Will Pinyin, ever replace the traditional Chinese characters? I wrote this in quora No, Pinyin will never ever replace characters. For a really long time, people of different part of china speaks different dialect, though we use the same characters (thanks to Qin Shi Huang). Which means we speak different Chinese languageS. eg. Once, three Chinese students who study abroad meet each other in Europe, ( there weren’t many Chinese student back then,) they was so excited to say anything, because they can’t communicate with Chinese, so them end up speaking english… In fact, they read each other’s letter. After PRC was founded, the leadership vote for an official language. Cantonese was so close to win, anyways right now, the Mandarin (Putonghua) is the actual official language. The stander was established, now it’s time to do that, Pinyin was invented for helping “correct” pronunciation. To eliminate illiteracy, to popularize the Mandarin, to simplify the pronunciation, it needs a pronounce systems , Pinyin was nothing but a tool to archive that. For most of the people, them only used Pinyin in schools. When you study your mother tone, do you need Phonetic symbol? Will Phonetic symbol replace alphabet? For most Chinese, Mandarin isn’t their mother tone, so they need it for a short period. In the future, with the development of the technology. Maybe we will depend less and less on Pinyin. To be honest, when i study english and french, i don’t(& can’t) read Phonetic symbol (maybe that’s the reason why I can’t speak it will). I can easily find videos, podcasts. I don’t need Phonetic symbol. I give you a couplet as gifts. This was written in an island of my hometown, Wenzhou. 云朝朝朝朝朝朝朝朝散， 潮长长长长长长长长消. yún zhāo cháo， zhāo zhāo cháo， zhāo cháo zhāo sàn cháo cháng zhǎng，cháng cháng zhǎng， cháng zhǎng cháng xiāo If one use Pinyin to write this, it's terrible. The writer was Wang Shipeng. (王十朋)（1112-1171）, It used feature of sometimes one character can have different tone, for fun. Both『朝』and『长』 has more than one tone. The “correct” couplet is like this. 云朝潮,朝朝潮,朝潮朝散, 潮常长,常常长,常长常消. If you want to communicate with Chinese, you have to learn character.