The Hanyu Pinyin system uses a series of consonants and vowels to spell out the Mandarin pronunciation of a Chinese character.
While pinyin may be the main phonetic system used to transcribe mandarin, there are other romanisation systems too.
Bopomofo, or Zhuyin Fuhao, concentrates on sounds, unlike pinyin which concentrates on the romanisation spelling and is the predominant phonetic system used in Taiwan to teach, read and writing in elementary school.
However, due to this brilliant Hanyu Pinyin system to romanise the Chinese characters phonetically, it has made learning Chinese so much simpler with English alphabets that are familiar to many of non-Chinese speakers.
The Hanyu Pinyin system was created by the Chinese linguists during the 1950s and Zhou You Guang, also known as the “Father of Pinyin”, who passed away in 2017 (Age: 111) was commanded to head the committee to reform the Chinese language to increase literacy.
Do you know that the Hanyu Pinyin system was only officially adopted by the government of the People’s Republic of China in 1958?
Interested to learn the Hanyu Pinyin system and send text in Mandarin to your friends? Come and join our Chinese Inputs class.