Latinxua Sin Wenz is a historical set of romanizations for Chinese. Promoted as a revolutionary reform to combat illiteracy and replace Chinese characters, Sin Wenz distinctively does not indicate tones, for pragmatic reasons and to encourage the use of everyday colloquial language. Beifangxua Latinxua Sin Wenz, for Mandarin Chinese, was the original iteration, and a number of variations for various varieties of Chinese were developed by regional Sin Wenz associations.
An issue of Dazhung Bao (大衆報; Dàzhòng Bào), a Mandarin–Shanghainese newspaper published in Latinxua in 1938. The subtitle of Dhazung Bao is in a Shanghainese adaptation of Sin Wenz, where dh represents the voiced alveolar plosive /d/, and the zh initial does not exist. Sheqben is the Shanghainese romanization of 日本 "Japan", where sh represents the voiced alveolar fricative /z/, and q represents the glottal stop /ʔ/. The pronunciation Lusin instead of *
Giefang Rhbao — Jiefang Daily (pinyin: Jiěfàng Rìbào).
Hanyu Pinyin, or simply pinyin, is the most common romanization system for Standard Chinese. In official documents, it is referred to as the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet. It is the official system used in China, Singapore, Taiwan, and by the United Nations. Its use has become common when transliterating Standard Chinese mostly regardless of region, though it is less ubiquitous in Taiwan. It is used to teach Standard Chinese, normally written with Chinese characters, to students already familiar with the Latin alphabet. The system makes use of diacritics to indicate the four tones found in Standard Chinese, though these are often omitted in various contexts, such as when spelling Chinese names in non-Chinese texts, or when writing non-Chinese words in Chinese-language texts. Pinyin is also used by various input methods on computers and to categorize entries in some Chinese dictionaries. Hànyǔ literally means 'Han language'—meaning, the Chinese language—while pinyin literally means 'spelled sounds'.
On the facade of this kindergarten in Zhengzhou, Henan, both simplified characters and Hanyu Pinyin are used.
A slogan written on a school wall featuring pinyin annotations without tonal marks or word grouping