Pinyin

Pinyin, or Hanyu Pinyin, is the official phonetic system for transcribing the Mandarin pronunciations of Chinese characters into the Latin alphabet in the People's Republic of China, Taiwan (Republic of China), and Singapore. It is often used to teach Standard Chinese and a pinyin without diacritic markers is often used in foreign publications to spell Chinese names familiar to non-Chinese and may be used as an input method to enter Chinese characters into computers.

The Hanyu Pinyin system was developed in the 1950s based on earlier forms of romanization. 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 in 1982. The system was adopted as the official standard in Taiwan in 2009, where it is used for romanization alone rather than for educational and computer input purposes.

The word HànyÇ" (simplified Chinese: 汉语; traditional Chinese: 漢語) means the spoken language of the Han people and pÄ«nyÄ«n (Chinese: 拼音) literally means "spelled-out sounds".

History before 1949

In 1605, the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci published Xizi Qiji (《西字奇蹟》; XÄ«zì QíjÄ«; Hsi-tzu Ch'i-chi; "Miracle of Western Letters") 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 Xi Ru Ermu Zi (《西å„'耳目資》; Hsi Ju Erh-mu Tzu; "Aid to the Eyes and Ears of Western Literati") 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 (方以智; Fāng Yǐzhì; Fang I-chih; 1611â€"1671).

The first late Qing reformer to propose that China adopt a system of spelling was Song Shu (1862â€"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. 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.

In the early 1930s, Communist Party of China leaders trained in Moscow introduced a phonetic alphabet using Roman letters which had been developed in the Soviet Oriental Institute of Leningrad and originally intended to improve literacy in the Russian Far East. This Sin Wenz or "New Writing" was much more linguistically sophisticated than earlier alphabets, with the major exception that it did not indicate tones.

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 (including Lincoln, Franklin, Edison, Ford, and Charlie Chaplin), 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 characters. Opposition arose, however, because the system was less well adapted to writing regional languages, and therefore would require learning Mandarin. Sin Wenzi fell into relative disuse during the following years.

History after 1949

Pinyin was developed as part of a Chinese government project in the 1950s. One of the prominent figures was Zhou Youguang, who is often called "the father of pinyin", as he led a government committee in developing the romanization system. Zhou was working in a New York bank when he decided to return to China to help rebuild the country after the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949. Zhou became an economics professor in Shanghai, and in 1954, when China's Ministry of Education created a Committee for the Reform of the Chinese Written Language, Zhou was assigned the task of helping to develop a new romanization system.

Hanyu Pinyin was based on several preexisting systems: (Gwoyeu Romatzyh of 1928, Latinxua Sin Wenz of 1931, and the diacritic markings from zhuyin). "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."

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 Chinese pronunciation and used to improve the literacy rate among adults.

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.

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 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 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.

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 both the grammar and spoken Mandarin coupled with Chinese characters (汉字; 漢字; 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. This results in some degree of ambiguity as to which words are being represented.

Overview

When a foreign writing system with one set of sounds and coding/decoding system 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/decoding system 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, q, x, z, c, s, zh, ch, sh, and r exhibiting the greatest discrepancies. (When Chinese speakers call out these letters, they read them as: ji, qi, xi, zi, ci, si, zhi, chi, shi, and ri. The i in the last four sounds more like r and the use of i is purely a matter of convention.)

In this system, the correspondence between the Roman letter 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 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, pronounced as [ts] and [tsÊ°]. 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 (and English-speakers use zh to represent /Ê'/ in foreign languages such as Russian anyway). 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.

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 European languages, clusters of letters â€" initials (声母; 聲母; shÄ"ngmÇ") and finals (韵母; 韻母; yùnmÇ") â€" 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). The latter case, though a common practice in some sub-dialects, is rarely used in official publications. One exception is the city Harbin (å"ˆå°"滨; å"ˆçˆ¾æ¿±), whose name comes from the Manchu language.

