16.Pinyin's Sixtieth Birthday Pinyin, a system that uses the Latin letters, tells us how to pronounce Chinese characters. What you learned in your first Chinese class in primary school was probably pinyin. The year 2018 marks pinyin's sixtieth birthday.
In 1958, Chinese linguist Zhou Youguang and his team designed (设计) pinyin.
Before that, Chinese people used many other methods to denote (标注) the pronunciation of Chinese characters. In ancient China, people denoted Chinese characters using other Chinese characters that had the same pronunciation. Some of the symbols are Chinese character strokes (笔画). For example, a vertical stroke is pronounced as "i" in pinyin. Some people still use this method.
However, these methods are not as simple to use as pinyin. Because of pinyin, many illiterate (不识字的) people have learned how to read. We use pinyin to type Chinese characters into computers and phones. Pinyin has been useful in other ways too. It helps to
promote the use of Standard Chinese, or Mandarin, so people who speak different dialects (方言) can still understand each other.
Pinyin is not only popular in China. Many people around the world start to learn Chinese by learning pinyin. You might say"nihao"instead of "hello" to a foreign friend. The Oxford English Dictionary includes more than 100 Chinese words in pinyin, such as zhongguomeng for "Chinese dream", and wanggou for "online shopping".
Pinyin is not only a language tool, but also a cultural bridge that connects China to the world, Guangming Daily noted. Pinyin is still young. But it has been and will still be a useful tool in the future.