Pīnyīn

Pīnyīn (拼音) is a type of Roman (Latin) script, used in mainland China, to map all those Chinese characters to their pronunciations.

Pīnyīn is very important. One of the reasons is that, when you want to type Chinese characters into a computer, most likely, you will be typing their pīnyīn representations instead. (Otherwise you will have to get a keyboard with thousands of keys - because that’s how many Chinese characters are out there!)

School kids in mainland China start their formal Chinese education by learning pīnyīn.