Even though most initials contain a consonant, finals are not always simple vowels, especially in compound finals (复韵母; 複韻母; fùyùnmÇ"), 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 yÄ« (è¡£, clothes, officially pronounced /í/) as /jí/ and wéi (å›´; 圍, to enclose, officially pronounced /uÄ›i/) as /wÄ›i/ or /wuÄ›i/. 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.

¹ r may phonetically be [ʐ] (a voiced retroflex fricative) or [É»] (a retroflex approximant). This pronunciation varies among different speakers, and is not two different phonemes.
² y is pronounced [É¥] (a labial-palatal approximant) before u.
³ 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 order (excluding w and y), derived from the zhuyin system, is:

Finals

The following chart gives the combinations of medials and finals based on an analysis that assumes just two vowel nuclei, /a/ and /É™/; various allophones result depending on phonetic context.

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 Chinese are -n and -ng, and -r, 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, or a minority language of China), or indicates the use of a non-pinyin romanization system (where final consonants may be used to indicate tones).

¹ [É'É»] 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 Erhua#Rules.
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 weng is pronounced [ÊŠÅ‹] (written as ong) when it follows an initial.

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 [É›] (欸; èª') and syllabic nasals m (å'', å'£), n (å—¯, å""), ng (å—¯, ð ®¾) are used as interjections.

Rules given in terms of English pronunciation

All 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: [É•i.an]) vs. xian (one syllable: [É•i̯ɛn]). 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 wordsâ€"that is, yi [i] or [ji], wu [u] or [wu], yu [y] or [É¥y],â€"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 â†' C+un, wei â†' C+ui, weng â†' C+ong, and you â†' C+iu.

** Note on the apostrophe

The apostrophe (') is used before a syllable starting with a vowel (a, o, or e) in a multiple-syllable word when the syllable does not start the word (which is most commonly realized as [ɰ]), unless the syllable immediately follows a hyphen or other dash. This is done to remove ambiguity that could arise, as in Xi'an, which consists of the two syllables xi ("西") an ("安"), compared to such words as xian ("先"). (This ambiguity does not occur when tone marks are used: The two tone marks in Xīān unambiguously show that the word consists of two syllables. However, even with tone marks, the city is usually spelled with an apostrophe as Xī'ān.)

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:

1. Remove the initial consonant. Zh, ch, and sh count as initial consonants.
2. Change initial w to u and initial y to i. For weng, wen, wei, you, look under ong, un, ui, iu.
3. For u after j, q, x, or y, look under ü.

Orthography

Letters

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).
• ü is written as u when there is no ambiguity (such as ju, qu, and xu), but written as ü when there are corresponding u syllables (such as lü and nü). In such situations where there are corresponding u syllables, it is often replaced with v on a computer, making it easier to type on a standard keyboard.
• When preceded by a consonant, iou, uei, and uen are simplified as iu, ui, and un (which do not represent the actual pronunciation).
• As in zhuyin, what are actually pronounced as buo, puo, muo, and fuo are given a separate representation: bo, po, mo, and fo.
• The apostrophe (') is used before a syllable starting with a vowel (a, o, or e) in a multiple-syllable word when the syllable does not start the word (which is most commonly realized as [É°]), unless the syllable immediately follows a hyphen or other dash. This is done to remove ambiguity that could arise, as in Xi'an, which consists of the two syllables xi ("西") an ("安"), compared to such words as xian ("å…ˆ"). (This ambiguity does not occur when tone marks are used: The two tone marks in "Xīān" unambiguously show that the word consists of two syllables. However, even with tone marks, the city is usually spelled with an apostrophe as "XÄ«'ān".)
• Eh alone is written as ê; elsewhere as e. Schwa is always written as e.
• zh, ch, and sh can be abbreviated as áº', 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.
• ng has the uncommon shorthand of Å‹.
• 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, sometimes, for ease of typing into a computer, the v is used to replace a ü.

Most of the above are used to avoid ambiguity when writing words of more than one syllable in pinyin. For example uenian is written as wenyan because it is not clear which syllables make up uenian; uen-ian, uen-i-an and u-en-i-an are all possible combinations whereas wenyan is unambiguous because we, nya, etc. do not exist in pinyin. See the pinyin table article for a summary of possible pinyin syllables (not including tones).

