Pinyin

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Pinyin, more formally Hanyu pinyin, is the most commonly used romanization system for Standard Mandarin. Hanyu means the Chinese language^[1], and pinyin means "spell sound", or the spelling of the sound.^[1] Developed by a government committee in the People's Republic of China, the system was initially approved by the Chinese government on February 11, 1958 ^[2]. The International Organization for Standardization adopted pinyin as the international standard in 1979, and since then it has been adopted by many organizations worldwide. It will also be the official romanization system in the Republic of China (Taiwan) starting in 2009 ^[3][4]. It is used to teach Chinese schoolchildren and foreign learners the standard pronunciation of Mandarin Chinese, to spell Chinese names in foreign publications and to enter Chinese characters on computers.

[edit] History

In 1954, the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China (PRC) created a Committee for the Reform of the Chinese Written Language. This committee developed Hanyu pinyin based upon existing systems of that time (Gwoyeu Romatzyh of 1928, Latinxua Sin Wenz of 1931, and the diacritic markings from zhuyin)^[5]. The main force behind pinyin was Zhou Youguang.^[6] Zhou was working in a New York bank when he decided to return to China to help rebuild the country after the war. He became an economics professor in Shanghai. The government assigned him to help the development of a new romanization system. The switch to language and writing largely saved him from the wrath of the Cultural Revolution of Mao Zedong.

A first draft was published on February 12, 1956. The first edition of Hanyu pinyin was approved and adopted at the Fifth Session of the 1st National People's Congress on February 11, 1958. It was then introduced to primary schools as a way to teach Standard Mandarin pronunciation and used to improve the literacy rate among adults. In 2001, the Chinese Government issued the National Common Language Law, providing a legal basis for applying pinyin.^[7]

[edit] Usage

Pinyin superseded older romanization systems such as Wade-Giles (1859; modified 1892) and Chinese Postal Map Romanization, and replaced zhuyin as the method of Chinese phonetic instruction in mainland China. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) adopted pinyin as the standard romanization for modern Chinese in 1982 (ISO 7098:1982, superseded by ISO 7098:1991). The United Nations adopted it as an official and standardized Mandarin romanization system in 1986.^[8] It has also been accepted by the government of Singapore, the Library of Congress, the American Library Association, and many other international institutions^[9].

The spelling of Chinese geographical or personal names in pinyin has become a standard or most common way to transcribe them in English. It has also become a useful tool for entering Chinese language text into computers.

Chinese speaking Standard Mandarin at home use pinyin to help children associate characters with spoken words which they already know; however, for the many Chinese who do not use Standard Mandarin at home, pinyin is used to teach them the Standard Mandarin pronunciation of words when they learn them in elementary school.

Pinyin has become a tool for many foreigners to learn the Mandarin pronunciation, it is used to explain the grammar and spoken Mandarin together with hanzi. Like zhuyin, it is used as a phonetic guide in books for children but also dialect speakers and foreign learners. Books containing both Chinese characters and pinyin are popular with foreign learners of Chinese, pinyin's role in teaching pronunciation to foreigners and children is similar to furigana-based books (with hiragana letters written above or next to kanji) in Japanese or fully vocalised texts in Arabic ("vocalised Arabic") but as mentioned above, pinyin is also the main romanisation method.

[edit] Overview

The correspondence between letter and sound does not follow any single other language, but does not depart any more from the norms of the Latin alphabet than many European languages. For example, the aspiration distinction between b, d, g and p, t, k is similar to that of English, but not to that of French. Z and c also have that distinction; however, they are pronounced as [ts], as in languages such as German, Italian, and Polish, which do not have that distinction. From s, z, c come the digraphs sh, zh, ch by analogy with English sh, ch; although this introduces the novel combination zh, it is internally consistent in how the two series are related, and represents the fact that many Chinese pronounce sh, zh, ch as s, z, c. In the x, j, q series, x rather resembles its pronunciation in Catalan, though q is more novel and its pronunciation is similar to the ch in China. Pinyin vowels are pronounced similarly to vowels in Romance languages. More information on the pronunciation of all pinyin letters in terms of English approximations is given further below.

