Hanyu Pinyin, commonly known as Pinyin.  It is a system of romanization for Standard Mandarin Chinese. There are other pronunciation tools, such as Wade-Giles, Zhuyin Fuhao and Postal System Pinyin.  However, Hanyu Pinyin is widely preferred.

‘Hanyu’ means Chinese language and  ‘Pinyin’ means "phonetic notation" or "phonetic symbols", ‘Pin’ means spelling and ‘Yin’ is sound.

Hanyu Pinyin uses Roman letters to represent sounds in Standard Mandarin Chinese.  It is a great typing tool that makes typing Chinese characters a breeze for anyone.

Although Pinyin and English both use the Roman alphabet, many letters are not expressed with the same sounds as in English phonetics.  For example, the sounds indicated in Pinyin  “j”, “q”, “x” or “zh” do not correspond to any exact sound in English.  So when learning Chinese Mandarin Pinyin, please keep in mind that Pinyin does not correspond with English phonetics and it should not be pronounced as English pronunciation. In addition, Pinyin only represents the sounds of Mandarin Chinese.  Do not use it to correspond sounds to other Chinese spoken dialects.

Lets learn our Mandarin Chinese Phonetics, click on a video to get started...

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