Pinyin

What is Pinyin?

Pinyin is a type of transliteration for the Chinese language, a tonal language, where accents are used to show tones. It is the official form of the Latin alphabet transliteration used for the People's Republic of China and most of the world. And it is the standard form of Chinese Romanization for the United Nations.

Consonants

b p m f w

d t n l

g k ng h

j q x y

z c s

Vowels

a e i o u ü

Basic combinations of vowel and consonant

ai ei ao ou

an en ang eng ong

Tones

There are four tones in Pinyin, such as ā, á, ǎ, à or written as a1, a2, a3, a4.

Syllable-dividing mark (geyin fuhao)

Geyin fuhao is used after the syllables starting with vowels "a, o, e", such as pi'ao.

Orthography

We should divide Pinyin text by words and write syllables connectedly, such as "I am a foreigner" should be written as "Wo shi yige waiguoren" in Pinyin.