Pinyin Overview

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Pinyin, more formally Hanyu Pinyin, is the most common Standard Mandarin romanization system in use. Hanyu means the Chinese language, pin means "together, connection, annotate" and yin means "sound".

Pinyin uses the Latin alphabet to represent sounds in Standard Mandarin. The way these letters represent sounds in Standard Mandarin does not correspond to any other one particular language that uses 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 ian ending, do not correspond to English pronunciations, either. This means that people who have not studied Chinese, or who have studied Chinese but not the pinyin system, are likely to severely mispronounce some words if they attempt to pronounce pinyin according to their own language spellings.