Word formation, capitalization, initialisms and punctuation

Although Chinese characters represent single syllables, Mandarin Chinese is a polysyllabic language. Spacing in pinyin is based on whole words, not 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; HànyÇ" PÄ«nyÄ«n ZhèngcífÇŽ JÄ«bÄ›n GuÄ«zé) were put into effect in 1988 by the National Educational Commission (国家教育å§"å'˜ä¼š; 國家教育å§"å"¡æœƒ; Guójiā Jiàoyù WÄ›iyuánhuì) and the National Language Commission (国家语言文字工作å§"å'˜ä¼š; 國家語言文字工作å§"å"¡æœƒ; Guójiā YÇ"yán Wénzì Gōngzuò WÄ›iyuánhuì). These rules became a Guobiao standard in 1996 and were updated in 2012.

1. General
   1. 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 (人, person); péngyou (朋友, friend); qiǎokèlì (巧克力, chocolate)
   2. Combined meaning (2 or 3 characters): Same goes for words combined of two words to one meaning: hÇŽifÄ"ng (海风; 海風, sea breeze); wèndá (é—®ç­"; 問ç­", question and answer); quánguó (全国; 全國, nationwide); chángyòngcí (常ç"¨è¯; 常ç"¨è©ž)
   3. 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 gāngguÇŽn (无缝é'¢ç®¡; 無縫鋼管, seamless steel-tube); huánjìng bÇŽohù guÄ«huà (环境保护规åˆ'; ç'°å¢ƒä¿è­·è¦åŠƒ, environmental protection planning); gāomÄ›ngsuānjiÇŽ (高é"°é…¸é'¾; 高錳酸鉀, potassium permanganate)
2. Duplicated words
   1. AA: Duplicated characters (AA) are written together: rénrén (人人, everybody), kànkan (看看, to have a look), niánnián (年年, every year)
   2. ABAB: Two characters duplicated (ABAB) are written separated: yánjiÅ« yánjiÅ« (ç "究ç "究, to study, to research), xuÄ›bái xuÄ›bái (雪白雪白, white as snow)
   3. AABB: Characters in the AABB schema are written together: láiláiwǎngwǎng (来来往往; 來來往往, come and go), qiānqiānwànwàn (千千万万; 千千萬萬, numerous)
3. Prefixes (前附成分; qiánfù chéngfèn) and Suffixes (后附成分; 後附成分; hòufù chéngfèn): Words accompanied by prefixes such as fù (副, vice), zÇ'ng (总; 總, chief), fÄ"i (非, non-), fÇŽn (反, anti-), chāo (超, ultra-), lÇŽo (老, old), ā (阿, used before names to indicate familiarity), kÄ› (可, -able), wú (æ— ; ç„¡, -less) and bàn (半, semi-) and suffixes such as zi (子, noun suffix), r (å„¿; å…', diminutive suffix), tou (头; é ­, noun suffix), xìng (性, -ness, -ity), zhÄ› (者, -er, -ist), yuán (å'˜; å"¡, person), jiā (家, -er, -ist), shÇ'u (手, person skilled in a field), huà (化, -ize) and men (们; å€', plural marker) are written together: fùbùzhÇŽng (副部长; 副部長, vice minister), chéngwùyuán (乘务å'˜; 乘務å"¡, conductor), háizimen (孩子们; 孩子å€', children)
4. Nouns and names (名词; 名詞; míngcí)
   1. Words of position are separated: mén wài (门外; 門外, outdoor), hé li (河里; 河裏, under the river), huÇ'chÄ" shàngmian (火车上面; 火車上面, on the train), Huáng Hé yǐnán (黄河以南; 黃河以南, south of the Yellow River)
      1. Exceptions are words traditionally connected: tiānshang (天上, in the sky or outerspace), dìxia (地下, on the ground), kōngzhōng (空中, in the air), hǎiwài (海外, overseas)
   2. Surnames are separated from the given names, each capitalized: Lǐ Huá (李华; 李華), Zhāng Sān (张三; 張三). If the surname and/or given name consists of two syllables, it should be written as one: ZhÅ«gÄ› KÇ'ngmíng (诸è'›å­"明; 諸è'›å­"明).
   3. Titles following the name are separated and are not capitalized: Wáng bùzhÇŽng (王部长; 王部長, Minister Wang), Lǐ xiānsheng (李先ç"Ÿ, Mr. Li), Tián zhÇ"rèn (ç"°ä¸»ä»», Director Tian), Zhào tóngzhì (赵同志; 趙同志, Comrade Zhao).
