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Modern Han Chinese consists of about 412 syllables [1] in 5 tones, so homophones abound and most non-Han words have multiple possible transcriptions. This is particularly true since Chinese is written as monosyllabic logograms, and consonant clusters foreign to Chinese must be broken into their constituent sounds (or omitted), despite being thought of as a single unit in their original language.
In China, letters of the English alphabet are pronounced somewhat differently because they have been adapted to the phonetics (i.e. the syllable structure) of the Chinese language. The knowledge of this spelling may be useful when spelling Western names, especially over the phone, as one may not be understood if the letters are pronounced as ...
A 17th-century European map using the then-typical transcription of Chinese place names. Note the systematic use of x where pinyin has sh, si where Pinyin has xi, and qu (stylized qv) where Pinyin uses gu A Taiwanese passport, with the name of the bearer (Lin Mei-hua) romanized for international intelligibility
Where this is not the pinyin transliteration there should be a redirect to the article from the pinyin name. When a group uses a translated name, the Chinese characters should always be included, because there is not always a 1:1 correspondence of terms between Chinese and English.
Hanyu Pinyin, or simply pinyin, officially the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet, is the most common romanization system for Standard Chinese. Hanyu ( 汉语 ; 漢語 ) literally means ' Han language'—that is, the Chinese language—while pinyin literally means 'spelled sounds'.
Taiwanese politician Mei Feng had criticised the official English name of the state, "Republic of China", for failing to translate the Chinese character "Min" (Chinese: 民; English: people) according to Sun Yat-sen's original interpretations, while the name should instead be translated as "the People's Republic of China", which confuses with ...
Chinese names also form the basis for many common Cambodian, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese surnames, and to an extent, Filipino surnames in both translation and transliteration into those languages. The conception of China as consisting of the "old hundred families" (Chinese: 老百姓; pinyin: Lǎo Bǎi Xìng; lit.
It is often helpful to include the original characters for Chinese-language names, terms, or phrases upon their initial mention in an article. There are many distinct Chinese words and names with similar or identical romanisations, and translations of Chinese terms into English may be inexact or easily conflated without additional context.