1. the development of pinyin

China didn't have pinyin letters at that time, so we used the method of orthography or anti-tangent of pinyin Chinese characters. Direct pronunciation means using homophones to express the pronunciation of Chinese characters. If homophones are rare words, they can't be read even if they are pronounced. Backcutting refers to annotating another Chinese character with two Chinese characters. The upper word is the same as the initial consonant of the annotated word, and the lower word is the same as the vowel and tone of the annotated word. Mr. Zhou Youguang called reverse cutting "center cutting welding method". These two methods of phonetic notation are inconvenient to use.

On the basis of analyzing the initial consonants, vowels and tones of Chinese, Wenshou monks in Tang Dynasty formulated 36 letters to describe the pronunciation of Chinese characters, which showed that the phonetic analysis of China had reached a high level at that time. Unfortunately, he used Chinese characters to represent these initials and finals, so such letters did not develop into pinyin characters.

1500 years ago, some Muslim minorities in China used "Xiaojing", an Arabic script. Spelling Chinese with Arabic letters is a step further than using Chinese characters to express initials and finals in the Tang Dynasty. * * * has 36 characters, 4 of which are unique. This may be the earliest phonetic symbol used to spell Chinese in China. It no longer bears the trace of Chinese characters, and uses pinyin letters completely. Dongxiang, Salar and other ethnic groups also use Xiaojing.

2. The characteristics of words

Use only 26 international letters, do not add new letters, and try not to use additional symbols (only use two additional symbols); Try not to change the reading, and use Y, W and the sound insulation symbol "'"for sound insulation; The four double letters ZH, CH, SH and NG are used, and four tone symbols are used to represent the four tone categories of flat tone, rising tone, rising tone and falling tone. The common alphabetical order of Latin letters is adopted to determine the names of Chinese phonetic letters.

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Used for Chinese phonetic notation: Since the autumn of 1958, Chinese phonetic notation has been used in primary school Chinese textbooks nationwide, and then Chinese phonetic notation has been used in middle school textbooks, dictionaries, popular books and literacy textbooks. People's Daily, etc. Annotate difficult words with Chinese Pinyin.

1958 10 the central administration for industry and commerce and the China language and writing reform commission jointly issued a notice, requiring all kinds of trademark designs and commodity packages to be marked with hanyu pinyin letters. The names of post offices, railway stations, weather stations and city streets are also marked in Chinese Pinyin. 1June 9, 982, the National Bureau of Standards issued the national standard "Chinese Spelling of Chinese Books and Periodicals", which stipulated that Chinese books and periodicals published in China should be marked with Chinese phonetic titles and titles on the front cover, front cover, back cover or copyright page.