台灣普遍使用『注音符號』來做拼音。 像：ㄅㄆㄇㄈㄉㄊㄋㄌ…等，類似英文的ABCDEFG…等。 所以也有子母音之分，並且配上『聲韻符號』做音調的變化。 聲韻符號：一聲（）二聲（ˊ）三聲（ˇ）四聲（ˋ）輕聲（˙）共五種，另一聲沒有符號 台灣的小朋友要學國字（中文字）前都要先學『注音符號』，來練習日後每一個中文字的發音。 例：你好嗎？ 　　你（ㄋㄧˇ）好（ㄏㄠˇ）嗎（ㄇㄚ˙）？ 　　通常寫為直式，聲韻符號在右，如下。 　　你ㄋ　　　就ㄐ 　　　　ˇ　　　 ㄧˋ 　　　ㄧ　　　　ㄡ

pinyin like english letter！ pinyin is composition chinese syllable！

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin do you think that japanese sounds better in English? Tokyo Toyota... when you try to pronounce the pinyin in English phonetics, it sounds odd. Beijing Shanghai...

pinyin is to help read chinese characters. And as Eliot said it's the first step to learn Chinese. Every character has its special pinyin to help us read and recogonize. Interesting thing is some different characters share same pinyin and even same tone, for example, 取、曲、娶, they all read as qǔ. 小,晓,筱 read as xiǎo. etc. While there are some characters have different pinyins to read according to the situation. For example, 落，sometimes the pinyin is luò, like 落叶(shed leaves), but when it comes to this sentence, 你落下东西了, it read as là. which means you left something behind. Well, it's kinda complicated, but interesting if keep digging =p

Pinyin is based on the phonetic symbol,and a way of everybody would learn the pronounciation of Chinese character.