Chinese language

Romanization

Romanization is the process of transcribing a language in the Latin alphabet. There are many systems of romanization for the Chinese languages; this is due to the complex history of interaction between China and the West, and to the Chinese languages' lack of phonetic transcription until modern times.

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At present, the most common romanization system for Standard Mandarin is Hanyu Pinyin, also known simply as Pinyin. Pinyin is the official Mandarin romanization system for the People's Republic of China, and has also been adopted as the official Mandarin romanization system used in Singapore. Pinyin is also very commonly used when teaching Mandarin in U.S. schools.

Related Topics:
Hanyu Pinyin - Singapore

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Perhaps the second-most common system of romanization for Mandarin is Wade-Giles. This system was probably the most common system of romanization for Mandarin prior to the development of Hanyu Pinyin. Wade-Giles is often found in academic use in the U.S., and is widely used in Taiwan.

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Here are a few examples of Hanyu Pinyin and Wade-Giles, for comparison:

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Regardless of system, tone transcription is often left out, either due to difficulties of typesetting or propriety for audience. Wade-Giles' extensive use of easily-forgotten apostrophes adds to the confusion. Thus, most Western readers will be much more familiar with Beijing than they will be with Běijīng, and with Taipei than with T'ai2-pei3.

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Regardless of romanization, the words are pronounced the same. Learning a system of romanization requires occasional deviations from the learner's own language, so, for example, Hanyu Pinyin uses "q" for very different values than an English speaker would probably be used to; the sound represented is similar to the English "ch", but is further back. This is unfortunate but unavoidable, as Mandarin (and any language transcribed) will have phonemes different from those of the learner's own.

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There are many other systems of romanization for Mandarin, as well as systems for Cantonese, Minnan, Hakka, and other Chinese languages.

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