Box 7.1 Romanization of Chinese
In this volume, as in most news outlets, periodicals, and other non-Chinese-lan-
guage publications, Chinese is rendered in a Romanization system called “pinyin” (lit-
erally “spell sound”) or Hanyu pinyin. Throughout the centuries of contact between
China and Europe, several Romanization systems (or rendering Chinese in Roman
letters) have been established, used, and eventually discarded. Even today there is
no universally shared system, though pinyin seems to have emerged on top.
Pinyin is specifically a Romanization system for Mandarin Chinese, or Putonghua
(“common dialect”), and there are different systems for Romanizing other major Chi-
nese dialects like Cantonese. Mandarin is the most common dialect spoken in the
People’s Republic of China (PRC) and originates from an amalgam of northern dia-
lects that came to be the language of scholar-officials in imperial China. Chinese offi-
cials came from all over the realm and spoke many different dialects. Speaking a
standard guanhua (“official’s speech”) helped smooth daily operations. Early Jesuit
visitors to China translated guanhua as “Mandarin,” since a mandarin was a term for a
high official. This eventually led to the Western name for the current standard Chinese
dialect. While the Romanization system used by these Jesuits did not stand the test of
time, they do have a couple particularly prominent legacies in Romanization. As they
translated the classic Chinese texts into Latin, several names occurred constantly,
and they decided to render these with Latin endings, perhaps for the reader’s com-
fort; so today instead of Kong Fuzi and Mengzi, we have the very un-Chinese-sound-
ing names of Confucius and Mencius, which continue to be used in most Western
references to the philosophers.
Mandarin pinyin, or Hanyu pinyin, was established systematically and completely
by the linguist Zhou Youguang (1906–2017) in the 1950s, and it was subsequently
adopted in the PRC, and gradually around the world. Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the
overseas Chinese community have been slow to completely adopt pinyin for a combi-
nation of reasons, including dialect differences and political implications of a PRC
Romanization system. The system is nonetheless commonplace to the Western
reader today and used in newspapers of record and official communications, though
it still may involve some confusion about uncommon pronunciations of some of the
letters used.
Abbreviated Pinyin Pronunciation Guide
C is pronounced like the “ts” in “cats.”
Z is pronounced like the “ds” in “kids.”
X is pronounced like “sh” but with the tip of the tongue a bit closer to the front teeth.
Zh is pronounced like a “j” sound.
Q is pronounced like a “ch” sound.
These are just a few of the unfamiliar pronunciations of consonants in pinyin
Romanization, and you can find a full pronunciation guide at this link:
http://www.ctcfl.ox.ac.uk/Pinyin_Notes.htm