   4. The forms of addressing people with suffixes such as LÇŽo (老), XiÇŽo (小), Dà (大) and Ä€ (阿) are capitalized: XiÇŽo Liú (小刘; 小劉, [young] Ms./Mr. Liu), Dà Lǐ (大李, [great; elder] Mr. Li), Ä€ Sān (阿三, Ah San), LÇŽo Qián (老é'±; 老錢, [senior] Mr. Qian), LÇŽo Wú (老吴; 老吳, [senior] Mr. Wu)
      1. Exceptions are: KÇ'ngzǐ (å­"子, Confucius), Bāogōng (包公, Judge Bao), XÄ«shÄ« (西施, Xishi), MèngchángjÅ«n (孟尝君; 孟嘗君, Lord Mengchang), among others
   5. Geographical names of China: Běijīng Shì (北京市, city of Beijing), Héběi Shěng (河北省, province of Hebei), Yālù Jiāng (鸭绿江; 鴨綠江, Yalu River), Tài Shān (泰山, Mount Tai), Dòngtíng Hú (洞庭湖, Dongting Lake), Táiwān Hǎixiá (台湾海峡; 臺灣海峽, Taiwan Strait)
      1. Monosyllabic prefixes and suffixes are written together with their related part: Dōngsì Shítiáo (东四十条; 東四十條, Dongsi 10th Alley)
      2. Common geographical nouns that have become part of proper nouns are written together: HÄ"ilóngjiāng (é»'龙江; é»'龍江, Heilongjiang)
   6. Chinese names of Non-Chinese names are written in Hanyu Pinyin: Āpèi Āwàngjìnměi (阿沛·阿旺晋美; 阿沛·阿旺晉美, Ngapoi Ngawang Jigme); Dōngjīng (东京; 東京, Tokyo)
5. Verbs (动词; å‹•è©ž; dòngcí): Verbs and their suffixes -zhe (着; è'—), -le (了) or -guo ((过; 過) are written as one: kànzhe (看着; 看è'—, seeing), jìnxíngguo (进行过; 進行過, have been implemented). Le as it appears in the end of a sentence is separated though: HuÇ'chÄ" dào le. (火车到了; 火車到了, The train [has] arrived).
   1. Verbs and their objects are separated: kàn xìn (看信, read a letter), chÄ« yú (吃鱼; 吃魚, eat fish), kāi wánxiào (开玩ç¬'; 開玩ç¬', to be kidding).
   2. If verbs and their complements are each monosyllabic, they are written together; if not, they are separated: gÇŽohuài (搞坏; 搞壞, to make broken), dÇŽsǐ (æ‰"æ­», hit to death), huàwéi (化为; 化為, to become), zhÄ›nglǐ hÇŽo (整理好, to sort out), gÇŽixiÄ› wéi (æ"¹å†™ä¸º; æ"¹å¯«ç‚º, to rewrite as)
6. Adjectives (形容词; 形容詞; xíngróngcí): A monosyllabic adjective and its reduplication are written as one: mÄ"ngmÄ"ngliàng (矇矇亮, dim), liàngtángtáng (亮堂堂, shining bright)
   1. Complements of size or degree such as xiÄ" (些), yÄ«xiÄ" (一些), diÇŽnr (点儿; 點å…') and yÄ«diÇŽnr (一点儿; 一點å…') are written separated: dà xiÄ" (大些), a little bigger), kuài yÄ«diÇŽnr (快一点儿; 快一點å…', a bit faster)
7. Pronouns (代词; 代詞; dàicí)
   1. Personal pronouns and interrogative pronouns are separated from other words: WÇ' ài Zhōngguó. (æˆ'爱中国。; æˆ'愛中國。, I love China); Shéi shuō de? (谁说的？; 誰說的？, Who said it?)
   2. The demonstrative pronoun zhè (è¿™; 這, this), nà (é‚£, that) and the question pronoun nÇŽ (å"ª, which) are separated: zhè rén (这人; 這人, this person), nà cì huìyì (那次会议; 那次會議, that meeting), nÇŽ zhāng bàozhǐ (å"ªå¼ æŠ¥çº¸; å"ªå¼µå ±ç´™, which newspaper)
      1. Exceptionâ€"If zhè, nà or nÇŽ are followed by diÇŽnr (点儿; 點å…'), bān (般), biān (è¾¹; é‚Š), shí (æ—¶; 時), huìr (会儿; 會å…'), lǐ (里; 裏), me (么; 麼) or the general classifierge (个; 個), they are written together: nàlǐ (那里; 那裏, there), zhèbiān (这边; 這邊, over here), zhège (这个; 這個, this)
8. Numerals (数词; 數詞; shùcí) and measure words (量词; 量詞; liàngcí)
