pinyin

American  

[pin-yin] / ˈpɪnˈyɪn /

noun

(sometimes initial capital letter)

1. a system for transliterating Chinese into the Latin alphabet: introduced in 1958 and adopted as the official system of romanization by the People's Republic of China in 1979.

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Pinyin British  

/ ˈpɪnˈjɪn /

noun

1. a system of romanized spelling developed in China in 1958: used to transliterate Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet

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Etymology

Origin of pinyin

First recorded in 1960–65; Chinese (Mandarin) pīnyīn literally “phonetic spelling,” equivalent to pīn “arrange, classify” + yīn “sound, pronunciation”

Example Sentences

When Chinese words are written using the English-language alphabet, one of two systems is typically used: pinyin or Wade-Giles.

From Textbooks • Dec. 14, 2022

The city’s name is now spelled Nanjing under the pinyin romanization system.

From Seattle Times • Dec. 12, 2021

New versions of the article, in attempts to evade censors, have proliferated, from one partly written in emojis to another done in morse code, as well as pinyin, the romanisation system for Mandarin.

From The Guardian • Mar. 11, 2020

The Romanization of Chinese words in the pinyin system makes them very hard to recognize unless you’ve learned the rules of pinyin while studying Chinese.

From New York Times • Sep. 15, 2014

Song Xiaowen Zhongli City, Taiwan Students of putonghua, or Mandarin Chinese, need to learn not just a romanization system like pinyin but also simplified and complex Chinese characters.

From Time Magazine Archive