Pinyin

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The Chinese Phonetic Alphabet, commonly called Hanyu Pinyin or simply pinyin (pīnyīn), is the most common romanization system for Standard Chinese. Hanyu literally means 'Han language' — that is, the Chinese language — while pinyin literally means 'spelled sounds'. Pinyin is the official romanization system used in China, Singapore and the United Nations. Its use has become the standard method for transliterating Standard Chinese in most regions, though it is less commonly used in Taiwan. It is employed to teach Standard Chinese, normally written with Chinese characters, to students in mainland China and Singapore. Pinyin is also used by various input methods on computers and to categorize entries in some Chinese dictionaries. In pinyin, each Chinese syllable is spelled in terms of an optional initial and a final, each of which is represented by one or more letters. Initials are initial consonants, whereas finals are all possible combinations of medials (semivowels coming before the vowel...

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