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( Hanyu Pinyin)
Pinyin (Simplified / Traditional Chinese??), or more formally Hanyu Pinyin (???? / ????), is currently the most commonly used romanization system for Standard Mandarin. Hànyu (?? / ??) means the Chinese language, and Pinyin (??) means "phonetics", or more literally, "spelling sound" or "spelled sound".[1] The system is now used in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, parts of Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore to teach Mandarin Chinese to schoolchildren[2] and internationally to teach Mandarin as a second language. It is also often used to spell Chinese names in foreign publications and can be used to enter Chinese characters (hanzi) on computers and cellphones. The romanization system was developed by a government committee in the People's Republic of China (PRC), and approved by the Chinese government on February 11, 1958.[3] The International Organization for Standardization adopted pinyin as the international standard in 1982,[4] and since then it has been adopted by many other organizations. This romanization system also became the national standard in the Republic of China (ROC, commonly known as Taiwan) on January 1, 2009.[5][6] In 1954, the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China (PRC) created a Committee for the Reform of the Chinese Written Language. This committee developed Hanyu pinyin based upon several preexisting systems (Gwoyeu Romatzyh of 1928, Latinxua Sin Wenz of 1931, and the diacritic markings from zhuyin).[7] The main force behind pinyin was Zhou Youguang.[8] Zhou was working in a New York bank when he decided to return to China to help rebuild the country after establishment of the PRC in 1949. He became an economics professor in Shanghai and was assigned to help the development of a new romanization system. A first draft was published on February 12, 1956. The first edition of Hanyu pinyin was approved and adopted at the Fifth Session of the 1st National People's Congress on February 11, 1958. It was then introduced to primary schools as a way to teach Standard Mandarin pronunciation and used to improve the literacy rate among adults. In 2001, the Chinese Government issued the National Common Language Law, providing a legal basis for applying pinyin.[9]
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