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# pinyin

«pinyin» in Mova's school dictionary: **the official way of writing Chinese (Mandarin) words with…** — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 2 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

### part of speech

noun (pinyin — uncountable); used before nouns (pinyin spelling)

### meaning for a pupil

1) Pinyin is the official way of writing Chinese (Mandarin) words with the Latin letters we use for English. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/pinyin/#m1)

2) It also shows the tones of Mandarin with little marks over the vowels, such as mā, má, mǎ, mà. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/pinyin/#m2)

### sense in the lessons

In language lessons pinyin helps learners read and say Mandarin before they know Chinese characters. Children in China learn pinyin at school, and it is used for typing Chinese on phones. Place names like Beijing are written in pinyin. A word in pinyin (ming, mei, ni hao) is Chinese, not English.

### examples

- "Nǐ hǎo" is "hello" written in pinyin. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/pinyin/#x1)
- We learnt the pinyin for numbers one to ten. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/pinyin/#x2)
- The card had the Chinese character and the pinyin underneath. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/pinyin/#x3)
- In pinyin, "Beijing" replaced the old spelling "Peking". [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/pinyin/#x4)
- My cousin types Chinese messages using pinyin. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/pinyin/#x5)
- The little marks in pinyin show the four tones. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/pinyin/#x6)
- Pinyin letters do not always sound like English letters: "x" sounds a bit like "sh". [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/pinyin/#x7)

### note

Pinyin is not a language; it is a way of spelling Mandarin. Its letters have their own sounds: q is like "ch", x like "sh", zh like "j". Usually written without a capital, though some books write Pinyin. Uncountable.

### In the corpora

- [We write what you hear in pinyin, with little tone marks showing whether the voice stays high, rises, dips or falls.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/1-hello-and-goodbye-at-the-gate/1/)
- [Pinyin writes Chinese sounds with Latin letters and tone marks; it helps learners with pronunciation.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/34-mandarin-compared-with-english/8/)

### Trees and pragmatics

[Every meaning and example of «pinyin» parsed by Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/pinyin/), each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.