   1. Numbers and words like gè (各, each), mÄ›i (每, each), mÇ'u (某, any), bÄ›n (本, this), gāi (该; 該, that), wÇ' (æˆ', my, our) and nǐ (ä½ , your) are separated from the measure words following them: liÇŽng ge rén (两个人; 兩個人, two people), gè guó (各国; 各國, every nation), mÄ›i nián (每年, every year), mÇ'u gōngchÇŽng (某工厂; 某工廠, a certain factory), wÇ' xiào (æˆ'æ ¡, our school)
   2. Numbers up to 100 are written as single words: sānshísān (三十三, thirty-three). Above that, the hundreds, thousands, etc. are written as separate words: jiÇ"yì qÄ«wàn èrqiān sānbÇŽi wÇ"shíliù (九亿七万二千三百äº"十六; 九億七萬二千三百äº"十六, nine hundred million, seventy-two thousand, three hundred fifty-six). Arabic numerals are kept as Arabic numerals: 635 fÄ"njÄ« (635 分机; 635 分機, extension 635)
   3. The dì (第) of ordinal numerals is hyphenated: dì-yī (第一, first), dì-356 (第 356, 356th). The chū (初) in front of numbers one to ten is written together with the number: chūshí (初十, tenth day)
   4. Numbers representing month and day are hyphenated: wÇ"-sì (äº"å››, May fourth), yīèr-jiÇ" (一二·九, December ninth)
   5. Words of approximations such as duō (多), lái (来; 來) and jǐ (几; 幾) are separated from numerals and measure words: yībǎi duō gè (一百多个; 一百多個, around a hundred); shí lái wàn gè (十来万个; 十來萬個, around a hundred thousand); jǐ jiā rén (几家人; 幾家人, a few families)
      1. Shíjǐ (十几; 十幾, more than ten) and jǐshí (几十; 幾十, tens) are written together: shíjǐ gè rén (十几个人; 十幾個人, more than ten people); jǐshí (几十根é'¢ç®¡; 幾十根鋼管, tens of steel pipes)
   6. Approximations with numbers or units that are close together are hyphenated: sān-wÇ" tiān (三äº"天, three to five days), qiān-bÇŽi cì (千百次, thousands of times)
9. Other function words (虚词; 虛詞; xūcí) are separated from other words, including:
   1. Adverbs (副词; 副詞; fùcí): hÄ›n hÇŽo (很好, very good), zuì kuài (最快, fastest), fÄ"icháng dà (非常大, extremely big)
   2. Prepositions (介词; 介詞; jiècí): zài qiánmiàn (在前面, in front)
   3. Conjunctions (连词; 連詞; liáncí): nǐ hé wÇ' (ä½ å'Œæˆ', you and I/me), Nǐ lái háishi bù lái? (你来还是不来？; 你來還是不來？, Are you coming or not?)
   4. "Constructive auxiliaries" (ç»"构助词; 結構助詞; jiégòu zhùcí) such as de (çš„/地/å¾—), zhÄ« (之) and suÇ' (所): mànmàn de zou (慢慢地走), go slowly)
      1. A monosyllabic word can also be written together with de (çš„/地/å¾—): wÇ' de shÅ« / wÇ'de shÅ« (æˆ'的书; æˆ'的書, my book)
   5. Modal auxiliaries at the end of a sentence: Nǐ zhÄ«dào ma? (你知é"吗？; 你知é"嗎？, Do you know?), Kuài qù ba! (快去吧！, Go quickly!)
   6. Exclamations and interjections: À! ZhÄ"n mÄ›i! (啊！真美！), Oh, that's so beautiful!)
   7. Onomatopoeia: mó dāo huòhuò (磨刀霍霍, honing a knife), hōnglōng yÄ« shÄ"ng (轰隆一声; 轟隆一聲, rumbling)
10. Capitalization
    1. The first letter of the first word in a sentence is capitalized: Chūntiān lái le. (春天来了。; 春天來了。, Spring has arrived.)
    2. The first letter of each line in a poem is capitalized.
    3. The first letter of a proper noun is capitalized: BeǐjÄ«ng (北京, Beijing), Guójì ShÅ«diàn (国际书店; 國際書店, International Bookstore), Guójiā YÇ"yán Wénzì Gōngzuò WÄ›iyuánhuì (国家语言文字工作å§"å'˜ä¼š; 國家語言文字工作å§"å"¡æœƒ, National Language Commission)
       1. On some occasions, proper nouns can be written in all caps: BÄšIJĪNG, GUÃ"JÃŒ SHŪDIÀN, GUÃ"JIÄ€ YÇ"YÁN WÉNZÃŒ GÅŒNGZUÃ' WÄšIYUÁNHUÃŒ
    4. 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 (佛教, Buddhism), Tángcháo (å"æœ, Tang dynasty), jÄ«ngjù (京剧; 京劇, Beijing opera), chuānxiōng (川芎, Szechuan lovage)
