Unlike many other languages, Chinese does not actually use a letter system. Each Chinese word is a combination of lines that create the word. However, Chinese does have two systems that help the language learner (native or not) learn how to pronounce these new words.
Pinyin is the system of “spelling” out sounds that is used in China. They use the letters of the Roman alphabet to spell out the sounds of each of the words. Since Chinese is a tonal language, meaning that different tones of the same sound have different meanings, the vowels have different “accents” on them. Pinyin uses all 26 letters of the American/Roman alphabet. An example of these different tones can be seen in the letters below:
- mā (meaning mom)
- mǎ (meaning horse)
- má (meaning to fall asleep or be anesthetized, as in “my foot fell asleep”)
- mà (to scold)
The same goes for E, I, O, and U. The letter V is also used as a vowel.
Bopomofo or zhuyin is the other system of “spelling” sounds. It uses a series of unique symbols, each representing a sound in the Chinese language. They are split into three main groups. The first is for sounds at the beginning of a word only, the second is for those at the end, and the last is for those that can serve both functions. There are a total of 37 “letters” in this alphabet system. To emphasize the tones of the words with this system, a simple line or check is added to the right of the word.
These two alphabet systems do directly translate. Each bopomofo “letter” can be easily changed to pinyin, and vice versa.
