Transliteration of Chinese |
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Mandarin |
Wu |
Yue |
Min |
Gan |
Hakka |
Xiang |
Polylectal |
See also |
General Chinese (Chinese: 通字; pinyin: tōng zì; Wade–Giles: t'ung1-tzu4) is a diaphonemic orthography invented by Yuen Ren Chao to represent the pronunciations of all major varieties of Chinese simultaneously.[1] It is "the most complete genuine Chinese diasystem yet published".[2] It can also be used for the Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese pronunciations of Chinese characters[citation needed], and challenges the claim that Chinese characters are required for interdialectal communication in written Chinese.
General Chinese is not specifically a romanization system, but two alternative systems: one (Tung-dzih Xonn-dzih) uses Chinese characters phonetically, as a syllabary of 2082 glyphs, and the other (Tung-dzih Lo-maa-dzih) is an alphabetic romanization system with similar sound values and tone spellings to Gwoyeu Romatzyh.