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 It superseded older transcriptions like the Wade-Giles system (1859; modified 1912) or Bopomofo.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.

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 letters in a similar way to Pinyin.

Related Topics:
Guangdong Romanization - Guangdong - Cantonese - Teochew - Hakka - Moiyen dialect - Hainanese

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In addition, in accordance to the "Regulation of Phonetic Transcription in Hanyu Pinyin Letters of Place Names in Minority Nationality Languages" (??????????????????? ?) promulgated in 1976, place names in non-Chinese languages like Mongol, Uyghur, and Tibetan are also officially transcribed using Pinyin. The pinyin letters (26 Roman letters, ü, and ê) are used to approximate the non-Chinese 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:

Related Topics:
1976 - Mongol - Uyghur - Tibetan

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