The pronunciation of Chinese is generally given in terms of initials and finals, which represent the segmental phonemic portion of the language. Initials are initial consonants, while finals are all possible combinations of medials (semivowels coming before the vowel), the nucleus vowel, and coda (final vowel or consonant).

[edit] Initials and Finals

Unlike in European languages, initials (simplified Chinese: 声母; traditional Chinese: 聲母; pinyin: shengmu) and finals (simplified Chinese: 韵母; traditional Chinese: 韻母; pinyin: yunmu, or rhyming sounds) - and not consonants and vowels - are the fundamental elements in pinyin (and most other phonetic systems used to describe the Han language). Nearly each Chinese syllable can be spelled with exactly one initial followed by one final, except in the special syllable 'er' and when a trailing 'r' is considered part of a syllable (see below). The latter case, though a common practice in some sub-dialects, is rarely used in official publications.^[10]

Even though most initials contain a consonant, finals are not simple vowels, especially in compound finals (simplified Chinese: 复韵母; traditional Chinese: 復韻母; pinyin: fuyunmu), i.e., when one "final" is placed in front of another one. For example, [i] and [u] are pronounced with such tight openings that some native Chinese speakers (especially when singing or on stage) pronounce yī (Chinese: 衣, clothes, officially pronounced as /i/) as /ji/, wéi (simplified Chinese: 围; traditional Chinese: 圍, to enclose, officially as /uei/) as /wei/ or /wuei/. The concepts of consonants and vowels are not incorporated in pinyin or its predecessors, despite the fact that the Roman alphabets are used in pinyin. In the entire pinyin system, there is not a list of consonants, nor a list of vowels.

[edit] Initials

In each cell below, the first line indicates the IPA, the second indicates pinyin.

¹ /ɻ/ may phonetically be /ʐ/ (a voiced retroflex fricative). This pronunciation varies among different speakers, and is not two different phonemes.
² the letter "w" is an initial/consonant actually, and is pronounced as /w/
³ the letter "y" is an initial/consonant actually, and is pronounced as /j/

Note: Letters "y" and "w" are not included in table of initials in the official pinyin system.^[clarify] They are used as spelling aids in place of "i", "u" and "ü" when there are no other initials, and carry the pronunciations of the corresponding finals.^[clarify] Consonants /j/ and /w/ are not officially used for these letters;^[clarify] they are absent from standard Chinese.^{[citation needed]}

Conventional order (excluding w and y), derived from the zhuyin system, is:

[edit] Finals

In each cell below, the first line indicates IPA, the second indicates pinyin for a standalone (no-initial) form, and the third indicates pinyin for a combination with an initial. Other than finals modified by an -r, which are omitted, the following is an exhaustive table of all possible finals. ¹

The only syllable-final consonants in standard Mandarin are -n and -ng, and -r which is attached as a grammatical suffix. Chinese syllables ending with any other consonant is either from a non-Mandarin language (southern Chinese languages such as Cantonese, or minority languages of China), or it indicates the use of a non-pinyin Romanization system (where final consonants may be used to indicate tones).

¹ /ər/ (而, 二, etc.) is written as er. For other finals formed by the suffix -r, pinyin does not use special orthography; one simply appends -r to the final that it is added to, without regard for any sound changes that may take place along the way. For information on sound changes related to final -r, please see Standard Mandarin.
² "ü" is written as "u" after j, q, x, or y.
³ "uo" is written as "o" after b, p, m, or f.
⁴ It is pronounced [ʊŋ] when it follows an initial, and pinyin reflects this difference.

In addition, ê [ɛ] is used to represent certain interjections.

[edit] Rules given in terms of English pronunciation

All rules given here in terms of English pronunciation are approximate, as several of these sounds do not correspond directly to sounds in English.

[edit] Pronunciation of initials

[edit] Pronunciation of finals

The following is an exhaustive list of all finals in Standard Mandarin. Those ending with a final -r are listed at the end.

To find a given final:

1. Remove the initial consonant. For zh-, ch-, sh-, both letters should be removed, they are single consonants spelt with two letters.
2. Although y- and w- are consonants nevertheless they may be considered as part of finals and do not remove those.
   1. Syllables beginning with y- and w- may be considered as standalone forms of finals "i, u, ü" and finals beginning with "i-, u-, ü-".
3. If a syllable begins with j-, q-, x-, or y-, and the final is -u or starts with -u-, then change -u or -u- to -ü or -ü-.

