Yale romanization of Mandarin

The Yale romanization of Mandarin is a system for transcribing the sounds of Standard Chinese, based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. It was devised in 1943 by the Yale sinologist George Kennedy for a course teaching Chinese to American soldiers, and was popularized by continued development of that course at Yale. The system approximated Chinese sounds using English spelling conventions, in order to accelerate acquisition of correct pronunciation by English speakers.

The Yale romanization was widely used in Western textbooks until the late 1970s. In fact, during the height of the Cold War, the use outside of China of pinyin rather than Yale romanization, was regarded as a political statement or identification with the communist Chinese regime. The situation was reversed once relations between the People's Republic of China and the West had improved. Communist China (PRC) became a member of the United Nations in 1971 by replacing Nationalist China (ROC). By 1979, much of the world adopted pinyin as the standard romanization for Chinese geographical names. In 1982, pinyin became an ISO standard, and interest in Yale Mandarin declined rapidly thereafter.