The main phonetic transcription systems used are the mainland pinyin system and the older Wade-Giles system, both based on the Latin alphabet; the National Phonetic Symbols current in Taiwan, which are based on modified Chinese characters, are little used.
拼音系統則以漢語拼音和威氏拼音為主，台灣一般所用的注音符號，則因另成體系，較少被引用。