Pinyin

Pinyin (??, p?ny?n) literally means "join (together) sounds" (a less literal translation being "phoneticize", "spell" or "transcription") in Chinese and usually refers to Hàny? P?ny?n (????, literal meaning: "Han language pinyin"), which is a system of romanization (phonemic notation and transcription to Roman script) for Standard Mandarin. Pinyin was approved in 1958 and adopted in 1979 by the government in the People's Republic of China. It superseded older transcriptions like the Wade-Giles system (1859; modified 1912) or Bopomofo. Similar systems have been designed for other Chinese spoken variants and non-Han minority languages in the PRC.

Miscellanea

An umlaut is placed over the letter u when it occurs after the initials l and n in order to represent the sound . This is necessary in order to distinguish the front high rounded vowel in lü (e.g. ?/? donkey) from the back high rounded vowel in lu (e.g. ?/? oven). Tonal markers are added on top of the umlaut, as in l?.

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However, the umlaut-u is not used in other contexts where it represents a front high rounded vowel, namely after the letters j, q, x and y. For example, the sound of the word ?/? (fish) is transcribed in pinyin simply as yú, not as y?. 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 diacritic.

Related Topics:
Wade-Giles - Tongyong Pinyin

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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. Occasionally, uu (double u) or U (capital u) is used in its place.

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See also:

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• Postal System Pinyin (unrelated)
• Combining diacritic marks Unicode #U0300