Pinyin

Hanyu Pinyin, often abbreviated to pinyin, is the official system for  in  and to some extent in. It is often used to teach, which is normally written using. The system includes four s denoting s. Pinyin without tone marks is used to spell s and words in languages written with the, and also in certain computer s to enter Chinese characters.

The pinyin system was developed in the 1950s by many linguists, including, based on earlier forms of. It was published by the in 1958 and revised several times. The (ISO) adopted pinyin as an  in 1982, and was followed by the  in 1986. The system was adopted as the official standard in Taiwan in 2009, where it is used for international events rather than for educational or computer-input purposes. But "some cities, businesses, and organizations, notably in the south of Taiwan, did not accept this, as it suggested that Taiwan is more closely tied to the ", so it remains one of several rival.

The word Hànyǔ means 'the  of the ', while Pīnyīn  literally means 'spelled sounds'.

When a foreign writing system with one set of coding/decoding system is taken to write a language, certain compromises may have to be made. The result is that the decoding systems used in some foreign languages will enable non-native speakers to produce sounds more closely resembling the target language than will the coding/decoding system used by other foreign languages. Native speakers of English will decode pinyin spellings to fairly close approximations of Mandarin except in the case of certain speech sounds that are not ordinarily produced by most native speakers of English: j, q , x , z , c , zh , ch , sh , h , and r exhibiting the greatest discrepancies.

In this system, the correspondence between the Roman letter and the sound is sometimes, though not necessarily more so than the way the Latin script is employed in other languages. For example, the distinction between b, d, g and p, t, k is similar to that of these syllable-initial consonants English (in which the two sets are however also differentiated by ), but not to that of French. Letters z and c also have that distinction, pronounced as and  (whilst reminiscent of both of them being used for the phoneme  in the German language and Latin script-using  respectively). From s, z, c come the sh, zh, ch by analogy with English , . Although this introduces the novel combination zh, it is internally consistent in how the two series are related, and reminds the trained reader that many Chinese people pronounce sh, zh, ch as s, z, c (and English-speakers use zh to represent in foreign languages such as Russian anyway). In the x, j, q series, the pinyin use of x is similar to its use in Portuguese, Galician, Catalan, Basque, and Maltese; and the pinyin q is akin to its value in Albanian; both pinyin and Albanian pronunciations may sound similar to the ch to the untrained ear. Pinyin are pronounced in a similar way to vowels in.

The pronunciation and spelling of Chinese words are generally given in terms of and, which represent the segmental phonemic portion of the language, rather than letter by letter. Initials are initial consonants, while finals are all possible combinations of medials (s coming before the vowel), a vowel, and  (final vowel or consonant).

Background: romanization of Chinese before 1949
In 1605, the missionary  published Xizi Qiji  in Beijing. This was the first book to use the Roman alphabet to write the Chinese language. Twenty years later, another Jesuit in China,, issued his Xi Ru Ermu Zi at Hangzhou. Neither book had much immediate impact on the way in which Chinese thought about their writing system, and the romanizations they described were intended more for Westerners than for the Chinese.

One of the earliest Chinese thinkers to relate Western alphabets to Chinese was late Ming to early Qing dynasty, (1611–1671).

The first late Qing reformer to propose that China adopt a system of spelling was Song Shu (1862–1910). A student of the great scholars and, Song had been to Japan and observed the stunning effect of the  syllabaries and Western learning there. This galvanized him into activity on a number of fronts, one of the most important being reform of the script. While Song did not himself actually create a system for spelling Sinitic languages, his discussion proved fertile and led to a proliferation of schemes for phonetic scripts.

Wade–Giles
The Wade–Giles system was produced by in 1859, and further improved by  in the  of 1892. It was popular and used in English-language publications outside China until 1979.

Sin Wenz
In the early 1930s, leaders trained in Moscow introduced a phonetic alphabet using Roman letters which had been developed in the Soviet Oriental Institute of Leningrad and was originally intended to improve literacy in the. This or "New Writing" was much more linguistically sophisticated than earlier alphabets, but with the major exception that it did not indicate tones of Chinese.

In 1940, several thousand members attended a Border Region Sin Wenz Society convention. and, head of the army, both contributed their calligraphy (in characters) for the masthead of the Sin Wenz Society's new journal. Outside the, other prominent supporters included Dr. 's son, ; , the country's most prestigious educator; , a leading educational reformer; and. Over thirty journals soon appeared written in Sin Wenz, plus large numbers of translations, biographies (including Lincoln, Franklin, Edison, Ford, and Charlie Chaplin), some contemporary Chinese literature, and a spectrum of textbooks. In 1940, the movement reached an apex when Mao's Border Region Government declared that the Sin Wenz had the same legal status as traditional characters in government and public documents. Many educators and political leaders looked forward to the day when they would be universally accepted and completely replace Chinese characters. Opposition arose, however, because the system was less well adapted to writing regional languages, and therefore would require learning Mandarin. Sin Wenz fell into relative disuse during the following years.

