Posted 2017/5/16
There is no true alphabet in written Chinese; instead a system of characters is used, with each character representing a different word or syllable.
However, Chinese can be written using English letters (called Romanization - conversion to a Roman alphabet). The most widely accepted system for Mandarin Chinese today is Hanyu Pinyin, used by mainland China.
While Pinyin is the most accurate system and is helpful, keep in mind that no system is perfect, and it is only a system used for learning to pronounce Chinese using English letters.
Many letters are pronounced as you would expect, however, there are a decent number of occasions where this is not the case. For example, the common Chinese last names “Yang” and “Wang” are NOT pronounced “a” as in “bang,” rather more like “a” as in “father.”
There are four tones in Mandarin Chinese, as indicated by the number after each Pinyin word. When learning to speak Chinese, tones are considered by many as one of the most challenging aspects. Each word must be spoken at the right pitch or the meaning is changed, and probably will be misunderstood.
