Transliteration of Chinese
Many forms of Chinese have been written with scripts other than Chinese characters. Here is a short, easy-to-understand overview of the main systems.
- General Chinese: A diaphonemic writing system created by Yuen Ren Chao to show the pronunciations of China's major varieties at once. It isn’t purely Romanization and has two forms: (1) Chinese characters used as a syllabary of about 2,082 glyphs, and (2) a romanization-style system similar in spelling to Gwoyeu Romatzyh. It can also be used for the Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese readings of Chinese characters.
- Guānhuà zìmǔ (Guanhua alphabet): The first alphabetic Chinese script, created by Wang Zhao. It was modeled on Japanese katakana and based on parts of Chinese characters. It was banned in 1901. Lao Naixuan later adapted it for Ningbo and Suzhou Wu dialects, which sparked a major debate: teaching literacy in local dialects could threaten China’s linguistic unity. This opposition helped block alphabetic scripts in China.
- Zhuyin Fuhao (bopomofo): A phonetic system developed from Jiyin Zimu and proclaimed in 1918. It uses unique symbols placed beside Chinese text and is not Latin-based. Because it is used for phonetic transcription, people often group it with romanization, even though it isn’t.
- Holo Taiwanese under Japanese rule: A katakana-based system used to write Holo Taiwanese as a phonetic guide to Chinese characters, similar to furigana in Japanese.
- Tao HanZi Yin: Pronunciation letters created in 1939 for a Cantonese dictionary.
- Phags-pa: An alphabet created for the Yuan dynasty to unify languages across the empire. It helps with historical Chinese pronunciation but does not indicate tones.
- Manchu and Mongolian scripts: The Manchu alphabet was used to write Chinese in the Qing dynasty; in Inner Mongolia, Mongolian script is used to transliterate Chinese.
- Xiao’erjing: Arabic letters used to write Chinese for some Muslim communities (mostly Hui, and also Dongxiang and Salar). The Dungan people in Central Asia later switched to Latin and then Cyrillic scripts.
- Romanization systems: Many schemes exist. Pinyin, introduced widely in 1982, is the most common today. Earlier systems include Wade-Giles and Yale. Some Cyrillic-based transcriptions (Cyrillisation) exist for Chinese, used for languages like Dungan, which now uses Cyrillic.
- Cyrillic and other scripts: Some languages use Cyrillic to represent Chinese pronunciation. There are also systems for transliterating Chinese into Cyrillic for other languages.
- Braille: Chinese is written in several braille systems. Mainland Chinese Braille and Two-Cell Chinese Braille are used in the mainland; Taiwanese Braille is used in Taiwan. Chinese braille typically writes syllables with 1–3 cells (initial, final, and tone), though tone is often omitted. Taiwanese Braille adjusts many consonants from international braille standards and uses a semi-syllabary approach.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 21:04 (CET).