Romanization of Chinese - Other Transcriptions

Other Transcriptions

Chinese languages have been phonetically transcribed into many other writing systems. The Phagspa script, for example, has helped reconstruct the pronunciation of pre-modern forms of Chinese but it totally ignores tone. There is a single widespread system for Cyrillization of Chinese, that is the Palladius system. The Dungan language (a variety of Mandarin used by the Dungan people of Central Asia) was once written in the Latin script but now employs Cyrillic.

Xiao'erjing is a system for transcribing Chinese using the Arabic alphabet.

The Manchu alphabet was also used to write Chinese in the Qing dynasty.

The ongoing Science and Civilization in China project uses another romanization scheme, similar to Wade-Giles. The most noticeable difference is that an "h" is inserted for aspiration (where Wade-Giles would use an apostrophe). Thus Hanyu Pinyin tiān / Wade-Giles t'ien1 is rendered thien.