[edit] Orthography

[edit] Letters

Pinyin differs from other romanizations in several aspects, such as the following:

• Syllables starting with u are written as w in place of u (e.g. ueng is written as weng). Standalone u is written as wu.
• Syllables starting with i are written as y in place of i (e.g. iou is written as you). Standalone i is written as yi.
• Syllables starting with ü are written as yu in place of ü (e.g. üe is written as yue).
• ü is written as u when there is no ambiguity (such as ju, qu, and xu), but written as ü when there are corresponding u syllables (such as lü and nü). In such situations where there are corresponding u syllables, it is often replaced with v on a computer, making it easier to type on a standard keyboard.
• When preceded by a consonant, iou, uei, and uen are simplified as iu, ui, and un (which do not represent the actual pronunciation).
• As in zhuyin, what are actually pronounced as buo, puo, muo, and fuo are given a separate representation: bo, po, mo, and fo.
• The apostrophe (') is often used before a, o, and e to separate syllables in a word where ambiguity could arise, especially when omitting tone marks, e.g., pi'ao (simplified Chinese: 皮袄; traditional Chinese: 皮襖) vs. piao (票), and Xi'an (西安) vs. xian (先).
• Eh alone is written as ê; elsewhere as e. Schwa is always written as e.
• zh, ch, and sh can be abbreviated as ẑ, ĉ, and ŝ (z, c, s with a circumflex). However, the shorthands are rarely used due to difficulty of entering them on computers.
• ng has the uncommon shorthand of ŋ.
• The letter v is unused （except in spelling foreign languages, languages of minority nationalities, and some dialects), despite a conscious effort to distribute letters more evenly than in Western languages. However, sometimes, for ease of typing into a computer, the v is used to replace a ü.

Most of the above are used to avoid ambiguity when writing words of more than one syllable in pinyin. For example uenian is written as wenyan because it is not clear which syllables make up uenian; uen-ian, uen-i-an and u-en-i-an are all possible combinations whereas wenyan is unambiguous because we, nya, etc. do not exist in pinyin. See the pinyin table article for a summary of possible pinyin syllables (not including tones).

[edit] Capitalization and word formation

Many writers are not yet aware of the rules for dividing text into words by spaces, and either put a space after each syllable, or run all words together. The manufacturer of these blankets put unnecessary spaces into 'Bishikaike' (the correct pinyin for 比什凯克, 'Bishkek') - but wrote the English text on top with no spaces at all.

Although Chinese characters represent single syllables, Mandarin Chinese is a polysyllabic language. Spacing in pinyin is based on whole words, not single syllables. However, there are often ambiguities in partitioning a word. Orthographic rules were put into effect in 1988 by the National Educational Commission (国家教育委员会, pinyin: Guójiā Jiàoyù Wěiyuánhuì ) and the National Language Commission (国家语言文字工作委员会, pinyin: Guójiā Yǔyán Wénzì Gōngzuò Wěiyuánhuì).

