gwoyeu romatzyh (pinyin: "guóyǔ luómǎzì", literally "national language romanization"), abbreviated gr, is a romanization of mandarin chinese, or a way to write mandarin using the roman alphabet, made by yuen ren chao and some other linguists in the late 1920s. it was made as a way to write mandarin using tonal spelling, or spelling rules that would change the syllable's spelling depending on its tone. for example, the syllable "chai" would be written as "chai" if it has the first mandarin tone (or "chāi" in pinyin), "chair" if it has the second tone ("chái")", chae" if it has the third tone ("chǎi")"," and "chay" if it had the fourth tone (chài). y.r. chao created gr in order to increase literacy in china because china's illiteracy was very high in the early 20th century. he made it that tones could be written without extra tone markers, which can be long and difficult to add when printing.