There are many, many bad transliteration systems out there, but Pinyin may very well be the worst. If they wanted a Chinese alphabet, they could have just created a new one. It isn't very difficult. But with Pinyin, there is absolutely no relationship between spelling and pronunciation. It is a terrible, terrible system and I hate it.

I wholeheartedly agree with the Wade-Giles assessment. I appreciate the effort, but dang, why not just use a b- for a b- sound, instead of facilitating the ingrained mispronunciation of China's important people and places in the west? Thank you, pinyin. You make sense to me.

This is not to say that Wade-Giles doesn't have serious flaws. But breaking your leg isn't a good cure for a broken arm.

Tiako,

Perhaps you should remember that pinyin is designed for Chinese people for using Chinese reference tools, not for westerners learning to pronounce Chinese.

The problem is that Beijing pushed it as a Romanization method, and as that, it fails utterly. If they had wanted a system to partially replace the insanely inefficient characters, they could have created an alphabet. I did when I was about twelve, so it isn't that hard. Instead, they decided to create a crappy Romanization system, thus making it harder for Chinese people to learn a Western language and for Westerners to study China. Pinyin is just another terrible plan from a government with a history of terrible plans.

Personally, I think it is a defence plan. Let's say the US invades and penetrates into central China. The top brass sends an order that the army should invade "Shee-an". This would no doubt confuse the armies greatly, since all they can see is Xi'An.

The second paragraph is a joke. The first isn't.

It seems I might be the first pro-pinyin chinese person here.
I studied pinyin when I was in priliminary school, it did help me study new words alone. When I got into middle school, the time I'd known enough words, I seldom had chance to use pinyin, apart from few times when I was learning new chinese words. After that, I bought my first pc ans chose pinyin method to put in words.
In general, I think pinyin of a useful tool especially at the very beginning of school days. And then, the odds to notice its very existence is very low.

i cant say that i'm the second pro-pinyin chinese here but i simply didnt get the chance to learn any alternative systems that wud help youngsters to learn the language
the only thing i dislike about pinyin is its wide usage on consumer goods, shop windows that directly 'translate' chinese characters into pinyin which do not help westerners in the least

Count me, a random google-ist, as another supporter of Pinyin over any available alternative latin-character systems. (Now, bopomofo, maybe...)

Peking <-> Beijing <-> 北京

Which one, seen by an ignorant tourist, is going to be pronounced the closest to how it should be pronounced?

Well, did you know that pinyin was developed by Russians to romanize Chinese into Russian? Hence the quasi-Cyrillic "q", "x", and "c". If you know Russian, the sounds make perfect sense. If you don't, then it's just another system of romanization for non-native speakers to learn. Nothing to get really excited about. For those of you who never learned anything else, I suggest you look into the other forms: Wade-Giles, Yale (good for American English speakers), Gwoyue Romatzyh Pinin Faashyh(the tones are in the spelling and it was designed by a Chinese linguist in 1928),Latinhua xinwenz (designed by a Chinese communist for use in Soviet East Asia), and Zhuyin Fuhao. In France there was a system created in the 19th century at Ecole francaise d'Extreme-Orient based on Wade-Giles but with vowels comprehensible to a French speaker.