Chinese is the only non-phonetic language in the world today. Therefore, it is important to use a phonetic system - in particular, the Latin (Roman) alphabet - to support this language. GoChinese provides Hanyu Pinyin support for all Chinese text. The following are reasons for this emphasis on Hanyu Pinyin:

• The People's Republic of China, Government of Singapore, International Organization for Standardization (ISO), United Nations, U.S. Library of Congress and American Library Association have adopted Pinyin as the standard romanization for modern Chinese.
  
  
• Chinese is the only non-phonetic language in the world today. Pinyin provides a phonetic basis for the language, using the commonly used Latin alphabet.
  
  
• Chinese character text does not indicate where a word begins and ends, creating ambiguity with comprehension and pronunciation. Pinyin provides a natural 'word grouping' to Chinese text. Moreover, when two characters are 'grouped together' to form a distinct word in Chinese, as is often the case, sometimes the tone or pronunciation of the character changes altogether. Pinyin therefore allow for greater precision in comprehension (with natural word groupings) and pronunciation of a word.
  
  
• Allows for easier indexing (following the alphabet) of Chinese.
  
  
• Knowledge of Pinyin facilitates the use of Chinese dictionaries (with facilitated indexing) and the retrieval of web-based Chinese information (with indexing and natural 'word grouping').
  
  
• Useful method for entering the Chinese language into the computer.
  
  
• Pinyin is adopted by the United Nations as the standard for transliteration of Chinese geographical names.

For more information, please see