pinyin

n. transliterated Chinese writing system using Latin characters

Pinyin, more formally called Hanyu Pinyin ( ; ; ), is the most common Standard Mandarin romanization system in use. Hanyu means the Chinese language, pin means "spell" and yin means "sound". It is also known as scheme of the Chinese phonetic alphabet ( ; ; ).Pinyin uses the Latin alphabet to represent sounds in Standard Mandarin. The way these letters represent sounds in Standard Mandarin differs from other languages that use the Roman alphabet. For example, the sounds indicated in pinyin by b and g correspond more closely to the sounds indicated by p and k in some Western uses of the Latin script, e.g., French. Other letters, like j, q, x or zh, indicate sounds that do not correspond to any exact sound in English. Some of the transcriptions in pinyin, such as the ang ending, do not correspond to English pronunciations either. This means that people who have not studied Chinese or the pinyin system are likely to severely mispronounce some words if they attempt to pronounce pinyin according to their own language spellings.
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n. Pinyin, transliterated Chinese writing system using Latin characters

"Pinyin" literally means "phonetic spelling". The system was developed in the Sovied Union in 1931, and a slightly revised version was in 1958 introduced as the official system to transcribe Mandarin Chinese in the Peoples Republic of China.

The system makes use of the Latin/Roman characters "A" to "Z" (minus "V") plus four types of accents that denote the tones of each syllable. Some European letters are used for sounds not entirely corresponding to the letters (e.g. "Q" and "X" are used for sounds that might be described as "tch" and "sch").

Most countries of the modern world tend to use this system when romanising Chinese today - only emitting the tones. In China, the system is used for road signs, maps, brand names, computer input, Chinese Braille, telegrams, semaphore, in dictionaries, when teaching Chinese and many other purposes.

Enter the romanisation for for a syllable in Mandarin Chinese according to Pinyin or Wade-Giles, and this glossary will give you the corresponding transliteration according to other systems!

Further reading: Bopomofo, Chinese phonetics, hanzi, tones, Wade-Giles, Zhuyin