From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hanyu Pinyin (simplified Chinese: 汉语拼音;
traditional Chinese: 漢語拼音;
pinyin: HànyǔPīnyīn;
[pʰín ín]) is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into Latin script in the People's Republic of China, Republic of China (Taiwan),[1] 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.[2] The International Organization for Standardization adopted pinyin as the international standard in 1982.[3] 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.[4][5]
Hànyǔ means the spoken language of the Han people and pinyin literally means "spelled sound" (phonetics).[6] The opposite process, transcription into Chinese characters, has only a semi-official standard with many irregularities given the number of homophones in Mandarin Chinese. Thanks to Wikipedia for that definition.
The words that I see on street signs around town are versions of Pinyin. Just like on the website www.chinese-tools.com
that has the English translation followed by Chinese characters and then the Pinyin to aid in pronunciation.
Yesterday Chuck and I took a walking tour around our neighborhood for a few hours. You can see video of some of it on Chuck’s blog. The funny thing to me is how many liquor stores we passed by. You just get used to it while you are here, but in the video it seemed like every block had at least one liquor store, sometimes two. We went to a market and got the much sought after rain boots. I of course got purple ones. Anyone that knows me surprised by that; didn’t think so.
We are staying in today I think. Chuck, is running a low fever and I’m not feeling well in my stomach, I think I ate or drank something that doesn’t agree with me.
Anyway I put pictures of our walking trip on my picture page, go check them out and you can see our neighborhood. Also check out the video that Chuck @ http://adventureinchina.weebly.com/chucks-blog.html put on his blog. Well let me get back to laundry and Nate’s school for the day.
Here is a link to a map in English that I found last night online. You can follow where we are in the city when we walk somewhere. http://www.chinatouristmaps.com/city/zhengzhou/full-map.html
Until tomorrow…