High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The romanization of Mandarin Chinese or Mandarin romanization is the use of the Latin alphabet to write Chinese. Because Chinese is a tonal language with a logographic script, its characters do not represent phonemes directly. There have been many systems of romanization throughout history. Linguist Daniel Kane recalls, "It used to be said that sinologists had to be like musicians, who might compose in one key and readily transcribe into other keys." However, Hanyu Pinyin has become the international standard since 1982. Other well-known systems include Wade-Giles and Yale Romanization.