Pinyin: Chinese Phonetic Alphabet

Chinese Phonetic Alphabet
汉语拼音方案
 Hànyǔǔ Pīnyīn Fāng'àn.

On February 11, 1958, the fifth plenary session of the NPC national of the People's Republic of China of the first legislature adopted "the phonetic transcription of the Chinese language project (1).

By this action the Assembly made official the Chinese phonetic alphabet based on the latin alphabet developed by the Committee on reform of the Chinese written language. Thus it became possible to use a Chinese standard for phonetically write the Chinese characters of the common language, Putonghua or language of the Han.

This standard was subsequently recognized in 1982 as spelling of Chinese language standard by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

The phonetic alphabet proves to be an indispensable tool for foreigners who want to learn Chinese. But it is necessarily used by children from elementary schools in China to learn Chinese characters. It is found now in most editions of the Chinese dictionaries, mainly those intended for foreigners.

1. English : Scheme for the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet
Chinese: 汉语拼音方案 Hànyǔ Pīnyīn Fāng'àn