11. Initialisms
    1. Single words are abbreviated by taking the first letter of each character of the word: BeǐjÄ«ng (北京, Beijing) â†' BJ
    2. A group of words are abbreviated by taking the first letter of each word in the group: guójiā biāozhÇ"n (国家标准; 國家標準, Guobiao standard) â†' GB
    3. Initials can also be indicated using full stops: BeǐjÄ«ng â†' B.J., guójiā biāozhÇ"n â†' G.B.
    4. 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 (李华; 李華) â†' Lǐ H. or LǏ H., ZhÅ«gÄ› KÇ'ngmíng (诸è'›å­"明; 諸è'›å­"明) â†' ZhÅ«gÄ› K. M. or ZHŪGÄš K. M.
12. Line Wrapping
    1. Words can only be split by the character:
       guāngmíng (光明, bright) â†' guāng-
       míng, not gu-
       āngmíng
    2. Initials cannot be split:
       Wáng J. G. (王建国; 王建國) â†' Wáng
       J. G., not Wáng J.-
       G.
    3. Apostrophes disappear in line wrapping:
       XÄ«'ān (西安, Xi'an) â†' XÄ«-
       ān, not Xī'-
       ān
    4. When the original word has a hyphen, the hyphen is added at the beginning of the new line:
       chÄ"shuǐ-mÇŽlóng (车水马龙; 車水馬龍, heavy traffic: "carriage, water, horse, dragon") â†' chÄ"shuǐ-
       -mǎlóng
13. Hyphenation: In addition to the situations mentioned above, there are four situations where hyphens are used.
    1. Coordinate and disjunctive compound words, where the two elements are conjoined or opposed, but retain their individual meaning: gōng-jiàn (å¼"ç®­, bow and arrow), kuài-màn (å¿«æ…¢, speed: "fast-slow"), shíqÄ«-bā suì (十七八岁; 十七八歲, 17â€"18 years old), dÇŽ-mà (æ‰"骂; æ‰"ç½µ, beat and scold), YÄ«ng-Hàn (英汉; 英漢, English-Chinese [dictionary]), JÄ«ng-JÄ«n (京津, Beijing-Tianjin), lù-hÇŽi-kōngjÅ«n (陆海空军; 陸海空軍, army-navy-airforce).
    2. Abbreviated compounds (略语; 略語; luèyÇ"): gōnggòng guānxì (公共关系; 公共關係, public relations) â†' gōng-guān (公关; 公關, PR), chángtú diànhuà (é•¿é€"ç"µè¯; é•·é€"電話, long-distance calling) â†' cháng-huà (长话; 長話, LDC).
       Exceptions are made when the abbreviated term has become established as a word in its own right, as in chÅ«zhōng (初中) for chÅ«jí zhōngxué (初级中学; 初級中學, junior high school). Abbreviations of proper-name compounds, however, should always be hyphenated: BÄ›ijÄ«ng Dàxué (北京大学; 北京大學, Peking University) â†' BÄ›i-Dà (北大, PKU).
    3. Four-syllable idioms: fÄ"ngpíng-làngjìng (风平浪静; 風平浪靜), calm and tranquil: "wind calm, waves down"), huÄ«jÄ«n-rútÇ" (挥é‡'如土; 揮é‡'如土, spend money like water: "throw gold like dirt"), zhǐ-bǐ-mò-yàn (纸ç¬"墨砚; 紙筆墨硯, paper-brush-ink-inkstone [four coordinate words]). (The AA-BB reduplication above is an instance of this.)
       1. Other idioms are separated according to the words that make up the idiom: bÄ"i hÄ"iguō (背é»'é"…; 背é»'鍋, to be made a scapegoat: "to carry a black pot"), zhǐ xÇ" zhōuguān fànghuÇ', bù xÇ" bÇŽixìng diÇŽndÄ"ng (只许州官æ"¾ç«ï¼Œä¸è®¸ç™¾å§"点灯; 只許州官æ"¾ç«ï¼Œä¸è¨±ç™¾å§"點燈, 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")
14. Punctuation
    1. The Chinese full stop (。) is changed to a western full stop (.).
    2. The hyphen is a half-width hyphen (-).
    3. Ellipsis can be changed from 6 dots (……) to 3 dots (…).
    4. The enumeration comma (、) is changed to a normal comma (,).
    5. All other punctuation marks are the same as the ones used in normal texts.

