Have you ever felt lost when trying to pronounce or understand a Chinese name? Well, you're not alone. It's a challenge many of us face, and it stems from the way Chinese names are romanized using ...

Mandarin Chinese is spoken by over a billion people across Asia and around the globe, making it a useful language for travelers to know. Learning pinyin, which romanizes Chinese characters, can ...

The phonetic alphabet developed by Zhou Youguang, pinyin, turns 50 this month, having helped up to a billion Chinese citizens to learn to read, write and in many cases speak the national language. The ...

Hanyu Pinyin, or the Chinese phonetic system, will celebrate its 50th anniversary on Monday (Feb. 11). One billion Chinese have used it to learn mandarin since the first edition of pinyin was issued ...

Mandarin characters don’t tell you how to pronounce a word. They are more like pictures that represent an object or an idea. Burt: Correct! Mandarin characters don’t give us the sound of a word, so ...

Between 1993 and 1995, I taught English in Hsinchu for the China External Trade Development Council (CETRA). CETRA is now the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) and its name change ...

Zhou Youguang, a linguist considered the father of pinyin, a system of Latin letters for reading and writing standard Chinese, died on Saturday at his home in Beijing at age 111, one day after his ...

FEW people live to 111. Fewer still leave as big a mark on linguistic lives as Zhou Youguang, who died on January 14th. Mr Zhou was the chief architect of pinyin, the system that the Chinese use to ...

So begins one of the most beautiful and well-known Tang dynasty poems, Farewell, composed by Wang Wei (AD699-761). To spell out this passage using Hanyu pinyin, mainland China’s official system of ...

Gugong, or the Forbidden City, is one of the most popular tourist spots in China. Su Yang / For China Daily Chinese words and terms are being used increasingly in media reports in the world's eight ...