What Symbol Is Used In The Chinese Language For The Letter M?

Posted on | December 24, 2009 | 1 Comment

In Chinese, characters are not used as individual sounds that come together to make words in the sense that we know. Chinese characters on their own each have a meaning, as well as a sound.
Feng1 (first tone) （风）on its own means wind, but when made into Feng1Su4Xi4Guan2 (风俗习惯）means tradition.
The sounds of the characters are transliterated into the roman characters through the PinYin system so that westerners can read them without knowing the characters themselves.
好 becomes Hao3 because that’s what it sounds like.
Similarily words from languages with roman characters can be transliterated into Chinese based on the characters that sound like the word. For example Coffee becomes 咖啡 (KaFei), a name created for a beverage previsouly unknown to the average Chinese. Names can also be transliterated.

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