Pinyin is a system of romanizing Chinese characters ... There are five different tones: Though most native speakers will be able to understand what you mean if you don’t use tones based on ...

“some of the Cantonese tones are derived from classical Chinese, which was developed over a thousand years ago.” Zhou Youguang, whose Pinyin writing system helped modernise China, dies at 111 ...

But nearly every Chinese character can be represented in Hanyu Pinyin using a combination of initials, finals and tones. When writing the first draft of his Hanyu Pinyin proposal, Zhou remembers ...

Mandarin characters don't give us the sound of a word, so the Chinese invented ... tones plus a neutral tone, we can create every sound in the Mandarin language. Many pinyin sounds are similar ...