Bopomofo

Mandarin Phonetic Symbols
百科全書 (encyclopedia) in Zhuyin Fuhao.
Type	Semisyllabary (letters for onsets and rimes; diacritics for tones)
Creator	Commission on the Unification of Pronunciation Introduced by the Gov't of the ROC
Time period	1918 to 1958 in China; 1945 to the present in Taiwan
Parent systems	Oracle Bone Script Seal Script Clerical Script Mandarin Phonetic Symbols
Child systems	Taiwanese Phonetic Symbols, Suzhou Phonetic Symbols, Hmu Phonetic Symbols
Sister systems	Simplified Chinese, Kanji, Hanja, Chữ Nôm, Khitan script
Direction	Left-to-right
ISO 15924	Bopo, 285
Unicode alias	Bopomofo
Unicode range	U+3100–U+312F Bopomofo U+31A0–U+31BF Bopomofo Extended

Zhuyin fuhao, Zhuyin or Bopomofo (pinyin: bōpōmōfō, Mandarin IPA: [pu̯ópʰu̯ómu̯ófu̯ó]) is a system of phonetic notation for the transcription of spoken Chinese, particularly the Mandarin dialect. The first two are traditional terms, whereas Bopomofo is the colloquial term, also used by the ISO and Unicode. Consisting of 37 characters and four tone marks, it transcribes all possible sounds in Mandarin. Zhuyin was introduced in China by the Republican Government in the 1910s and used alongside the Wade-Giles system, which used a modified Latin alphabet. The Wade system was replaced by Hanyu Pinyin in 1958 by the Government of the People's Republic of China, and at the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in 1982. Although Taiwan officially abandoned Wade-Giles in 2009, Bopomofo is still the official phonetic notation system of the country and remains widely used as an educational tool and electronic input method in Taiwan.

The informal name "Bopomofo" is derived from the first four syllables in the conventional ordering of available syllables in Mandarin Chinese. The four Bopomofo characters (ㄅㄆㄇㄈ) that correspond to these syllables are usually placed first in a list of these characters. The same sequence is sometimes used by other speakers of Chinese to refer to other phonetic systems.

The original formal name of the system was Guóyīn Zìmǔ (traditional 國音字母, simplified 国音字母, lit. "Phonetic Alphabet of the National Language") and Zhùyīn Zìmǔ (traditional 註音字母, simplified 注音字母, lit. "Phonetic Alphabet" or "Annotated Phonetic Letters"). It was later renamed Zhùyīn Fúhào (traditional 注音符號, simplified 注音符号), meaning "phonetic symbols".