The Pinyin Romanization system or Hanyu Pinyin Romanization system is one of the common romanization systems for Mandarin in Chinese.
Pinyin uses Roman alphabets together with a corresponding tone to form the pronunciation of Chinese characters. One character usually consists of the combination an initial and a final but there are cases where only the final is used. There are five different tones that can be associated with a Chinese character. These tones are the flat tone (or high level tone), the rising tone (or high-rising tone), the falling-rising tone (or low tone), the falling tone (or high-falling tone) and the neutral tone.