First, we must know what is Pinyin 拼音. According to Wikipedia, Pinyin (Chinese: 拼音; pinyin: pīnyīn; [pʰín ín]) or formally Hanyu Pinyin (simplified Chinese: 汉语拼音; traditional Chinese: 漢語拼音; pinyin: Hànyǔ Pīnyīn) 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 and Malaysia too.
Pinyin is to help you to pronounce the Chinese words by romanization of the Chinese characters. It will help you to say Chinese words but not help you to recognise the Chinese character. That you will need to memorise bit by bit.
So, you can speak but you cannot read. You can understand through listening, but you will not be able to write. For those who would just want to communicate through Chinese and does not want to learn how to read or write, then Pinyin will be sufficient.
But if you travel to China where everything is in Chinese, then reading and writing is very useful.
You may read more about Romanization of the Mandarin Chinese at Wikipedia to understand more.
Just a brief history about Mandarin Chinese. In China, Singapore and Malaysia, the Chinese character has been simplified, meaning the strokes are lesser and easier to memorise. Meanwhile in Taiwan and Hong Kong, they are still using the traditional Chinese character.
Since I learned the simplified way, this is how it will be shown here in the blog, the simplified version.
That's all for now. Next lesson, we will learn about the Chinese Syllable.
P/S: I will try to post once a week as I am still learning on a weekly basis. Please bear with the speed. Thank you!
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