Editing Pinyin (section)

=== Background ===
[[Matteo Ricci]], a [[Jesuit]] missionary in China, wrote the first book that used the Latin alphabet to write Chinese, entitled ''Xizi Qiji'' (Hsi-tzŭ Ch'i-chi; {{zhi|t=西字奇蹟|l=Miracle of Western Letters}}) and published in Beijing in 1605.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Sin |first=Kiong Wong |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nMapiPYFvc8C&q=Matteo+Ricci+Xizi+Qiji&pg=PA72 |title=Confucianism, Chinese History and Society |publisher=World Scientific |year=2012 |isbn=978-981-4374-47-7 |page=72 |access-date=13 July 2014}}</ref> Twenty years later, fellow Jesuit [[Nicolas Trigault]] published {{zhl|p=Xīrú ěrmù zī|t=西儒耳目資|l=Aid to the Eyes and Ears of Western Literati|w=Hsi ju erh mu tzŭ}}) in Hangzhou.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Brockey |first=Liam Matthew |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sOGSvo4VMPkC&q=Matteo+Ricci+Xizi+Qiji&pg=PA261 |title=Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579–1724 |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=2009 |isbn=978-0-674-02881-4 |page=261 |access-date=13 July 2014}}</ref> Neither book had any influence among the contemporary Chinese literati, and the romanizations they introduced primarily were useful for Westerners.<ref name="Joseph">{{Cite book |last1=Chan |first1=Wing-tsit |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mXEWsXaMJZYC&q=Matteo+Ricci+Xizi+Qiji&pg=PA302 |title=Sources of Chinese Tradition |last2=Adler |first2=Joseph |publisher=Columbia University Press |year=2013 |isbn=978-0-231-51799-7 |pages=303–304 |access-date=13 July 2014}}</ref>

During the late Qing, the reformer Song Shu (1862–1910) proposed that China adopt a phonetic writing system. A student of the scholars [[Yu Yue]] and [[Zhang Taiyan]], Song had observed the effect of the ''[[kana]]'' syllabaries and [[Western learning]] during his visits to Japan.{{which|date=October 2020}} While Song did not himself propose a transliteration system for Chinese, his discussion ultimately led to a proliferation of proposed schemes.<ref name="Joseph" /> The [[Wade–Giles]] system was produced by [[Thomas Francis Wade|Thomas Wade]] in 1859, and further improved by [[Herbert Giles]], presented in ''[[A Chinese–English Dictionary|Chinese–English Dictionary]]'' (1892). It was popular, and was used in English-language publications outside China until 1979.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Ao |first=Benjamin |year=1997 |title=History and Prospect of Chinese Romanization |url=http://www.white-clouds.com/iclc/cliej/cl4ao.htm |journal=Chinese Librarianship: An International Electronic Journal |volume=4}}</ref> In 1943, the US military tapped [[Yale University]] to develop [[Yale romanization of Mandarin|another romanization system for Mandarin Chinese]] intended for pilots flying over China—much more than previous systems, the result appears very similar to modern Hanyu Pinyin.