Why does every teacher would like to teach students pinyin in their first Chinese lesson? In general, pronunciation can't be derived from seeking at Chinese characters, even though sometimes characters with typical parts have comparable pronunciation. As opposed to other current written languages, Chinese characters will not be phonetic, and surely not alphabetic, but pictographic or ideographic (displaying combinations of images or symbols to convey meaning) like ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Therefore there has required to be a strategy of representing in composing the pronunciation of every character when teaching the language. Many systems are actually used, but pinyin may be the current standard means of writing Chinese pronunciation.
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