Every Mandarin learner and every parent of a Mandarin learner needs to know what pinyin is. Here is a definition of pinyin (pronounced "ping-ing") and some related information from Chinahighlights.com:
From chinahighlights.com:
Pinyin means to join together, or spell out, sounds. Pinyin was developed for Chinese speakers and those learning standard Chinese pronunciation, and is an efficient way of representing Chinese sounds with the Roman alphabet. It serves the same purpose as the international phonetic symbols used in dictionaries to show how English words are pronounced.
Pinyin was developed during the People’s Republic of China era (from 1949). It was first approved by the Chinese government in 1958, and the International Organization for Standardization adopted it as a world standard in 1982.
It is obvious that pinyin wasn’t developed for, and is often misunderstood by, the English-speaking world. This is in evidence whenever English speakers try to pronounce pinyin words without any previous study. About half the time letters in pinyin represent different sounds from what they would in a typical English word, and most of the time the vowels have peculiar sounds.
Pinyin is a very useful tool to learn to get around China. The Chinese view their characters as the true Chinese written language, but pinyin can be seen on many maps, road signs, and other notices. Pinyin is much easier to learn, use and remember than characters, particularly if tones are ignored. Pinyin notation can be thoroughly learnt in a few hours (though the tongue may not be fully trained in that time—that takes days or weeks of practice), but a working knowledge of Chinese characters (3,000 characters for basic literacy) takes years of hard study.
Find more of this article on pronunciation and pinyin from chinahighlights.com in the document section.
