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Pinyin - a system of writing in the modern Chinese language, based on Latin script. It is accepted in mainland China, but in practice it is not used in Taiwan. It plays the roll of a basic system of transcribing the words of the Chinese language in the countries where Roman letters are in use.
Pallady's System - a system of recording Chinese words and phrases, based on Cyrillic script. It is recognized in Russia as an official system of writing Chinese names and titles. It has been developed during the second half of XIX century by Archimandrite Pallady (Kafarov) - one of the establishers of Russian Sinology.
The most used way in the modern Chinese language of recording words is hieroglyphics. However, with the aim of simplifying the recording of Chinese words, using as a tool in the process the Roman script, a system consisted of 422 syllables was worked out - Pinyin, which unequivocally corresponds to the standard phonetic system of the Chinese language of the official dialect - Putonghua (i.e. to every single syllable of Putonghua corresponds only one Pinyin syllable). In Russia a similar system has been developed for the same purposes on the basis of Cyrillic script. Below is the table of their concordance.
In Chinese names, as well as in Japanese, the first place belongs to the family name (consisted of one syllable, or in rare cases - two), and afterwards — the personal name (usually two syllables) follows. However, when written in Russian, they do not change places in order to conform to the rule of writing down Russian names. Thus, in the name “Mao Zedong” “Mao” is the surname.
Disyllabic Chinese names in Russian are written together (unlike Vietnamese, Korean and Indonesian). Sometimes they are written using dashes — “Мао Цзэ-дун”. However such writing has become outdated.
It is important to have in mind that all of the aforesaid does not have much connection with the real pronunciation of Chinese. It is just a system of writing Chinese words in Cyrillic script, which tries do describe their articulation in Russian. If you are interested in how those words really sound in Chinese, then you should engage yourself in a serious study of that language.
Archimandrite Pallady (in the world - Peter Ivanovich Kafarov) was born in 1817. He studied at the Kazan Seminary, and after finishing it, at St. Petersburg Spiritual Academy. In 1840 he was tonsured as a monk and then sent to China being a member of the Spiritual Mission there. In 1849 he was ordained as a hieromonk.
In the forthcoming period Archimandrite Pallady visited China many times, where he headed the Spiritual Mission in Beijing and studied the languages and the culture of the Far East. In 1878, returning from a regular expedition, he died.
As a scientist, Archimandrite Pallady was interested primarily in the history of China and Mongolia, Buddhism and Chinese literature. His life long work, the “Chinese—Russian Dictionary”, was finished by another member of the Spiritual Mission in China, P. S. Popov, and then published in Beijing in 1889.