Pinyin

Text in pinyin in Shanghai.

The Hànyǔ Pīnyīn (in simplified Chinese, 汉语拼音; literally, 'Chinese spelling of sounds'), often called pinyin, is the most widely used Mandarin Chinese transliteration system. It was developed in the 1950s by linguists in the People's Republic of China to overcome earlier complex and inaccurate Chinese transcription systems, and was adopted by the ISO and the UN in the 1980s.

To represent the complex phonology of standard Chinese, pinyin uses all the letters of the basic Latin alphabet (except V) plus four digraphs (sh, ch, zh, ng) and u with umlaut (ü), plus of four accents (ō, ó, ǒ, ò) that serve to mark the tones of Chinese. The pinyin system also dictates rules about the use of capital letters and the separation of words.

For the Spanish-speaking listener, the use of the vowels ⟨a,o,u⟩ is similar, but ⟨e⟩ sounds darker, ⟨i⟩ represents two different i's depending on the consonant, while ⟨ü,ju,qu,xu,yu⟩ represent the French u. In the consonants there is even more divergence. Some notable differences are that ⟨b,d,g⟩ represent the Spanish sounds p, t, k, while ⟨p,t,k⟩ represent those same sounds but with aspiration. They also contrast the pair ⟨c,z⟩, which sounds like /ts/ (with and without aspiration), as well as the pairs ⟨ch,zh⟩ and ⟨q,j⟩, which are affricate sounds reminiscent of /ch/ in Spanish. The sounds represented by ⟨x⟩ and ⟨r⟩ do not exist in Spanish. These and other differences mean that pinyin requires study in order to be pronounced correctly.

History of Pinyin

Pinyin was created by the Chinese intellectual Zhou Youguang, called "the father of Pinyin", as part of a program launched in the 1950s by the Chinese government to make Mandarin the national language of China, simplify characters and devise a new phonetic alphabet. Zhou was working in a New York bank when he returned to China to help rebuild the country after the Communist Party of China (CCP) victory and rise to power in 1949. Zhou was a professor of economics in Shanghai. In 1954, the Chinese Ministry of Education created the Committee for the Reform of Chinese Written Language. Zhou worked to develop a new romanized calligraphic system that helped eradicate illiteracy in China; during the Cultural Revolution, pinyin was abandoned and Zhou spent two years in a forced labor camp. Zhou noted years later that it was not the father of pinyin "I am the son of the pinyin, which is the result of a long tradition that begins in the last years of the Qing dynasty. We have studied the work done and we have improved it."

Use

The main utility of pinyin is transliteration of standard Chinese into the Latin alphabet. At the same time it tries to be a phonemic writing system (one letter, or one digraph, per phoneme) of Mandarin Chinese.

Anglophone

Because pinyin was designed primarily for English speakers, it is common that "the pronunciation of a letter in pinyin does not correspond to its sound in English." Pinyin is extra easier to use for English speakers than for those of us who speak Spanish, due to its origins in English linguistics.

Republic of China

Taiwan has been in the process of adopting pinyin. The zhuyin system has been used in its primary schools, and there is no official romanization system, despite many 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, the hànyǔ pīnyīn or the tōngyòng pīnyīn.

This controversy parallels the political tensions between supporters of Taiwanese independence (who support the use of the tōngyòng pīnyīn system) and those of reunification with China or maintenance of the status quo (supporters of the hànyǔ pīnyīn, the system used in mainland China).

In October 2002, the Taiwanese government made the tōngyòng pīnyīn system official. However, local governments have the right to choose whether or not to apply this administrative order on their territory, and localities under Kuomintang command have chosen to use the hànyǔ pīnyīn system.

Mandarin and school usage

The main purpose of pinyin in Chinese schools is to teach the pronunciation of Mandarin (China's official language) to speakers of other Chinese languages. Since not all Chinese speak Mandarin as their first language, some children learn its pronunciation at school, with the help of pinyin.

Typography

Each Chinese character usually represents one syllable. For example "I am Mexican" It is written with six characters, that is, with six syllables (Wo3 shi4 mo4 xi1 ge1 ren2):

The syllable in Mandarin has two parts, an initial (in blue in the example) and a final (in red). Green indicates the tone (Mandarin has four tones and a neutral tone, which is not written).

The first box below shows the initial parts and the second one how the vowels are read and the special readings of some final parts:

Tones

Tones of Mandarin

Mandarin Chinese is a tonal language. The tones are marked by the use of graphic accents on a non-medial vowel.

1. The first tone is represented with a macro (vocal) on the vowel:

   ō ē ī ī) Ā Ē Ē Ē Ū Ū Ū)

2. The second tone is marked with a sharp accent ():):

   )) é))))))))

3. The third tone is represented with a caron (one), slightly different from the brief [(θ) that is not spiced], although this usage is relatively common on the Internet.

   ɑ)))))))))))))

4. The fourth tone is symbolized with a severe accent (PH):

   ɑ))))))))

5. The fifth tone, or neutral tone, is represented with a normal vocal without graphic accents:

   (rate) a or i u ü A O E I U Ü
   

(In some cases, this is also written with a point before syllable; for example, ·ma.)

As many computer fonts lack accents such as macron or caron, a common convention is to indicate the number corresponding to the tone just after each syllable (for example, tóng (tong with the rising tone) would be written tong²). The digit is numbered in the order listed above, with one exception: the "fifth tone", in addition to having the number 5, may not be indicated or may be indicated by a 0, as in the interrogative particle ma0 (吗/嗎).

Pinyin vowels are arranged in the following order: a, o, e, i, u, ü. In general, the tone mark is placed on the vowel that occurs before it in the order listed. Liú is a superficial exception whose true pronunciation is lióu, and since the o precedes the i, it is marked the óu (contracting to ú).