Yale romanization
In 1943, the U.S. military engaged to develop a romanization of Mandarin Chinese for its pilots flying over China. The resulting system is very close to pinyin, but does not use English letters in unfamiliar ways; for example, pinyin x for is written as sy in the Yale system. Medial s are written with y and w (instead of pinyin i and u), and apical vowels (s) with r or z. Accent marks are used to indicate tone.

Emergence and history of Hanyu Pinyin
Pinyin was created by Chinese linguists, including, as part of a Chinese government project in the 1950s. Zhou is often called "the father of pinyin," Zhou worked as a banker in when he decided to return to China to help rebuild the country after the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949. He became an economics professor in, and in 1955, when created a Committee for the Reform of the Chinese Written Language, Premier  assigned Zhou Youguang the task of developing a new romanization system, despite the fact that he was not a professional linguist.

Hanyu Pinyin was based on several existing systems: ' of 1928, ' of 1931, and the from  (bopomofo). "I'm not the father of pinyin," Zhou said years later; "I'm the son of pinyin. It's [the result of] a long tradition from the later years of the Qing dynasty down to today. But we restudied the problem and revisited it and made it more perfect."

A draft was published on February 12, 1956. The first edition of Hanyu Pinyin was approved and adopted at the Fifth Session of the on February 11, 1958. It was then introduced to primary schools as a way to teach pronunciation and used to improve the literacy rate among adults.

Beginning in the early 1980s, Western publications addressing began using the Hanyu Pinyin romanization system instead of earlier romanization systems; this change followed the  between the United States and the PRC in 1979. In 2001, the PRC Government issued the National Common Language Law, providing a legal basis for applying pinyin. The current specification of the orthographic rules is laid down in the National Standard GB/T 16159-2012.

Initials and finals
Unlike European languages, clusters of letters — initials and finals  — and not consonant and vowel letters, form the fundamental elements in pinyin (and most other phonetic systems used to describe the Han language). Every Mandarin syllable can be spelled with exactly one initial followed by one final, except for the special syllable er or when a trailing -r is considered part of a syllable (see below, and see ). The latter case, though a common practice in some sub-dialects, is rarely used in official publications.

Even though most initials contain a consonant, finals are not always simple vowels, especially in compound finals, i.e. when a "medial" is placed in front of the final. For example, the medials and  are pronounced with such tight openings at the beginning of a final that some native Chinese speakers (especially when singing) pronounce yī (, clothes, officially pronounced ) as  and wéi (, to enclose, officially pronounced ) as  or. Often these medials are treated as separate from the finals rather than as part of them; this convention is followed in the chart of finals below.

Initials
In each cell below, the bold letters indicate pinyin and the brackets enclose the symbol in the.

1 y is pronounced (a ) before u. 2 The letters w and y are not included in the table of initials in the official pinyin system. They are an orthographic convention for the medials i, u and ü when no initial is present. When i, u, or ü are finals and no initial is present, they are spelled yi, wu, and yu, respectively.

The conventional (excluding w and y), derived from the  system ("bopomofo"), is:
 * {|cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3"


 * style="background: #ccf;"| b p  m  f 
 * style="background: #cfc;"| d t  n  l 
 * style="background: #fcc;"| g k  h 
 * style="background: #fcf;"| j q  x 
 * style="background: #cff;"| zh ch  sh  r 
 * style="background: #ffc;"| z c  s 
 * }

Finals
In each cell below, the first line indicates, the second indicates pinyin for a standalone (no-initial) form, and the third indicates pinyin for a combination with an initial. Other than finals modified by an -r, which are omitted, the following is an exhaustive table of all possible finals.1

The only syllable-final consonants in Standard Chinese are -n and -ng, and -r, which are attached as a grammatical. A Chinese syllable ending with any other consonant either is from a non-Mandarin language (a southern Chinese language such as, or a minority language of China; possibly reflecting ), or indicates the use of a non-pinyin romanization system (where final consonants may be used to indicate tones).

1 is written er. For other finals formed by the suffix -r, pinyin does not use special orthography; one simply appends r to the final that it is added to, without regard for any sound changes that may take place along the way. For information on sound changes related to final r, please see.

2 ü is written as u after j, q, or x.

3 uo is written as o after b, p, m, f, or w.

Technically, i, u, ü without a following vowel are finals, not medials, and therefore take the tone marks, but they are more concisely displayed as above. In addition, ê  and syllabic nasals m, n , ng  are used as s.

The ü sound
An is placed over the letter u when it occurs after the initials l and n when necessary in order to represent the sound [y]. This is necessary in order to distinguish the front high rounded vowel in lü (e.g. ) from the back high rounded vowel in lu (e.g. ). Tonal markers are added on top of the umlaut, as in lǘ.

However, the ü is not used in the other contexts where it could represent a front high rounded vowel, namely after the letters j, q, x, and y. For example, the sound of the word 鱼/魚 (fish) is transcribed in pinyin simply as yú, not as yǘ. This practice is opposed to, which always uses ü, and , which always uses yu. Whereas Wade–Giles needs of using the umlaut to distinguish between chü (pinyin ju) and chu (pinyin zhu), this ambiguity does not arise with pinyin, so the more convenient form ju is used instead of jü. Genuine ambiguities only happen with nu/nü and lu/lü, which are then distinguished by an umlaut.