Tones

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). 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 and also for the use of a Latin alpha (É') rather than the standard style of the letter (a) found in most fonts. The official rules of Hanyu Pinyin, however, specify no such practice.

1. The first tone (Flat or High Level Tone) is represented by a macron (ˉ) added to the pinyin vowel:

   
   ā (É'Ì„) Ä" Ä« ō Å« Ç– Ä€ Ä' Ī ÅŒ Ū Ç•

2. The second tone (Rising or High-Rising Tone) is denoted by an acute accent (ËŠ):

   
   á (É'́) é í ó ú ǘ Á É Í Ã" Ú Ç—

3. 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 font limitations.

   
   ÇŽ (É'ÌŒ) Ä› ǐ Ç' Ç" Çš Ǎ Äš Ǐ Ç' Ç" Ç™

4. The fourth tone (Falling or High-Falling Tone) is represented by a grave accent (Ë‹):

   
   à (É'Ì€) è ì ò ù Çœ À È ÃŒ Ã' Ù Ç›

5. The fifth tone (Neutral Tone) is represented by a normal vowel without any accent mark:

   
   a (É') e i o u ü A E I O U Ãœ

(In some cases, this is also written with a dot before the syllable; for example, ·ma.)

These tone marks normally are only used in Mandarin textbooks or in foreign learning texts, but they are essential for correct pronunciation of Mandarin syllables, as exemplified by the following classic example of five characters whose pronunciations differ only in their tones:

The words are "mother", "hemp", "horse", "scold" and a question particle, respectively.

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 吗/嗎, an interrogative marker.

Rules for placing the tone mark

Briefly, the tone mark should always be placed by the orderâ€"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 /É™/ (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 â†' -uì) and in -iu (from you: yòu â†' -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:

1. If there is an a or an e, it will take the tone mark.
2. If there is an ou, then the o takes the tone mark.
3. Otherwise, the second vowel takes the tone mark.

