The word "Pinyin" is divided two parts. Pin means together, connection and yin means tone, sound. Pinyin is a phonetic symbol to pronunce Chinese, Transcribe is mixed 25 alphabets out of "v" and 4 type of accents. All the Chinese letters are written with pinyin at the top or bottom of each letters on a primer for people who learns Chinese. Even Chinese children learn pinyin at first before reading Chinese. Pinyin is getting used all over the world to support reading Chinese. But one problem makes us trouble to pronunce pinyin. Pinyin is written by an alphabet, so people who knows english pronunciations often misunderstand to read some kind of pinyin. For example, pinyin "ci" includes "i". Most of english people will mistake to read the pronunciation "i" likely "see". Real usage to pronunce "ci" is closely the tone "ts" of "cats". Pinyin "zi" is likey "z" of "zoo". All of us have to remember own pronunciation pinyin has.