Many fonts or output methods do not support an umlaut for ü or cannot place tone marks on top of ü. Likewise, using ü in input methods is difficult because it is not present as a simple key on many keyboard layouts. For these reasons v is sometimes used instead by convention. For example, it is common for cellphones to use v instead of ü. Additionally, some stores in China use v instead of ü in the transliteration of their names. The drawback is that there are no tone marks for the letter v.

This also presents a problem in transcribing names for use on passports, affecting people with names that consist of the sound lü or nü, particularly people with the surname 吕 (), a fairly common surname, particularly compared to the surnames 陆, 鲁 , 卢 and 路. Previously, the practice varied among different passport issuing offices, with some transcribing as "LV" and "NV" while others used "LU" and "NU". On 10 July 2012, the standardized the practice to use "LYU" and "NYU" in passports.

Although nüe written as nue, and lüe written as lue are not ambiguous, nue or lue are not correct according to the rules; nüe and lüe should be used instead. However, some Chinese input methods (e.g. ) support both nve/lve (typing v for ü) and nue/lue.

Approximation from English pronunciation
Most rules given here in terms of English pronunciation are approximations, as several of these sounds do not correspond directly to sounds in English.

Pronunciation of initials
Y and w are equivalent to the medials i, u, and ü (see below). They are spelled differently when there is no initial consonant in order to mark a new syllable: fanguan is fan-guan, while fangwan is fang-wan (and equivalent to *fang-uan). With this convention, an apostrophe only needs to be used to mark an initial a, e, or o: Xi'an (two syllables: ) vs. xian (one syllable: ). In addition, y and w are added to fully vocalic i, u, and ü when these occur without an initial consonant, so that they are written yi, wu, and yu. Some Mandarin speakers do pronounce a or  sound at the beginning of such words—that is, yi  or, wu  or , yu  or ,—so this is an intuitive convention. See below for a few finals which are abbreviated after a consonant plus w/u or y/i medial: wen → C+un, wei → C+ui, weng → C+ong, and you → C+iu.
 * * Note on y and w:

The (')  is used before a syllable starting with a vowel (a, o, or e) in a multiple-syllable word when the syllable does not start the word (which is most commonly realized as ), unless the syllable immediately follows a  or other dash. This usage is done to remove ambiguity that could arise, as in , which consists of the two syllables xi ("") an (""), compared to such words as xian (""). (This ambiguity does not occur when tone marks are used: the two tone marks in Xīān unambiguously show that the word consists of two syllables. However, even with tone marks, the city is usually spelled with an apostrophe as Xī'ān.) This apostrophe is not used in the names.
 * ** Note on the apostrophe:

Pronunciation of finals
The following is a list of finals in Standard Chinese, excepting most of those ending with r.

To find a given final:
 * 1) Remove the initial consonant. Zh, ch, and sh count as initial consonants.
 * 2) Change initial w to u and initial y to i. For weng, wen, wei, you, look under ong, un, ui, iu.
 * 3) For u after j, q, x, or y, look under ü.

Tones
The pinyin system also uses s to mark the four. The diacritic is placed over the letter that represents the, unless that letter is missing.

Many books printed in China use a mix of fonts, with vowels and tone marks rendered in a different font from the surrounding text, tending to give such pinyin texts a typographically ungainly appearance. This style, most likely rooted in early technical limitations, has led many to believe that pinyin's rules call for this practice, e.g. the use of a ( ɑ ) rather than the standard style ( a ) found in most fonts, or g often written with a. The rules of Hanyu Pinyin, however, specify no such practice.


 * 1) The first tone (Flat or High Level Tone) is represented by a  (ˉ) added to the pinyin vowel:
 * ā ē ī ō ū ǖ Ā Ē Ī Ō Ū Ǖ
 * 1) The second tone (Rising or High-Rising Tone) is denoted by an  (ˊ):
 * á é í ó ú ǘ Á É Í Ó Ú Ǘ
 * 1) The third tone (Falling-Rising or Low Tone) is marked by a /háček (ˇ). It is not the rounded  (˘), though a breve is sometimes substituted due to font limitations.
 * ǎ ě ǐ ǒ ǔ ǚ Ǎ Ě Ǐ Ǒ Ǔ Ǚ
 * 1) The fourth tone (Falling or High-Falling Tone) is represented by a  (ˋ):
 * à è ì ò ù ǜ À È Ì Ò Ù Ǜ
 * 1) The fifth tone (Neutral Tone) is represented by a normal vowel without any accent mark:
 * a e i o u ü A E I O U Ü
 * In dictionaries, neutral tone may be indicated by a dot preceding the syllable; for example, ·ma. When a neutral tone syllable has an alternative pronunciation in another tone, a combination of tone marks may be used: zhī·dào (知道).

These tone marks normally are only used in Mandarin textbooks or in foreign learning texts, but they are essential for correct pronunciation of Mandarin syllables, as exemplified by the following classic example of five characters whose pronunciations differ only in their tones:

The words are "mother", "hemp", "horse", "scold", and a, respectively.

