Chinese in 1982 (ISO 7098:1982, superseded by ISO 7098:1991); the United Nations followed suit in 1986.It has also been accepted by the government of Singapore, the United States' 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 a useful tool for entering Chinese text into computers. Chinese families who speak Mandarin as a mother tongue use pinyin to help children associate characters with spoken words which they already know. Chinese families who speak some other language as their mother tongue use the system to teach children Mandarin pronunciation when they learn vocabulary in elementary school. 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. Pinyin has become a tool for many foreigners to learn the Mandarin pronunciation, and is used to explain the grammar and spoken Mandarin together with //hanzi//. 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) 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. An unfortunate effect of this is the ambiguity that results about which Chinese characters are being represented.

Overview
The correspondence between Roman letter and sound in the system is sometimes idiosyncratic, though not necessarily more so than the way the Roman alphabet is employed in other languages. For example, the aspiration distinction between //b, d, g// and //p, t, k// is similar to that of English (in which the two sets are however also differentiated by voicing), but not to that of French. //Z// and //c// also have that distinction; however, they are pronounced as [ts], as in German and Italian, which do not have that distinction. From //s, z, c// come the digraphs //sh, zh, ch// by analogy with English //sh, ch.// Although this introduces the novel combination //zh,// it is internally consistent in how the two series are related, and reminds the trained reader that many Chinese pronounce //sh, zh, ch// as //s, z, c.// In the //x, j, q// series, the Pinyin use of //x// is similar to its use in Portuguese, Galician, Catalan, Basque and Maltese; and the Pinyin //q// is akin to its value in Albanian; both Pinyin and Albanian pronunciations may sound similar to the //ch// to the untrained ear. Pinyin vowels are pronounced in a similar way to vowels in Romance languages. More information on the pronunciation of all pinyin letters in terms of English approximations is given further below. The pronunciation and spelling of Chinese words are generally given in terms of initials and finals, which represent the //segmental phonemic// portion of the language, rather than letter by letter. Initials are initial consonants, while finals are all possible combinations of medials (semivowels coming before the vowel), the nucleus vowel, and coda (final vowel or consonant).

Initials and finals
Unlike in European languages, initials (simplified Chinese: 声母; traditional Chinese: 聲母; **pinyin**: //shēngmǔ//) and finals (simplified Chinese: 韵母; traditional Chinese: 韻母; **pinyin**: //yùnmǔ//)—and not consonants and vowels—are the fundamental elements in pinyin (and most other phonetic systems used to describe the Han language). Nearly each Mandarin syllable can be spelled with exactly one initial followed by one final, except in the special syllable //er// and when a trailing //-r// is considered part of a syllable (see below). The latter case, though a common practice in some sub-dialects, is rarely used in official publications. One exception is the city Harbin (simplified Chinese: 哈尔滨; traditional Chinese: 哈爾濱), which is from the Manchu language originally. Even though most initials contain a consonant, finals are not simple vowels, especially in compound finals (simplified Chinese: 复韵母; traditional Chinese: 複韻母; **pinyin**: //fuyunmu//), i.e., when one "final" is placed in front of another one. For example, [i] and [u] are pronounced with such tight openings that some native Chinese speakers (especially when singing or on stage) pronounce //yī// (simplified Chinese: 衣; traditional Chinese: 衣, clothes, officially pronounced /i/ ) as /ji/, //wéi// (simplified Chinese: 围; traditional Chinese: 圍, to enclose, officially as /uei/ ) as /wei/ or /wuei/. The concepts of consonant and vowel are not incorporated in pinyin or its predecessors; there is no list of consonants or vowels.

Initials
In each cell below, the first line indicates the IPA, the second indicates pinyin. b ||= [pʰ] p ||  ||= [t] d ||= [tʰ] t ||||  ||||   ||   ||= [k] g ||= [kʰ] k || m ||  ||||= [n] n ||||  ||||   ||   ||||   || l ||||  ||||   ||   ||||   || z ||= [tsʰ] c ||= [tʂ] zh ||= [tʂʰ] ch ||= [tɕ] j ||= [tɕʰ] q ||  ||||   || f ||||= [s] s ||= [ʂ] sh ||= [ʐ] 1 r ||||= [ɕ] x ||  ||||= [x] h || r ||||  ||= [j] 2 or [ɥ] 3 y ||||= [w] 2 w || 1 /ɻ/ may phonetically be [ʐ] (a voiced retroflex fricative). This pronunciation varies among different speakers, and is not two different phonemes. 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. 3 "y" is pronounced [ɥ] (a labial-palatal approximant) before "u". The conventional order (excluding //w// and //y//), derived from the zhuyin system, is:
 * ||||~ Bilabial ||~ Labio-dental ||||~ Alveolar ||||~ Retroflex ||||~ Alveolo-palatal ||~ Palatal ||||~ Velar ||
 * ~ Plosive ||= [p]
 * ~ Nasal ||||= [m]
 * ~ Lateral approximant ||||  ||   ||||= [l]
 * ~ Affricate ||||  ||   ||= [ts]
 * ~ Fricative ||||  ||= [f]
 * ~ Approximant ||||  ||   ||||   ||||= [ɻ] 1
 * b p m f || d t n l || g k h || j q x || zh ch sh r || z c s ||

Finals
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 The only syllable-final consonants in standard Mandarin are //-n// and //-ng//, and //-r//, which is attached as a grammatical suffix. Chinese syllables ending with any other consonant is either from a non-Mandarin language (southern Chinese languages such as Cantonese, or minority languages of China), or it indicates the use of a non-pinyin Romanization system (where final consonants may be used to indicate tones). a -a || [i̯a] ya -ia || [u̯a] wa -ua ||  || ai -ai ||  || [u̯aɪ̯] wai -uai ||  || ao -ao || [i̯ɑʊ̯] yao -iao ||  ||   || an -an || [i̯ɛn] yan -ian || [u̯an] wan -uan || [y̯ɛn] yuan -üan 2 || ang -ang || [i̯ɑŋ] yang -iang || [u̯ɑŋ] wang -uang ||  || e -e || [i̯ɛ] ye -ie || [u̯ɔ] wo -uo/-o 3 || [y̯œ] yue -üe 2 || ei -ei ||  || [u̯eɪ̯] wei -ui ||  || ou -ou || [i̯oʊ̯] you -iu ||  ||   || en -en || [in] yin -in || [u̯ən] wen -un || [yn] yun -ün 2 || eng -eng || [iŋ] ying -ing || [u̯əŋ], [ʊŋ] 4 weng -ong || [i̯ʊŋ] yong -iong ||
 * ~ Final ||||||||~ Medial ||
 * ~ Nucleus ||~ Coda || Ø || i || u || y ||
 * a || Ø || [ɑ]
 * ^  || i || [aɪ̯]
 * ^  || u || [ɑʊ̯]
 * ^  || n || [an]
 * ^  || ŋ || [ɑŋ]
 * ə || Ø || [ɤ]
 * ^  || i || [eɪ̯]
 * ^  || u || [oʊ̯]
 * ^  || n || [ən]
 * ^  || ŋ || [əŋ]
 * Ø || [ɨ]

-i || [i] yi -i || [u] wu -u || [y] yu -ü 2 || 1 [ɑɻ] (而, 二, etc.) is written //er//. 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 Standard Mandarin. 2 "ü" is written as "u" after j, q, x, or y. 3 "uo" is written as "o" after b, p, m, or f. 4 It is pronounced [ʊŋ] when it follows an initial, and pinyin reflects this difference. 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,