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TheYale romanization of Mandarin is a system for transcribing the sounds ofStandard Chinese, based on theBeijing dialect ofMandarin.^[1] It was devised in 1943 by theYale sinologistGeorge Kennedy for a course teaching Chinese to American soldiers, and was popularized by continued development of that course at Yale.^[2][3]The system approximated Chinese sounds using English spelling conventions, in order to accelerate acquisition of correct pronunciation by English speakers.^[4]

The Yale romanization was widely used in Western textbooks until the late 1970s. In fact, during the height of theCold War, the use outside of China ofpinyin rather than Yale romanization was regarded as a political statement or identification with the communist Chinese regime.^[5] The situation was reversed once relations between thePeople's Republic of China and the West had improved. Communist China (PRC) became a member of theUnited Nations in 1971 by replacing Nationalist China (ROC). By 1979, much of the world adopted pinyin as the standard romanization for Chinese geographical names. In 1982, pinyin became anISO standard, and interest in Yale Mandarin declined rapidly thereafter.

The tables below show the Yale Mandarin representation of eachChinese sound (in bold type), together with the correspondingIPA phonetic symbol (in square brackets), and equivalent representations inbopomofo and pinyin.

In Mandarin,stop andaffricate consonants are allvoiceless, but show a contrast between anaspirated and unaspirated series. A much-criticized feature of theWade–Giles system was its use of an apostrophe to indicate aspiration, as in the syllablet'a contrasting with the unaspiratedta.

The corresponding Yale spellings,ta andda respectively, suggest an approximation of the aspiration distinction to speakers of English, in which (unlike, say,Romance languages) voiceless consonants liket are pronounced with distinct aspiration when they occur at the start of a word, but voiced ones liked are pronounced unaspirated and with weakened voicing in that position.^[4][6]Similar conventions were used in the earlierGwoyeu Romatzyh system and the later pinyin system.

The Yale system, like Wade–Giles and Gwoyeu Romatzyh, representspalatal consonants using letters for the similarretroflex sounds with which they are incomplementary distribution, aside fromsy for /ɕ/.^[7] That is more intuitive for English speakers than the pinyin usage of the lettersq andx, which no longer carry their values expected in English text. For example,q in pinyin is pronounced something like thech inchicken and is written asch in Yale Romanization.Xi in pinyin is pronounced something like Englishshe; in Yale it is written assyi.

Nucleus		a					ə						∅
Coda		∅	i	u	n	ŋ	∅	i	u	n	ŋ	ɻ
Medial	∅	a [a] ㄚ a	ai [ai] ㄞ ai	au [au] ㄠ ao	an [an] ㄢ an	ang [aŋ] ㄤ ang	e [ɤ] ㄜ e	ei [ei] ㄟ ei	ou [ou] ㄡ ou	en [ən] ㄣ en	eng [əŋ] ㄥ eng	er [aɚ] ㄦ er	r/z [ɨ] ㄭ -i
	i	ya [ja] ㄧㄚ ia		yau [jau] ㄧㄠ iao	yan [jɛn] ㄧㄢ ian	yang [jaŋ] ㄧㄤ iang	ye [je] ㄧㄝ ie		you [jou] ㄧㄡ iu	in [in] ㄧㄣ in	ing [iŋ] ㄧㄥ ing		i [i] ㄧ i
	u	wa [wa] ㄨㄚ ua	wai [wai] ㄨㄞ uai		wan [wan] ㄨㄢ uan	wang [waŋ] ㄨㄤ uang	wo [wo] ㄨㄛ uo	wei [wei] ㄨㄟ ui		wun [wən] ㄨㄣ un	ung [ʊŋ] ㄨㄥ ong		u [u] ㄨ u
	y				ywan [ɥɛn] ㄩㄢ üan		ywe [ɥe] ㄩㄝ üe			yun [yn] ㄩㄣ ün	yung [jʊŋ] ㄩㄥ iong		yu [y] ㄩ ü

Syllables withsyllabic fricatives are spelledjr (ㄓ zhi),chr (ㄔ chi),shr (ㄕ shi),r (ㄖ ri),dz (ㄗ zi),tsz (ㄘ ci),sz (ㄙ si), suggesting approximate pronunciations to English speakers.^[7]In pinyin, these are all spelled-i.For example, "knowledge" (知識) is spelledchih-shih in Wade–Giles andzhishi in pinyin, but in Yale romanization it is writtenjr-shr—only the last will elicit a near-correct pronunciation from an unprepared English speaker.

Tone was marked using diacritics, the shape of which suggested the correspondingpitch contour:ā (high level),á (rising),ǎ (falling-rising) andà (falling).^[8] The same method was adopted by pinyin.

The dash (-) is used to divide syllables, indicating that syllable-finalng before a vowel is pronounced /ŋ/ where it could be read as two separate syllables ending with /n/ and beginning with /k/; for instance, /ʈ͡ʂʰaŋ˧˥ an˥/ is speltCháng-ān.^[9]

• Yale romanization of Cantonese
• Yale romanization of Korean
• Comparison of Chinese transcription systems

• "Comparison chart of Yale Romanization for Mandarin with Hanyu Pinyin and Zhuyin Fuhao". Archived fromthe original on July 16, 2014.

• Romanization of Chinese
• Yale University
• Writing systems introduced in 1943

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