Numerals in place of tone marks
Before the advent of computers, many typewriter fonts did not contain vowels with or  diacritics. Tones were thus represented by placing a at the end of individual syllables. For example, tóng is written tong². The number used for each tone is as the order listed above, except the neutral tone, which is either not numbered, or given the number 0 or 5, e.g. ma⁵ for 吗／嗎, an marker.

Rules for placing the tone mark
Briefly, the tone mark should always be placed by the order&mdash;a, o, e, i, u, ü, with the only exception being iu, where the tone mark is placed on the u instead. Pinyin tone marks appear primarily above the, for example as in kuài, where k is the initial, u the medial, a the nucleus, and i the coda. The exception is syllabic nasals like /m/, where the nucleus of the syllable is a consonant, the diacritic will be carried by a written dummy vowel.

When the nucleus is /ə/ (written e or o), and there is both a medial and a coda, the nucleus may be dropped from writing. In this case, when the coda is a consonant n or ng, the only vowel left is the medial i, u, or ü, and so this takes the diacritic. However, when the coda is a vowel, it is the coda rather than the medial which takes the diacritic in the absence of a written nucleus. This occurs with syllables ending in -ui (from wei: (wèi → -uì) and in -iu (from you: yòu → -iù.) That is, in the absence of a written nucleus the finals have priority for receiving the tone marker, as long as they are vowels: if not, the medial takes the diacritic.

An algorithm to find the correct vowel letter (when there is more than one) is as follows:


 * 1) If there is an a or an e, it will take the tone mark
 * 2) If there is an ou, then the o takes the tone mark
 * 3) Otherwise, the second vowel takes the tone mark

Worded differently,
 * 1) If there is an a, e, or o, it will take the tone mark; in the case of ao, the mark goes on the a
 * 2) Otherwise, the vowels are -iu or -ui, in which case the second vowel takes the tone mark

If the tone is written over an i, the above the i is omitted, as in yī.

Phonological intuition
The placement of the tone marker, when more than one of the written letters a, e, i, o, and u appears, can also be inferred from the nature of the vowel sound in the medial and final. The rule is that the tone marker goes on the spelled vowel that is not a (near-)semi-vowel. The exception is that, for triphthongs that are spelled with only two vowel letters, both of which are the semi-vowels, the tone marker goes on the second spelled vowel.

Specifically, if the spelling of a begins with i (as in ia) or u (as in ua), which serves as a near-, this letter does not take the tone marker. Likewise, if the spelling of a diphthong ends with o or u representing a near-semi-vowel (as in ao or ou), this letter does not receive a tone marker. In a spelled with three of a, e, i, o, and u (with i or u replaced by y or w at the start of a syllable), the first and third letters coincide with near-semi-vowels and hence do not receive the tone marker (as in iao or uai or iou). But if no letter is written to represent a triphthong's middle (non-semi-vowel) sound (as in ui or iu), then the tone marker goes on the final (second) vowel letter.

Using tone colors
In addition to and mark, tone color has been suggested as a visual aid for learning. Although there are no formal standards, there are a number of different color schemes in use.
 * Dummitt's color scheme was one of the first to be used. It is tone 1 - red, tone 2 - orange, tone 3 - green, tone 4 - blue, and neutral tone - black.
 * The Unimelb color scheme is tone 1 - blue, tone 2 - green, tone 3 - purple, tone 4 - red, neutral tone - grey
 * The Hanping color scheme is tone 1 - blue, tone 2 - green, tone 3 - orange, tone 4 - red, neutral tone - grey.
 * The Pleco color scheme is tone 1 - red, tone 2 - green, tone 3 - blue, tone 4 - purple, neutral tone - grey
 * The Thomas color scheme is tone 1 - green, tone 2 - blue, tone 3 - red, tone 4 - black, neutral tone - grey

Third tone exceptions
In spoken Chinese, the third tone is often pronounced as a "half third tone", in which the pitch does not rise. Additionally, when two third tones appear consecutively, such as in 你好 (nǐhǎo, hello), the first syllable is pronounced with the second tone — this is called. In pinyin, words like "hello" are still written with two third tones (nǐhǎo).

Letters
Pinyin differs from other romanizations in several aspects, such as the following:


