Written Chinese is not an alphabet

Alphabet

An alphabet is a standard set of letters—basic written symbols or graphemes—each of which represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or semantic...

ic script

Writing system

A writing system is a symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in language.-General properties:Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic communication systems in that the reader must usually understand something of the associated spoken language to...

. Rather, it is a logographic

Logogram

A logogram, or logograph, is a grapheme which represents a word or a morpheme . This stands in contrast to phonograms, which represent phonemes or combinations of phonemes, and determinatives, which mark semantic categories.Logograms are often commonly known also as "ideograms"...

 script based on Chinese character

Chinese character

Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and Japanese , less frequently Korean , formerly Vietnamese , or other languages...

s, though there also exist alphabetic systems to transcribe

Transcription (linguistics)

Transcription in the linguistic sense is the systematic representation of language in written form. The source can either be utterances or preexisting text in another writing system, although some linguists only consider the former as transcription.Transcription should not be confused with...

 the language.

Alphabetic transcription of Chinese

For the use of the Latin alphabet

Latin alphabet

The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...

 to transcribe Chinese, see:

• Romanization of Chinese
  Romanization of Chinese
  The romanization of Mandarin Chinese is the use of the Latin alphabet to write Chinese. Because Chinese is a tonal language with a logographic script, its characters do not represent phonemes directly. There have been many systems of romanization throughout history...
  
  
  • Romanization of Chinese in Taiwan
    Romanization of Chinese in Taiwan
    There are a large number of romanisation systems used in the Republic of China . Many commonly encountered Taiwanese proper names are written in Wade–Giles, a historic system semi-official in the ROC...
    
    
• Hanyu Pinyin
  Pinyin
  Pinyin is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. It is also often used to teach Mandarin Chinese and spell Chinese names in foreign publications and used as an input method to enter Chinese characters into...
  
   (a.k.a. Pinyin) - the modern international standard for transcription of Standard Chinese
  Standard Chinese
  Standard Chinese, or Modern Standard Chinese, also known as Mandarin or Putonghua, is the official language of the People's Republic of China and Republic of China , and is one of the four official languages of Singapore....
  
  
• Wade-Giles
  Wade-Giles
  Wade–Giles , sometimes abbreviated Wade, is a romanization system for the Mandarin Chinese language. It developed from a system produced by Thomas Wade during the mid-19th century , and was given completed form with Herbert Giles' Chinese–English dictionary of 1892.Wade–Giles was the most...
  
  
• Yale Romanization
  Yale Romanization
  The Yale romanizations are four systems created at Yale University for romanizing the four East Asian languages of Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, and Japanese...
  
  

For the use of the Cyrillic alphabet

Cyrillic alphabet

The Cyrillic script or azbuka is an alphabetic writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School...

 to transcribe Chinese, see:

• Cyrillization of Chinese
  Cyrillization of Chinese
  The Cyrillization of Chinese is effected using the Palladius system for transcribing Chinese characters into the Cyrillic alphabet. It was created by Pyotr Ivanovich Kafarov , a Russian sinologist and monk who spent 30 years in China and was also known by his monastic name Palladius...
  
  

For the use of the Arabic alphabet

Arabic alphabet

The Arabic alphabet or Arabic abjad is the Arabic script as it is codified for writing the Arabic language. It is written from right to left, in a cursive style, and includes 28 letters. Because letters usually stand for consonants, it is classified as an abjad.-Consonants:The Arabic alphabet has...

 to transcribe Chinese, see:

• Xiao'erjing

For another phonetic script in widespread use in Taiwan

Taiwan

Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...

 (often called an alphabet but actually a semi-syllabary

Semi-syllabary

A semi-syllabary is a writing system that behaves partly as an alphabet and partly as a syllabary. The term has traditionally been extended to abugidas, but for the purposes of this article it will be restricted to scripts where some letters are alphabetic and others are syllabic.-Iberian...

) see:

• Zhuyin fuhao (a.k.a. bopomofo or Zhuyin)

See also

• Chinese character classification
  Chinese character classification
  All Chinese characters are logograms, but there are several derivative types. These include a handful which derive from pictograms and a number which are ideographic in origin, but the vast majority originated as phono-semantic compounds . In older literature, Chinese characters in general may be...
  
  
• Fanqie
  Fanqiè
  In Chinese phonology, fanqie is a method to indicate the pronunciation of a character by using two other characters.-The Origin:...
  
  
• Transliteration into Chinese characters
  Transliteration into Chinese characters
  In Chinese, transcription is known as yīnyì or yìmíng . While it is common to see foreign names left in their original forms in a Chinese text, it is also common to transcribe foreign proper nouns into Chinese characters....