Editorial Note: Forbes Advisor may earn a commission on sales made from partner links on this page, but that doesn't affect our editors' opinions or evaluations. Learning a new language requires ...

Mandarin characters don’t tell you how to pronounce a word. They are more like pictures that represent an object or an idea. Burt: Correct! Mandarin characters don't give us the sound of a word, so ...

Hanyu Pinyin, or the Chinese phonetic system, will celebrate its 50th anniversary on Monday (Feb. 11). One billion Chinese have used it to learn mandarin since the first edition of pinyin was issued ...