 * Syllables starting with u are written as w in place of u (e.g., *uan is written as wan). Standalone u is written as wu.
 * Syllables starting with i are written as y in place of i (e.g., *ian is written as yan). Standalone i is written as yi.
 * Syllables starting with ü are written as yu in place of ü (e.g., *üe is written as yue).
 * ü is written as u when there is no ambiguity (such as ju, qu, and xu), but written as ü when there are corresponding u syllables (such as lü and nü). In such situations where there are corresponding u syllables, it is often replaced with v on a computer, making it easier to type on a standard keyboard.
 * When preceded by a consonant, iou, uei, and uen are simplified as iu, ui, and un (which do not represent the actual pronunciation).
 * As in zhuyin, what are actually pronounced as buo, puo, muo, and fuo are given a separate representation: bo, po, mo, and fo.
 * The (') is used before a syllable starting with a vowel (a, o, or e) in a multiple-syllable word when the syllable does not start the word (which is most commonly realized as ), unless the syllable immediately follows a  or other dash. This is done to remove ambiguity that could arise, as in , which consists of the two syllables xi  an, compared to such words as xian . (This ambiguity does not occur when tone marks are used: The two tone marks in "Xīān" unambiguously show that the word consists of two syllables. However, even with tone marks, the city is usually spelled with an apostrophe as "Xī'ān".)
 * Eh alone is written as ê; elsewhere as e. is always written as e.
 * zh, ch, and sh can be abbreviated as ẑ, ĉ, and ŝ (z, c, s with a ). However, the shorthands are rarely used due to difficulty of entering them on computers and are confined mainly to keyboard layouts. Early drafts and some published material used  instead: ' (/), ', ' (').
 * ng has the uncommon shorthand of  (which was also used in early drafts).
 * Early drafts also contained the letter ' or ', borrowed from the, in place of later j.
 * The letter v is unused (except in spelling foreign languages, languages of minority nationalities, and some dialects), despite a conscious effort to distribute letters more evenly than in Western languages. However, sometimes, for ease of typing into a computer, the v is used to replace a ü.

Most of the above are used to avoid ambiguity when writing words of more than one syllable in pinyin. For example, uenian is written as wenyan because it is not clear which syllables make up uenian; uen-ian, uen-i-an, and u-en-i-an are all possible combinations whereas wenyan is unambiguous because we, nya, etc. do not exist in pinyin. See the article for a summary of possible pinyin syllables (not including tones).

Words, capitalization, initialisms and punctuation
Although Chinese characters represent single syllables, Mandarin Chinese is a language. Spacing in pinyin is usually based on words, and not on single syllables. However, there are often ambiguities in partitioning a word. The Basic Rules of the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet Orthography were put into effect in 1988 by the National Educational Commission  and the National Language Commission. These rules became a Guobiao standard in 1996 and were updated in 2012.


