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Live and learn! Chinese input software Chinese Newspapers Online Few words about Chinese cuisine Chinese words in latin letters
How to come to China Small secrets of Chinese input Martial arts World brandnames in Chinese Holidays in the People's Republic of China
Pinyin to Wade-Giles conversion table Self-adopted words in Chinese language Short names of Chinese provinces

Romanization of Chinese Words


When you learn Chinese, you are to use transcription of Chinese words.

There are several systems of Chinese transcription.

Zhuyin - the first successfully developed phonetic alphabet by Chinese linguists. Utilizes special signs derived from the elements of traditional characters. Used in some dictionaries and for keyboard input in some Chinese software.

Wade-Giles - transcription used by anglophones since 19th century; now it is mainly used for writing Chinese names of historical heritage (i.e. Mao Tse-tung, Chiang Kai-shek), and names of habitants of westernized Hong Kong and Taiwan (i.e. Raymond Chow). However, a lot of Chinese personal and geographic names were transcribed voluntarily and thus non-systematically at start.

Pinyin - official romanization of Putonghua (Mandarin). Widely used in all modern dictionaries and learning books, and also for transcribing people's and geographic names. There are clear differences between Wade-Giles and Pinyin. Compare: Mao Tse-tung and Mao Zedong, Peking and Beijing. Pinyin is greatly formalized and quite logical. Once you have learned this system, there's no trouble to pronounce new words from dictionary or learning book. Pinyin is also convenient to input Chinese characters from keyboard.

For correspondence between Pinyin and Wade-Giles see the table.

Most of the Chinese words used on this site are in Pinyin.

In printed learning books and dictionaries words in Pinyin are accompanied by tone signs. Text processing software usually cannot execute such a function. Because of it, some people use arabic figures (1-4) right after the syllables to mark tones.


Related Links:

Site of OCLC. Here you can find conversion tables for Wade-Giles and Pinyin.

Chinese page by Paul Halsall.

The site located in Singapore offers very curious concept HLV Pinyin.

Live and learn! Chinese input software Chinese Newspapers Online Few words about Chinese cuisine Chinese words in latin letters
How to come to China Small secrets of Chinese input Martial arts World brandnames in Chinese Holidays in the People's Republic of China
Pinyin to Wade-Giles conversion table Self-adopted words in Chinese language Short names of Chinese provinces

Chinese software dictionary pack



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© Dmitry Alemasov

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If the English text was translated by its author, the translator's name is not stated. Otherwise translator's name is stated separately.

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