1. General
   1. Single meaning: Words with a single meaning, which are usually set up of two characters (sometimes one, seldom three), are written together and not capitalized: rén (Chinese: 人, person); péngyou (Chinese: 朋友, friend), qiǎokèlì (Chinese: 巧克力, chocolate)
   2. Combined meaning (2 characters): Same goes for words combined of two words to one meaning: hǎifēng (simplified Chinese: 海风; traditional Chinese: 海風, sea breeze); wèndá (simplified Chinese: 问答; traditional Chinese: 問答, Q&A), quánguó (simplified Chinese: 全国; traditional Chinese: 全國, 'pan-national')
   3. Combined meaning (4 or more characters): Words with four or more characters having one meaning are split up with their original meaning if possible: wúfèng gāngguǎn (simplified Chinese: 无缝钢管; traditional Chinese: 無縫鋼管, seamless steel-tube); huánjìng bǎohù guīhuà (simplified Chinese: 环境保护规划; traditional Chinese: 環境保護規劃, environmental protection planning)
2. Duplicated words
   1. AA: Duplicated characters (AA) are written together: rénrén (Chinese: 人人, everybody), kànkàn (Chinese: 看看, to have a look), niánnián (Chinese: 年年, every year)
   2. ABAB: two characters duplicated (ABAB) are written separated: yánjiū yánjiū (Chinese: 研究研究, to study, to research), xuěbái xuěbái (Chinese: 雪白雪白, snow-white)
   3. AABB: A hyphen is used with the schema AABB: láilái-wǎngwǎng (simplified Chinese: 来来回回; traditional Chinese: 來來回回, go back and forth), qiānqiān-wànwàn (simplified Chinese: 千千万万; traditional Chinese: 千千萬萬, numerous)
3. Nouns and names (míngcí): Nouns are written in one: zhuōzi (Chinese: , table), mùtou (simplified Chinese: 木头; traditional Chinese: 木頭, wood)
   1. Even if accompanied by a prefix and suffix: fùbùzhǎng (simplified Chinese: 副部长; traditional Chinese: 副部長, vice minister), chéngwùyuán (simplified Chinese: 乘务员; traditional Chinese: 乘務員, conductor), háizimen (simplified Chinese: 孩子们; traditional Chinese: 孩子們, children)
   2. Words of position are separated: mén wài (outdoor), hé li (in the river), huǒchē shàngmian (on the train), Huáng Hé yǐnán (south of the Yellow River)
      1. Exceptions are words traditionally connected: tiānshang (in the sky), dìxia (on the ground), kōngzhōng (in the air), hǎiwài (overseas)
   3. Surnames are separated from the given name: Lǐ Huá, Zhāng Sān. If the given name consists of two syllables, it should be written as one: Wáng Jiàngguó.
   4. Titles following the name are separated and are not capitalized: Wáng bùzhǎng (minister Wang), Lǐ xiānsheng (Mr. Li), Tián zhǔrèn (director Tian), Zhào tóngzhì (comrade Zhao).
   5. The forms of addressing people with Lǎo, Xiǎo, Dà and A are capitalized: Xiǎo Liú ([young] Ms. Liu), Dà Lǐ ([great] Mr. Li), A Sān (Ah San), Lǎo Qián ([senior] Mr. Qian), Lǎo Wú ([senior] Ms. Wu)
      1. Exceptions are: Kǒngzǐ (Master Confucius), Bāogōng (Judge Bao), Xīshī (a historical person), Mèngchángjūn (a historical person)
   6. Geographical names of China: Běijīng Shì (City of Beijing), Héběi Shěng (Province of Hebei), Yālù Jiāng (Yalu River), Tài Shān (Mt. Taishan), Dòngtíng Hú (Lake Donting), Táiwān Hǎixiá (Taiwan strait)
   7. Non-Chinese names translated back from Chinese will be written by their original writing: Marx, Einstein, London, Tokyo
4. Verbs (dòngcí): Verbs and their suffixes (-zhe, -le and -guo) are written as one: kànzhe/kànle/kànguo (to see/saw/seen), jìngxíngzhe (to implement). Le as it appears in the end of a sentence is separated though: Huǒchē dào le (The train [has] arrived).
   1. Verbs and their objects are separated: kàn xìn (read a letter), chī yú (eat fish), kāi wánxiào (to be kidding).
   2. If verbs and their complements are each monosyllabic, they are written together, if not, separated: gǎohuài ("to make broken"), dǎsǐ (hit to death), huàwéi ("to become damp"), zhěnglǐ hǎo (to straighten out), gǎixiě wéi (rewrite a screenplay)
5. Adjectives (xíngróngcí): A monosyllabic adjective and its reduplication are written as one: mēngmēngliàng (dim), liàngtāngtāng (shining bright)
   1. Complements of size or degree (as xiē, yīxiē, diǎnr, yīdiǎnr) are written separated: dà xiē (a little bigger), kuài yīdiānr (a bit faster)
6. Pronouns (dàicí)
   1. The plural suffix -men directly follows up: wǒmen (we), tāmen (they)
   2. The demonstrative pronoun zhè (this), nà (that) and the question pronoun nǎ (which) are separated: zhè rén (this person), nà cì huìyì (that meeting), nǎ zhāng bàozhǐ (which newspaper)
      1. Exceptions are: nàli (there), zhèbian (over here), zhège (this piece), zhème (so), zhèmeyàng (that way)... and similar ones.
7. Numerals and measure words (shùcí hé liàngcí)
   1. Words like gè/měi (every, each), mǒu (any), běn (that), gāi (that), wǒ (mine, our), are separated from the measure words following them: gè guó (every nation), gè gè (everyone), měi nián (every year), mǒu gōngchǎng (a certain factory), wǒ xiào (our school).