 * 1) General
 * 2) Single meaning: Words with a single meaning, which are usually set up of two characters (sometimes one, seldom three), are written together and not capitalized: rén (, person); péngyou (, friend); qiǎokèlì (, chocolate)
 * 3) Combined meaning (2 or 3 characters): Same goes for words combined of two words to one meaning: hǎifēng (, sea breeze); wèndá (, question and answer); quánguó (, nationwide); chángyòngcí (, common words)
 * 4) Combined meaning (4 or more characters): Words with four or more characters having one meaning are split up with their original meaning if possible: wúfèng gāngguǎn (, seamless steel-tube); huánjìng bǎohù guīhuà (, environmental protection planning); gāoměngsuānjiǎ (, potassium permanganate)
 * 5) Duplicated words
 * 6) AA: Duplicated characters (AA) are written together: rénrén (, everybody), kànkan (, to have a look), niánnián (, every year)
 * 7) ABAB: Two characters duplicated (ABAB) are written separated: yánjiū yánjiū (, to study, to research), xuěbái xuěbái (, white as snow)
 * 8) AABB: Characters in the AABB schema are written together: láiláiwǎngwǎng (, come and go), qiānqiānwànwàn (, numerous)
 * 9) Prefixes and Suffixes : Words accompanied by prefixes such as fù (, vice), zǒng (, chief), fēi (, non-), fǎn (, anti-), chāo (, ultra-), lǎo (, old), ā (, used before names to indicate familiarity), kě (, -able), wú (, -less) and bàn (, semi-) and suffixes such as zi (, noun suffix), r (, diminutive suffix), tou (, noun suffix), xìng (, -ness, -ity), zhě (, -er, -ist), yuán (, person), jiā (, -er, -ist), shǒu (, person skilled in a field), huà (, -ize) and men (, plural marker) are written together: fùbùzhǎng (, vice minister), chéngwùyuán (, conductor), háizimen (, children)
 * 10) Nouns and names
 * 11) Words of position are separated: mén wài (, outdoor), hé li (, under the river), huǒchē shàngmian (, on the train), Huáng Hé yǐnán (, south of the Yellow River)
 * 12) Exceptions are words traditionally connected: tiānshang (, in the sky or outerspace), dìxia (, on the ground), kōngzhōng (, in the air), hǎiwài (, overseas)
 * 13) Surnames are separated from the given names, each capitalized: Lǐ Huá, Zhāng Sān . If the surname and/or given name consists of two syllables, it should be written as one: Zhūgě Kǒngmíng.
 * 14) Titles following the name are separated and are not capitalized: Wáng bùzhǎng (, Minister Wang), Lǐ xiānsheng (, Mr. Li), Tián zhǔrèn (, Director Tian), Zhào tóngzhì (, Comrade Zhao).
 * 15) The forms of addressing people with suffixes such as Lǎo, Xiǎo , Dà and Ā  are capitalized: Xiǎo Liú (, [young] Ms./Mr. Liu), Dà Lǐ (, [great; elder] Mr. Li), Ā Sān (, Ah San), Lǎo Qián (, [senior] Mr. ), Lǎo Wú (, [senior] Mr. Wu)
 * 16) Exceptions include Kǒngzǐ, Bāogōng , Xīshī , Mèngchángjūn
 * 17) Geographical names of China: Běijīng Shì (, city of ), Héběi Shěng (, province of ), Yālù Jiāng, Tài Shān , Dòngtíng Hú , Táiwān Hǎixiá
 * 18) Monosyllabic prefixes and suffixes are written together with their related part: Dōngsì Shítiáo (, Dongsi 10th Alley)
 * 19) Common geographical nouns that have become part of proper nouns are written together: Hēilóngjiāng
 * 20) Non-Chinese names are written in Hanyu Pinyin: Āpèi Āwàngjìnměi ; Dōngjīng
 * 21) Verbs : Verbs and their suffixes -zhe, -le or -guo ( are written as one: kànzhe (, seeing), jìnxíngguo (, have been implemented). Le as it appears in the end of a sentence is separated though: Huǒchē dào le. (, The train [has] arrived).
 * 22) Verbs and their objects are separated: kàn xìn (, read a letter), chī yú (, eat fish), kāi wánxiào (, to be kidding).
 * 23) If verbs and their complements are each monosyllabic, they are written together; if not, they are separated: gǎohuài (, to make broken), dǎsǐ (, hit to death), huàwéi (, to become), zhěnglǐ hǎo (, to sort out), gǎixiě wéi (, to rewrite as)
 * 24) Adjectives : A monosyllabic adjective and its reduplication are written as one: mēngmēngliàng (, dim), liàngtángtáng (, shining bright)
 * 25) Complements of size or degree such as xiē, yīxiē , diǎnr and yīdiǎnr  are written separated: dà xiē , a little bigger), kuài yīdiǎnr (, a bit faster)
 * 26) Pronouns
 * 27) Personal pronouns and interrogative pronouns are separated from other words: Wǒ ài Zhōngguó. (, I love China); Shéi shuō de? (, Who said it?)
 * 28) The demonstrative pronoun zhè (, this), nà (, that) and the question pronoun nǎ (, which) are separated: zhè rén (, this person), nà cì huìyì (, that meeting), nǎ zhāng bàozhǐ (, which newspaper)
 * 29) Exception—If zhè, nà or nǎ are followed by diǎnr, bān , biān , shí , huìr , lǐ , me or the general classifier ge , they are written together: nàlǐ (, there), zhèbiān (, over here), zhège (, this)
 * 30) Numerals and measure words
 * 31) Numbers and words like gè (, each), měi (, each), mǒu (, any), běn (, this), gāi (, that), wǒ (, my, our) and nǐ (, your) are separated from the measure words following them: liǎng gè rén (, two people), gè guó (, every nation), měi nián (, every year), mǒu gōngchǎng (, a certain factory), wǒ xiào (, our school)
 * 32) Numbers up to 100 are written as single words: sānshísān (, thirty-three). Above that, the hundreds, thousands, etc. are written as separate words: jiǔyì qīwàn èrqiān sānbǎi wǔshíliù (, nine hundred million, seventy-two thousand, three hundred fifty-six). Arabic numerals are kept as Arabic numerals: 635 fēnjī (, extension 635)
