Pinyin

Pinyin is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet for the purposes of teaching Mandarin Chinese. It is also often used to spell Chinese names in foreign publications and used as an input method to enter Chinese characters (汉字 / 漢字, hànzì) into computers. It is thus indispensable for learners of modern Chinese. Almost all text books will use it as a guide to pronunciation, even if they teach the Chinese characters alongside it.

Although pinyin may look vauguely like English, with perhaps the exception of no u after q and the dots above the u (ü), which function as they do in German, the following letters are rather different to their English counterparts: c, ch, j, q, r, sh, z and zh. There is also one vast difference to English: all vowels in Chinese are pronounced in one of five tones, which are indicated with an accent (or lack of accent) on the vowel - ā, á, ǎ, à, a. The best way to experience these differences is with a table of all possible pinyin syllables, each with an audio clip — see links below.

Introduction to Pinyin

• Chinese Phonetics - Google Knol
• Pinyin - Wikipedia

Pinyin Table

• Pinyin, Pinyin Table
• Arch Chinese - Chinese Pinyin Table,Chinese Pronunciation, 

Pinyin Input

• Pinyin Text Editor: write “ni3hao3”, get “nǐhǎo”.

Pinyin Practice

• Pinyin Practice ~ Tones
• Tone Drill
• Tone Game