Pinyin

nyin (Chinese: 拼音; pinyin: pīnyīn; ) or formally Hanyu Pinyin (simplified Chinese: 汉语拼音; traditional Chinese: 漢語拼音; pinyin: Hànyǔ Pīnyīn) is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into Latin script in the People's Republic of China, Republic of China (Taiwan), and Singapore. It is often used to teach Standard Chinese and spell Chinese names in foreign publications and may be used as an input method to enter Chinese characters (汉字 / 漢字, hànzì ) into computers.

The pinyin system was developed in the 1950s based on earlier forms of romanization. It was published by the Chinese government in 1958 and revised several times. The International Organization for Standardization adopted pinyin as the international standard in 1982. The system was adopted as the official standard in Taiwan in 2009, where it is generally referred to as the New Phonetic System and is used for romanization alone rather than for educational and computer input purposes.

Hànyǔ means the spoken language of the Han people and pinyin literally means "spelled-out sounds." "Pinyin" is a shorthand form of "Pinyin wenzi" (Chinese: 拼音文字; pinyin: pīnyīn wénzì), which means "alphabetical writing system." "Hanyu pinyin wenzi" thus means "the alphabetical writing system for the Chinese language."