 * 33) According to 汉语拼音正词法基本规则 6.1.5.4, the dì used in s is followed by a hyphen: dì - yī (, first), dì - 356 (, 356th). The hyphen should not be used if the word in which dì (第) and the numeral appear does not refer to an ordinal number in the context. For example: Dìwǔ (, a ). The chū  in front of numbers one to ten is written together with the number: chūshí (, tenth day)
 * 34) Numbers representing month and day are hyphenated: wǔ-sì, yīèr-jiǔ
 * 35) Words of approximations such as duō, lái and jǐ  are separated from numerals and measure words: yībǎi duō gè (, around a hundred); shí lái wàn gè (, around a hundred thousand); jǐ jiā rén (, a few families)
 * 36) Shíjǐ (, more than ten) and jǐshí (, tens) are written together: shíjǐ gè rén (, more than ten people); jǐshí (, tens of steel pipes)
 * 37) Approximations with numbers or units that are close together are hyphenated: sān-wǔ tiān (, three to five days), qiān-bǎi cì (, thousands of times)
 * 38) Other function words are separated from other words
 * 39) Adverbs : hěn hǎo (, very good), zuì kuài (, fastest), fēicháng dà (, extremely big)
 * 40) Prepositions : zài qiánmiàn (, in front)
 * 41) Conjunctions : nǐ hé wǒ (, you and I/me), Nǐ lái háishi bù lái? (, Are you coming or not?)
 * 42) "Constructive auxiliaries" such as de, zhī  and suǒ : mànmàn de zou , go slowly)
 * 43) A monosyllabic word can also be written together with de : wǒ de shū / wǒde shū (, my book)
 * 44) Modal auxiliaries at the end of a sentence: Nǐ zhīdào ma? (, Do you know?), Kuài qù ba! (, Go quickly!)
 * 45) Exclamations and interjections: À! Zhēn měi!, Oh, it's so beautiful!)
 * 46) Onomatopoeia: mó dāo huòhuò (, honing a knife), hōnglōng yī shēng (, rumbling)
 * 47) Capitalization
 * 48) The first letter of the first word in a sentence is capitalized: Chūntiān lái le. (, Spring has arrived.)
 * 49) The first letter of each line in a poem is capitalized.
 * 50) The first letter of a proper noun is capitalized: Běijīng (, Beijing), Guójì Shūdiàn (, International Bookstore), Guójiā Yǔyán Wénzì Gōngzuò Wěiyuánhuì (, National Language Commission)
 * 51) On some occasions, proper nouns can be written in : BĚIJĪNG, GUÓJÌ SHŪDIÀN, GUÓJIĀ YǓYÁN WÉNZÌ GŌNGZUÒ WĚIYUÁNHUÌ
 * 52) If a proper noun is written together with a common noun to make a proper noun, it is capitalized. If not, it is not capitalized: Fójiào (, Buddhism), Tángcháo (, Tang dynasty), jīngjù (, Beijing opera), chuānxiōng
 * 53) Initialisms
 * 54) Single words are abbreviated by taking the first letter of each character of the word: Beǐjīng (, Beijing) → BJ
 * 55) A group of words are abbreviated by taking the first letter of each word in the group: guójiā biāozhǔn (, Guobiao standard) → GB
 * 56) Initials can also be indicated using full stops: Beǐjīng → B.J., guójiā biāozhǔn → G.B.
 * 57) When abbreviating names, the surname is written fully (first letter capitalized or in all caps), but only the first letter of each character in the given name is taken, with full stops after each initial: Lǐ Huá → Lǐ H. or LǏ H., Zhūgě Kǒngmíng  → Zhūgě K. M. or ZHŪGĚ K. M.
 * 58) Line Wrapping
 * 59) Words can only be split by the character: guāngmíng (, bright) → guāng- míng, not gu- āngmíng
 * 60) Initials cannot be split: Wáng J. G. → Wáng J. G., not Wáng J.- G.
 * 61) Apostrophes are removed in line wrapping: Xī'ān (, Xi'an) → Xī- ān, not Xī- 'ān
 * 62) When the original word has a hyphen, the hyphen is added at the beginning of the new line: chēshuǐ-mǎlóng (, heavy traffic: "carriage, water, horse, dragon") → chēshuǐ- -mǎlóng
 * 63) Hyphenation: In addition to the situations mentioned above, there are four situations where hyphens are used.
 * 64) Coordinate and disjunctive compound words, where the two elements are conjoined or opposed, but retain their individual meaning: gōng-jiàn (, bow and arrow), kuài-màn (, speed: "fast-slow"), shíqī-bā suì (, 17–18 years old), dǎ-mà (, beat and scold), Yīng-Hàn (, English-Chinese [dictionary]), Jīng-Jīn (, Beijing-Tianjin), lù-hǎi-kōngjūn (, army-navy-airforce).
 * 65) Abbreviated compounds : gōnggòng guānxì (, public relations) → gōng-guān (, PR), chángtú diànhuà (, long-distance calling) → cháng-huà (, LDC). Exceptions are made when the abbreviated term has become established as a word in its own right, as in chūzhōng for chūjí zhōngxué (, junior high school). Abbreviations of proper-name compounds, however, should always be hyphenated: Běijīng Dàxué  → Běi-Dà (, PKU).
 * fēngpíng-làngjìng, calm and tranquil: "wind calm, waves down"), huījīn-rútǔ (, spend money like water: "throw gold like dirt"), zhǐ-bǐ-mò-yàn (, paper-brush-ink-inkstone [four coordinate words]). (The AA-BB reduplication above is an instance of this.)
 * 1) Other idioms are separated according to the words that make up the idiom: bēi hēiguō (, to be made a scapegoat: "to carry a black pot"), zhǐ xǔ zhōuguān fànghuǒ, bù xǔ bǎixìng diǎndēng (, Gods may do what cattle may not: "only the official is allowed to light the fire; the commoners are not allowed to light a lamp")
 * 2) Punctuation
 * 3) The Chinese full stop (. ) is changed to a western full stop (.)
 * 4) The hyphen is a half-width hyphen (-)
 * 5) Ellipsis can be changed from 6 dots (......) to 3 dots (...)
 * 6) The (、) is changed to a normal comma
 * 7) All other punctuation marks are the same as the ones used in normal texts

