Just like alphabet A - Z to English, Pinyin provides a phonetic alphabet for Chinese. It is taught from Grade 1 in Chinese elementary schools. It is a fundamental tool used for learning the spelling of Chinese characters throughout Chinese language study.
After mastering Pinyin, you can easily read Chinese books with Pinyin marked, learn Chinese characters by looking in the dictionary, or input Chinese characters into your computer, it will take your Chinese study to a higher level.
Pinyin is used by most modern Chinese dictionaries to denote pronunciation of characters. It is also an efficient input method in Chinese computer software, which is natively supported by Microsoft Windows OS.
A Student Project
LIS 650/651
