Table of Contents
Why pinyin is important in the Chinese Mandarin?
Chinese pinyin helps both foreigners and native Chinese speakers learn and understand the language, and also aids with reading and writing skills. It is essential for everyday life for Chinese people, as much as it is for foreigners. This aids both with reading Chinese and the pronunciation of it.
How are Chinese names romanized?
The romanization of Mandarin Chinese, or Mandarin romanization, is the use of the Latin alphabet to write Chinese. Chinese is a tonal language with a logographic script; its characters do not represent phonemes directly. The two main systems used by English speakers are Pinyin (拼音) and Wade-Giles (韦氏拼音).
Why is pinyin not the same as Mandarin?
First, Mandarin refers to a whole language dialect and is the standard dialect for Chinese. Pinyin is just the romanization of the pronunciation of Chinese.
What does the Chinese word Pinyin mean?
Pinyin is the Romanization of the Chinese characters based on their pronunciation. In Mandarin Chinese, the phrase “Pin Yin” literally translates into “spell sound.” In other words, spelling out Chinese phrases with letters from the English alphabet.
What is the romanization of Chinese?
Romanization of Chinese. “National language” (國語; Guóyǔ) written in Traditional and Simplified Chinese characters, followed by Hanyu Pinyin, Gwoyeu Romatzyh, Wade-Giles, and Yale romanizations.
Why are English names so hard to pronounce in China?
For many, English names are informal haos that represent another layer of identity. Admittedly, some Chinese names are really difficult to pronounce. For instance, westerners find it tricky to pronounce names starting with ‘x’, which sounds a little like ‘sh’ in Chinese, or ‘c’ which is pronounced ‘tz’.
What is the Hanyu Pinyin system used in Europe?
Most European language texts use the Chinese Hanyu Pinyin system (usually without tone marks) since 1979 as it was adopted by the People’s Republic of China. A 17th-century European map using the then-typical transcription of Chinese place names.
Why do we use Roman characters to represent Chinese?
There have been many systems using Roman characters to represent Chinese throughout history. Linguist Daniel Kane recalls, “It used to be said that sinologists had to be like musicians, who might compose in one key and readily transcribe into other keys.”