Comparison with other orthographies
Pinyin is now used by foreign students learning Chinese as a second language, as well as Bopomofo.

Pinyin assigns some Latin letters sound values which are quite different from that of most languages. This has drawn some criticism as it may lead to confusion when uninformed speakers apply either native or English assumed pronunciations to words. However, this problem is not limited only to pinyin, since many languages that use the Latin alphabet natively also assign different values to the same letters. A recent study on Chinese writing and literacy concluded, "By and large, pinyin represents the Chinese sounds better than the system, and does so with fewer extra marks."

Because Pinyin is purely a representation of the sounds of Mandarin, it completely lacks the cues and contexts inherent in s. Pinyin is also unsuitable for transcribing some  other than Mandarin, languages which by contrast have traditionally been written with Han characters allowing for written communication which, by its unified semanto-phonetic orthography, could theoretically be readable in any of the various vernaculars of Chinese where a phonetic script would have only localized utility.

Usage
Pinyin superseded older such as  (1859; modified 1892) and, and replaced  as the method of Chinese phonetic instruction in. The ISO adopted pinyin as the standard romanization for modern Chinese in 1982 (ISO 7098:1982, superseded by ISO 7098:2015). The followed suit in 1986. It has also been accepted by the, the United States's , the , and many other international institutions.

The spelling of Chinese geographical or personal names in pinyin has become the most common way to transcribe them in English. Pinyin has also become the dominant method for in Mainland China, in contrast to Taiwan; where  is most commonly used.

Families outside of Taiwan who speak Mandarin as a mother tongue use pinyin to help children associate characters with spoken words which they already know. outside of Taiwan who speak some other language as their mother tongue use the system to teach children Mandarin pronunciation when they learn vocabulary in.

Since 1958, pinyin has been actively used in as well, making it easier for formerly  to continue with self-study after a short period of pinyin literacy instruction.

Pinyin has become a tool for many foreigners to learn Mandarin pronunciation, and is used to explain both the grammar and spoken Mandarin coupled with s. Books containing both Chinese characters and pinyin are often used by foreign learners of Chinese. Pinyin's role in teaching pronunciation to foreigners and children is similar in some respects to -based books (with letters written above or next to, directly analogous to ) in  or fully  texts in  ("vocalised Arabic").

The tone-marking diacritics are commonly omitted in popular news stories and even in scholarly works. This results in some degree of ambiguity as to which words are being represented.

Computer input systems
Simple computer systems, able to display only 7-bit text (essentially the 26 Latin letters, 10 digits, and punctuation marks), long provided a convincing argument for using unaccented pinyin instead of Chinese characters. Today, however, most computer systems are able to display characters from Chinese and many other writing systems as well, and have them entered with a Latin keyboard using an editor. Alternatively, some, s, and s allow users to input characters graphically by writing with a , with concurrent online.

Pinyin with accents can be entered with the use of special keyboard layouts or various utilities. includes a "Hanyu Pinyin (altgr)" layout for -triggered input of accented characters.

Pinyin in Taiwan
Taiwan adopted , a modification of Hanyu Pinyin, as the official romanization system on the national level between October 2002 and January 2009, when it decided to promote Hanyu Pinyin. Tongyong Pinyin ("common phonetic"), a romanization system developed in Taiwan, was designed to romanize languages and dialects spoken on the island in addition to Mandarin Chinese. The (KMT) party resisted its adoption, preferring the Hanyu Pinyin system used in  and in general use internationally. Romanization preferences quickly became associated with issues of national identity. Preferences split along party lines: the KMT and its affiliated parties in the pan-blue coalition supported the use of Hanyu Pinyin while the and its affiliated parties in the pan-green coalition favored the use of Tongyong Pinyin.

Tongyong Pinyin was made the official system in an administrative order that allowed its adoption by local governments to be voluntary. Locales in, and other areas use romanizations derived from  for some district and street names. A few localities with governments controlled by the KMT, most notably, , and , overrode the order and converted to Hanyu Pinyin before the January 1, 2009 national-level decision, though with a slightly different capitalization convention than mainland China. Most areas of Taiwan adopted Tongyong Pinyin, consistent with the national policy. Today, many street signs in Taiwan are using Tongyong Pinyin-derived romanizations, but some, especially in northern Taiwan, display Hanyu Pinyin-derived romanizations. It is not unusual to see spellings on street signs and buildings derived from the older, and other systems.

The adoption of Hanyu Pinyin as the official romanization system in Taiwan does not preclude the official retention of earlier spellings. International familiarity has led to the retention of the spelling  ("Taibei" in pinyin systems) and even to its continuation in the name of, a municipality created in 2010. Personal names on Taiwanese passports honor the choices of Taiwanese citizens, who often prefer the Wade–Giles romanization of their personal names, though the official online conversion tool lists pinyin before other systems. Transition to Hanyu Pinyin in official use is also necessarily gradual. Universities and other government entities retain earlier spellings in long-established names, and budget restraints preclude widespread replacement of signage and stationery in every area. Primary education in Taiwan continues to teach pronunciation using  (MPS or Mandarin Phonetic Symbols).

Pinyin for other languages
Pinyin-like systems have been devised for other variants of Chinese. is a set of romanizations devised by the government of province for, ,  , and. All of these are designed to use Latin letters in a similar way to pinyin.

In addition, in accordance to the Regulation of Phonetic Transcription in Hanyu Pinyin Letters of Place Names in Minority Nationality Languages promulgated in 1976, place names in non-Han languages like, , and  are also officially transcribed using pinyin in a system adopted by the State Administration of Surveying and Mapping and Geographical Names Committee known as. The pinyin letters (26 Roman letters, plus ü and ê) are used to approximate the non-Han language in question as closely as possible. This results in spellings that are different from both the customary spelling of the place name, and the pinyin spelling of the name in Chinese:

 was developed in Taiwan for use in rendering not only Mandarin Chinese, but other languages and dialects spoken on the island such as, , and.