Worded differently,

1. 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.
2. Otherwise, the vowels are -iu or -ui, in which case the second vowel takes the tone mark.

If the tone is written over an i, the tittle above the i is omitted, as in yī.

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 begins with i (as in ia) or u (as in ua), which here 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 color scheme was one of the first to be used. It is tone 1 - red, tone 2 - orange, tone 3 - green, tone 4 - blue and neutral tone - black.
• The Unimelb color scheme is tone 1 - blue, tone 2 - green, tone 3 - purple, tone 4 - red, neutral tone - grey
• The Hanping color scheme is tone 1 - blue, tone 2 - green, tone 3 - orange, tone 4 - red, neutral tone - grey.
• The Pleco color scheme is tone 1 - red, tone 2 - green, tone 3 - blue, tone 4 - purple, neutral tone - grey
• The Thomas color scheme is tone 1 - green, tone 2 - blue, tone 3 - red, tone 4 - black, neutral tone - grey

Third tone exceptions

In spoken Chinese, the third tone is often pronounced as a "half third tone," in which the pitch does not rise. Additionally, when two third tones appear consecutively, such as in 你好 (nǐhǎo, hello), the first syllable is pronounced with the second tone. In pinyin, words like "hello" are still written with two third tones (nǐhǎo).

The ü sound

An umlaut is placed over the letter u when it occurs after the initials l and n 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 to use the umlaut to distinguish between chü (pinyin ju) and chu (pinyin zhu), this ambiguity cannot 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 (LÇš), a fairly common surname, particularly compared to the surname 陆 (Lù), 鲁 (LÇ"), 卢 (Lú) and è·¯ (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.

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.

Pinyin 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 switched to Hanyu Pinyin. Tongyong Pinyin ("official phonetic"), a variant of pinyin developed in Taiwan, was designed to romanize languages and dialects spoken on the island in addition to Mandarin Chinese. The Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist 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 Kuomintang 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. A few localities with governments controlled by the Kuomintang (KMT), most notably Taipei, Hsinchu, and Kinmen County, overrode the order and converted to Hanyu Pinyin before the January 1, 2009 national-level switch, though with a slightly different capitalization convention than mainland China. Most areas of Taiwan adopted Tongyong Pinyin, consistent with the national policy. Many street signs in Taiwan today still display Tongyong Pinyin but some, especially in northern Taiwan, display Hanyu Pinyin. It is still not unusual to see spellings on street signs and buildings derived from the older Wade-Giles, MPS2 and other systems.

The adoption of Hanyu Pinyin as the official romanization system in Taiwan does not preclude the official retention of earlier spellings. International familiarity has led to the retention of the spelling Taipei ("Taibei" in pinyin systems) and even to its continuation in the name of New Taipei, a municipality created in 2010. Personal names on Taiwanese passports honor the choices of Taiwanese citizens, who often prefer the Wade-Giles romanization of their personal names. Transition to Hanyu Pinyin in official use is also necessarily gradual. Universities and other government entities retain earlier spellings in long-established names, budget restraints preclude widespread replacement of signage and stationery in every area, and questions remain about the ability of the national government to enforce the standard island-wide. Primary education in Taiwan continues to teach pronunciation using zhuyin (MPS or Mandarin Phonetic Symbols).

Comparison with other orthographies

Pinyin is now used by foreign students learning Chinese as a second language.

Pinyin assigns some Latin letters sound values which are quite different from that 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 is not a specific problem of pinyin, since many languages that use the Latin alphabet natively 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."

Pinyin is purely a representation of the sounds of Mandarin, therefore it lacks the semantic cues that Chinese characters can provide. It is also unsuitable for transcribing some Chinese spoken languages other than Mandarin.

Chart of comparison with other romanizations

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 in favor of pinyin over 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 directly by writing with a stylus.

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), 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 (å°'æ•°æ°'族语地名汉语拼音字母音è¯'转写法; å°'數æ°'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, ü, 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, Hakka and aboriginal languages.