Transliteration of Chinese

This system was modeled on Japanese katakana, which he learned during a two-year stay in Japan, and consisted of letters that were based on components of Chinese characters.

[1] One of Wang's contemporaries, Lao Naixuan 勞乃宣 (1843–1921), later adapted Guanhua zimu for use in two Wu dialects, those of Ningbo and Suzhou.

In doing this, he raised the issue that was ultimately responsible for the failure of all alphabetic writing systems in China: the notion that people should be introduced to literacy in their own local dialects.

Such a proposal would both challenge the unique position of the millennia-old writing system and create more than one literary language, destroying China's linguistic unity in both the historical and geographic senses.

[5] The Phags-pa script was an alphabet designed by Drogön Chögyal Phagpa at the behest of Kublai Khan during the Yuan dynasty, to unify the empire's various languages.

While Phags-pa has aided in the reconstruction of pre-modern Chinese pronunciation, it totally ignores tone.

It is used on occasion by many ethnic minorities who adhere to the Islamic faith in China (mostly the Hui, but also the Dongxiang, and the Salar), and formerly by their Dungan descendants in Central Asia.

The Dungan language, a variety of Mandarin, was once written in the Latin script, but now employs Cyrillic.

The base letters represent the initial and rhyme; these are modified with diacritics for the medial and tone.