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 ...

In 1958, a brand new writing system was introduced in China called Pinyin. It used the Roman alphabet to help simplify Chinese characters into words. The mastermind behind Pinyin was a professor ...

A portrait taken in Beijing in 1974 of Chinese prime minister Zhou Enlai. In 1955, Zhou Enlai invited Zhou Youguang to simplify Chinese characters and devise a new alphabet, so that Mandarin could be ...