[edit] Tones

Relative pitch changes of the four tones

The pinyin system also uses diacritics for the four tones of Mandarin, usually above a non-medial vowel. Many books printed in China mix fonts, with vowels and tone marks rendered in a different font than the surrounding text, tending to give such pinyin texts a typographically ungainly appearance. This style, most likely rooted in early technical limitations, has led many to believe that pinyin's rules call for this practice and also for the use of a Latin alpha ("ɑ") rather than the standard style of the letter ("a") found in most fonts. The official rules of Hanyu Pinyin, however, specify no such practice. Note that tone marks can also appear on consonants in certain vowelless exclamations.

1. The first tone (Flat or High Level Tone) is represented by a macron (ˉ) added to the pinyin vowel:

   
   ā (ɑ̄) ē ī ō ū ǖ Ā Ē Ī Ō Ū Ǖ

2. The second tone (Rising or High-Rising Tone) is denoted by an acute accent (ˊ):

   
   á (ɑ́) é í ó ú ǘ Á É Í Ó Ú Ǘ

3. The third tone (Falling-Rising or Low Tone) is marked by a caron/háček (ˇ). It is not the rounded breve (˘), though a breve is sometimes substituted due to font limitations.

   
   ǎ (ɑ̌) ě ǐ ǒ ǔ ǚ Ǎ Ě Ǐ Ǒ Ǔ Ǚ

4. The fourth tone (Falling or High-Falling Tone) is represented by a grave accent (ˋ):

   
   à (ɑ̀) è ì ò ù ǜ À È Ì Ò Ù Ǜ

5. The fifth tone (Neutral Tone) is represented by a normal vowel without any accent mark:

   
   a (ɑ) e i o u ü A E I O U Ü

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

These tone marks normally are only used in Mandarin textbooks or in foreign learning texts, but they are essential for correct pronunciation of Mandarin syllables, as exemplified by the following classic example of five characters whose pronunciations differ only in their tones:

Traditional characters: 媽(mā) 麻(má) 馬(mǎ) 罵(mà) 嗎(·ma) Simplified characters: 妈(mā) 麻(má) 马(mǎ) 骂(mà) 吗(·ma)

mā má mǎ mà A sound sample of the four tones Problems listening to the file? See media help.

The words are "mother", "hemp", "horse", "scold" and a question particle, respectively.

[edit] Numerals in place of tone marks

Since before the advent of computers, many fonts did not contain vowels with macron or caron diacritics, a common convention for tone is to add a tone number at the end of individual syllables. For example, tóng is written tong2. The number used for each tone is as the order listed above (except the neutral tone, which is either not numbered or numbered zero, as in ma0 吗/嗎 (an interrogative marker).

[edit] Rules for placing the tone mark

The rules for determining on which vowel the tone mark appears when there are multiple vowels are as follows:^[11]

1. First, look for an "a" or an "e". If either vowel appears, it takes the tone mark. There are no possible pinyin syllables that contain both an "a" and an "e".
2. If there is no "a" or "e", look for an "ou". If "ou" appears, then the "o" takes the tone mark.
3. If none of the above cases hold, then the last vowel in the syllable takes the tone mark.

(y and w are not considered vowels for these rules.)

The reasoning behind these rules is in the case of diphthongs and triphthongs, i, u, and ü (and their orthographic equivalents y and w when there is no initial consonant) are considered medial glides rather than part of the syllable nucleus in Chinese phonology. The rules ensure that the tone mark always appears on the nucleus of a syllable.

Another way to find a proper vowel for a tone mark is to apply the tone mark in the following order: "a", "e", "o", "i", "u", except for "iu", in which case "u" takes the tone mark.

[edit] The character "ü"

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

However, the ü 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 鱼/魚 (fish) is transcribed in pinyin simply as yú, not as yǘ. 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.

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), u: (u followed by a colon) or U (capital u) is used in its place.

[edit] Comparison chart