THE CHINESE ALPHABET
Chinese using the Latin alphabet

The Chinese Alphabet - The Chinese using the Latin alphabet

Regarding our earlier article "The Chinese alphabet: Where is it?" we have received a number of responses. Several people have pointed out that the Chinese actually do have an alphabet which is known to the educated people in China who use it for inputting Chinese characters on the computer. Now what is this "Chinese alphabet" and where can one get a hold of it? To be precise, the alphabet is the Latin alphabet and it cannot be called "Chinese." It is called pinyin, which simply means "spelling out the sounds" in Chinese. It is not an alphabet but a system of romanization. What this means is that any Chinese character can be written down with pinyin if needed. It provides, for example, a convenient method for writing Chinese on the computer. You type in the pinyin and then you get a list of characters that correspond to that sound. For example, if you type the letters "zhong" then you

get quite a few characters that have this sound, including "China," "center," "to hit the target," "to plant." Now you have to choose the character you wanted to write and it will be inserted into the text. Another use for pinyin is in teaching Chinese characters. When children begin to learn characters, it is sometimes easier to teach them the small number of letters in the Latin (i.e. English) alphabet and then proceed on to teaching the Chinese characters. The same is true for foreigners who learn to write Chinese easier if they have a romanized alphabet to assist them. In sum, pinyin is a system of transliteration and not the "Chinese alphabet" per se. It is always secondary to Chinese characters and has only limited use. Although there have been some attempts to write Chinese only in pinyin, these projects proved to be short-lived and now completely abandoned. Stephen Bekes The Chinese alphabet: Where is it? Origins of Chinese writing Chinese letters Chinese symbols for tattoos Chinese dictionaries