page_title: Transliteration of Chinese
section_title: Bopomofo
hierarchical_section_title: Transliteration of Chinese / Bopomofo
caption_attribution_description: Zhuyin, selfmade
context_page_description: The different varieties of Chinese have been transcribed into many other writing systems.
context_section_description: Wu Jingheng (who had developed a "beansprout alphabet") and Wang Zhao (王照) (who had developed a Mandarin alphabet, Guanhua Zimu, in 1900) and Lu Zhuangzhang were part of the Commission on the Unification of Pronunciation (1912–1913), which developed the rudimentary Jiyin Zimu (記音字母) system of Zhang Binglin into the Mandarin-specific phonetic system now known as Zhuyin Fuhao or Bopomofo, which was eventually proclaimed on 23 November 1918.
  The significant feature of Bopomofo is that it is composed entirely of "ruby characters" which can be written beside any Chinese text whether written vertically, right-to-left, or left-to-right. The characters within the Bopomofo system are unique phonetic characters, and are not part of the Latin alphabet. In this way, it is not technically a form of romanisation, but because it is used for phonetic transcription the alphabet is often grouped with the romanisation systems.
caption: Bopomofo symbols compared to Pinyin
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