The Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese:汉语拼音, Traditional Chinese:漢語拼音, pinyin: Hànyǔ Pinyin), usually called Pinyin (拼音) is the official phonetic transcription system for Mandarin Chinese. Instead of using Chinese characters (which generally do not give information about pronunciation), letters of the Latin alphabet are used to write Chinese words phonetically. This system helps foreigners learn the pronunciation through textbooks and is also used to enter text in Chinese characters on QWERTY keyboards through specific programs for this (see Chinese input methods for computers).
Summary
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- 1 History
- 2 Use
- 3 How to read
- 4 Tones
- 5 See also
- 6 Sources
History
Pinyin (pinyin) means “spelling by sound”. It is short for Hanyu Pinyin (Han language spelling by sound), and is a transcription system to the Latin alphabet of Mandarin. Pinyin was approved in 1958 and adopted as official by the government of the People’s Republic of China on January 1, 1979. It replaced older Romanization systems, such as the Wade Giles system (created in 1859 and modified in 1912) or the Bopomofo . Pinyin has since been accepted and endorsed by the Library of Congress, the American Library Association, and most institutions as the only transcription system for Mandarin. In 1979, the ISO adopted pinyin as the standard romanization system for Chinese. The Tongyong Pinyin (which literally means “spelling by word for common use”) is a related system to the Hanyu Pinyin, which was created in Taiwan in 1998. The differences are small, since only certain letters change for certain sounds. The pinyin system has a complex system of diacritics to mark the tones, as described below. However, due to their typographic complexity, it is very common to suppress them. In addition, it has some fundamental rules: you can never delete a sign no matter how superfluous it may seem, nor can you join or separate words on a whim. for only certain letters change for certain sounds. The pinyin system has a complex system of diacritics to mark the tones, as described below. However, due to their typographic complexity, it is very common to suppress them. In addition, it has some fundamental rules: you can never delete a sign no matter how superfluous it may seem, nor can you join or separate words on a whim. for only certain letters change for certain sounds. The pinyin system has a complex system of diacritics to mark the tones, as described below. However, due to their typographic complexity, it is very common to suppress them. In addition, it has some fundamental rules: you can never delete a sign no matter how superfluous it may seem, nor can you join or separate words on a whim.
Use
The main utility of Pinyin is the transcription from Chinese to the Latin alphabet. At the same time it tries to be a phonemic writing system (a letter, or a Digraph, by phoneme) of Mandarin Chinese. Taiwan has been in the process of adopting Pinyin. The Zhuyin system has been used in its elementary schools, and there is no official romanization system, despite multiple efforts. In the late 1990s, the Taiwanese government decided to replace the Zhuyin system with the Pinyin system. This has led to a discussion of which system to use, whether the Hanyu Pinyin or the Tongyong Pinyin. This controversy parallels the political tensions between supporters of Taiwan independence (who support the use of the tongyong system) and those of reunification with China or maintenance of the status quo (supporters of Hanyu Pinyin, the one used in mainland China). In October 2002, the Taiwanese government elected the Tongyong Pinyin system as official. However, local governments have the right to choose whether or not to apply this administrative order on their territory, and localities under the command of the Kuomintang have chosen to use the Hanyu Pinyin system. The main objective of Pinyin in Chinese schools is to teach the pronunciation of Mandarin (the official language of China). In the West there are those who believe that pinyin is used for children to associate Chinese characters with the words they already know how to say. This is partly false, as not all Chinese speak Mandarin as their mother tongue. Some Chinese learn Mandarin pronunciation at school with the help of pinyin. The opinion of the Style Book of the Spanish newspaper El País, About the use of pinyin in Spanish, it must have the following exceptions: [citation required] 1. The names of people and historical or geographical places that already have a common spelling in other languages (exonyms) can keep it. Thus, China, Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Beijing, Hong Kong, Canton, Formosa (the island), Fishermen’s archipelago, Macao Island, or Confucius and Mencius should continue to be written in Spanish and not their equivalents in Pinyin. 2. The names of overseas Chinese (outside of the People’s Republic of China, such as Taiwan, Singapore and other Chinese diaspora communities) will be spelled in their customary spellings. Names of people and historical or geographic places that already have a common spelling in other languages (exonyms) can retain it. Thus, China, Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Beijing, Hong Kong, Canton, Formosa (the island), Fishermen’s archipelago, Macao Island, or Confucius and Mencius should continue to be written in Spanish and not their equivalents in Pinyin. 2. The names of overseas Chinese (outside of the People’s Republic of China, such as Taiwan, Singapore and other Chinese diaspora communities) will be spelled in their customary spellings. Names of people and historical or geographic places that already have a common spelling in other languages (exonyms) can retain it. Thus, China, Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Beijing, Hong Kong, Canton, Formosa (the island), Fishermen’s archipelago, Macao Island, or Confucius and Mencius should continue to be written in Spanish and not their equivalents in Pinyin. 2. The names of overseas Chinese (outside of the People’s Republic of China, such as Taiwan, Singapore and other Chinese diaspora communities) will be spelled in their customary spellings.
How to read
Each Chinese character usually represents one syllable. For example, “I am Mexican” is written with 6 characters, that is, with 6 syllables (Wo3 shi4 mo4 xi1 ge1 ren2):
.
The syllable in Mandarin has two parts, an initial (blue in the example) and a final (red). Green indicates the tone (Mandarin has 4 tones and a neutral tone, which is not written). The first box below shows the initial parts and the second how the vowels are read and the special readings of some final parts:
Tones
Mandarin Chinese is a tonal language. Tones are marked by using graphic accents on a non-medial vowel.
1. The first tone is represented by a macron (ˉ) over the vowel:
(ɑ̄) ā ē ī ō ū ǖ
- The second tone is marked with an acute accent (ˊ):
(ɑ́) á é í ó ú ǘ - The third tone is represented by a caron (ˇ), a mark slightly different from the short [(˘) that is not weevil], although this use is relatively common on the Internet .
(ɑ̌) ǎ ě ǐ ǒ ǔ ǚ - The fourth tone is symbolized by a grave accent (ˋ):
(ɑ̀) à è ì ò ù ǜ - The fifth tone, or neutral tone, is represented by a normal vowel without graphic accents:
(ɑ) aeiou ü
(In some cases, this is also written with a period before the syllable; for example, · ma.)
Since many typefaces used on a computer lack accents such as hyphen or inverted circumflex, a common convention is to indicate the number corresponding to the tone just after each syllable (for example, “tóng” (tong with rising tone) you would write “tong2”). The digit is numbered in the order indicated above, with one exception: the “fifth tone”, in addition to having the number 5, may not be indicated or indicated with a 0, as in the interrogative particle ma0 (吗 / 嗎). Pinyin vowels are ordered like this: a, o, e, i, u, ü. In general, the tonal mark is placed on the vowel that appears before in the order indicated. Liú is a superficial exception whose authentic pronunciation is lióu, and since the o precedes the i, the óu is marked (contracted to ú).
