[cheatdeath]

I guess I've just been assuming any Roman characters are English, some definitely might be Pinyin. I generally try not to stare at peoples screens for too long haha. I did an intro to Chinese (Mandarin) class a few years ago so I'm aware of Pinyin but have forgotten almost everything (except some of the bits I found particularly interesting like word order for times and places, how numbers are represented and a few other things).

[brobinson]

This is a useful reference for hanyu pinyin/tones: http://lost-theory.org/chinese/phonetics/