Chinese Phonetic Alphabet

"Chinese Phonetic Alphabet” (known as Pinyin) which was adopted in 1958, is a set of symbols used to transliterate Chinese characters and combine the speech sounds of the common speech into syllables. This Pinyin makes use of the Latin alphabet, modified to meet the needs of the Chinese language.
Pinyin, which will form the foundation for the creation of a Chinese alphabetic systems or writing, is being used through-out the country to facilitate the learning of Chinese characters, help unify pronunciation and popularize the common speech. Pinyin has for years been used among foreign learner of Chinese as well and and has been found much useful and helpful.
Currently this Pinyin is used as one of the methods for typing Chinese Character in computers. So far, this typing method is the most popular method especially among the young Chinese generation as well as the foreigners who learn Chinese. It is because this typing method uses normal English keyboard - really convenient.